Problems in the virtual terminal on an Asus eeePC

[kilgota banach math auburn edu]

I have just obtained a eeePC, more or less as a late Christmas present. So 
one of the first things I had to do was to learn how to get into a 
terminal window (Cntrl-Alt-t) and I checked whether Midnight Commander is 
there. No. So I installed it.

MC works fine in the xterm, as described above. But it does not do so well 
in the terminal (you can get back to one terminal from X by doing 
Cntrl-Alt-F3). What one gets is the corrupted display which can happen 
sometimes, with some machines, and it is discussed in section 4.2 of the 
FAQ. Specifically, what is happening is

     * Lines are shown as lower case characters like this

      lqqqqqqqqqk
      x         x
      mqqqqqqqqqj

and it is not so obvious how to fix it. The explanation in the FAQ about 
how to improve the terminfo information is rather mysterious and seems to 
presume that the reader knows how to do everything which is recommended.

Quoting what it says:

    1. Your terminal might not support line drawing characters.  VT100
       compatible terminals, rxvt and xterm and color_xterm do support
       them.
    2. Your terminfo or termcap database might have missing or incorrect
       definitions for line drawing characters.  Set the acsc variable
       in the terminfo database like this:
       acsc=a\376k\277l\332m\300j\331n\305w\302v\301u\264t\303q\304x
       \263h\2600\333
       Don't forget issue 'tic' command.  This supposes you are using PC
       character set.  The octal values might be different for other
       character sets.  If you are using termcap instead of terminfo,
       you should modify above solution appropriately.
    3. Your terminal font might not support line drawing characters.
       Try changing the font.

So, I ask. Has anyone passed this way before with one of these machines?

Theodore Kilgore