@Andre4freedom...I took your advice (sort of).  I used a spare ssd, did another net install; formatting all partitions rather than not formatting /home, choosing mate desktop.
The only software installed after, via synaptic was audacity and vlc, with recommends.  I then copied a video and a audio file over from a flash drive.
Other than a few flickers on a mouse hover on the audacity menu item, all seems ok; vlc played the video ok.  Not sure what is different; I did make sure
to rename the dot files on the first install, but perhaps I missed one, and that could have been the problem.  Not sure how I can check that on the first
install.
That said, I will mark this as solved and thanks to all who chimed in.

Best regards,
Bob

Posting this to possibly save someone else trouble-shooting time.

I have a 1 tb spinning HDD with a "long time use" install and updated ASCII (2), and two 250 gb SSDs. My practice on installation is to uninstall completely Mate Screeensaver, Gimp and PulseAudio.  I set Power Manager to set the power button to "shutdown" and did similar to the suspend options, as well as inhibiting the screen sleep/dim mode. It does not hang.  I downloaded Beowulf RC from Ralph's borta server, burned it to a usb stick, and proceeded to install to one of the ssd. I rebooted and I uninstalled the above three programs, and did the power manager settings as above.

Everything seemed to work fine, except that after a few minutes the screen would go dark, and the mouse and keyboard would become non-usable.  I would have to initiate a shutdown by the power button.  The laptop (Lenovo L512) could then be restarted normally. 

A few days later I downloaded the Beowulf beta, and installed it to the same ssd, in the same way as above.  Results were the same as with the RC.  So I reinstalled to the other ssd.  Same results as the first ssd.  I then reinstalled this time choosing the xfce desktop instead of mate.  Same results.  I then downloaded the ASCII 2 iso, and installed choosing mate desktop to an ssd.  Uninstalled the screensaver, gimp, and pulseaudio. Result was no hang. I then apt updated it and then dist-upgraded to Beowulf. Worked fine, with no hang.

So I again installed with the beowulf iso stick to the ssd, this time leaving the screensaver installed, and only removing gimp and pulseaudio.  I did the inhibit screensaver settings, and the above power manager settings.  Result was no hanging.  I am using that beowulf install to  write this.

One thing of note; when the hang would occur, if I fiddled with the mouse, and then shutdown and rebooted, there would be a "new file" icon on the desktop.  That would seem to indicate that the laptop was still "computing" with only the video not working.  I suspect that the screensaver program has something
to do with recovering from a "sleep" state.  Oh yes, I did try disabling the pci bus and the cpu "powering down" after some non-use time in bios.  No joy with that.

(edit to fix formattinh)

KatolaZ:  here you go .. Note that I am not concerned about the stray (unused) systemd files; only that systemd code should not be running, expecially on boot.

root@thinkpad:/run# tree -alp  systemd
systemd
├── [srwx------]  cgroups-agent
├── [d---------]  inaccessible
│   ├── [b---------]  blk
│   ├── [c---------]  chr
│   ├── [d---------]  dir
│   ├── [p---------]  fifo
│   ├── [----------]  reg
│   └── [s---------]  sock
├── [drwxr-xr-x]  inhibit
│   ├── [-rw-r--r--]  1
│   └── [prw-------]  1.ref
├── [drwxr-xr-x]  machines
├── [drwxr-xr-x]  seats
│   └── [-rw-r--r--]  seat0
├── [drwxr-xr-x]  sessions
│   ├── [-rw-r--r--]  1
│   └── [prw-------]  1.ref
└── [drwxr-xr-x]  users
    └── [-rw-r--r--]  1000

7 directories, 12 files
root@thinkpad:/run# 

# sources.list
# note .. was pkgmster on install
# deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0_amd64_dvd-1]/ ascii main non-free
#deb cdrom:[devuan_ascii_2.0.0_amd64_dvd-1]/ ascii main non-free
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main non-free contrib
deb-src http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main non-free contrib
deb-src http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main non-free contrib
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main non-free contrib

#pinning
/preferences.d/avoid-systemd
Package: systemd-sysv
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -1

Further to the above..I checked on the debian site, and it seems that jessie uses the 2014, and sid uses the 2015 dated version.  So I imagine that the certificates is not my problem.  I will await further developments.  Sorry for the "red herring",

Regards,
Bob

@fsmithred;
I added the source line you suggested and am happy to report that all is well.  Will be spending all day tomorrow playing. 
Again, thanks.

Best regards,
Bob

Last night I installed beta2 using the dvd; it installed okay, but on reboot, there was no networking tools for the wireless.  Actually, after the install, I disconnected the lan cable and rebooted, and subsequently re-plugged the lan cable...no connection.  Okay, so I rebooted, and low and behold, the lan auto-connected.  Then I looked for some wireless tools, and could not find wicd, or simple-netaid installed.  In fact, neither was available from the repos.  So my question is:  Is there some other repo than the (four) suggested in the sources.list?  By the way, I did the install from a usb stick, rather than a dvd, so as to get a faster install.  Perhaps that has some bearing on this issue?  Perhaps wicd has a dependency on libsystemd0? 

Also, prior to this bare metal install, I attempted to upgrade an old wheezy mate install, following the instructions on this site.  It was sort of successful, except that even with pinning systemd, and libsystemd0, systemd kept on getting installed.  No problem..I had made a clonezilla of the wheezy install, just in case.

Regards,
Bob