The root window I had opened was shifted down by the amount of text that had scrolled into view on the "text" console after pressing stop+A. Also, only the "client area" (in windows terminology) was redrawing - I could not figure out how to redraw the window border and could not get it to respond to click-and-drag on the title bar. Finally, after logging out using the context menu on the desktop (right click), pressing ENTER spewed rubbish into the "text" console, as did trying to type in my username to login.
I have seen Solaris panic on return from stop+A, so this is definitely not a problem! As long as I can SSH into the box to reboot it then I'm happy, which was obviously the case here. :-) Cheers Andrew. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org