Off-Center Screen on iMacDV

[Individual . .]

I've just installed Debian (potato) and it seems that all is well... 
except a few minor issues, and this is the most irritating one: When 
in the bash shell (not an X terminal; haven't figured out how to set 
up and get X running yet), the output to the screen seems to be 
slightly off center: the first half letter or maybe the first whole 
letter of my shell prompt is drawn off screen, and the higher you go 
towards the top of the screen, the more of that letter appears. This 
means that the lines of text at the very top of my screen are fine. 
To the right of my screen, from the subtle differences of shades of 
black, I can tell that there is ample space for the screen output to 
be moved.... but I have no idea how. I have a bad feeling I'll need 
to recompile the kernel... Any suggestions?

Paul