Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!mimsy!mojo!russotto
From: russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Hardware screen savers (Re: The next screen saver feature?)
Message-ID: <1990Sep17.171613.23221@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 90 17:16:13 GMT
References: <13599@hydra.gatech.EDU> <11276@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <5532@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (The News System)
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
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In article <5532@mace.cc.purdue.edu> omalley@mace.cc.purdue.edu (John O'Malley) writes:

>I once saw an Apple Lisa with a dimmed screen ... move the mouse and it
>came up to full brightness.  But I have no clue whether it was hardware
>or software.
>
>If it was hardware, then that's even more reason that Apple should add
>similar functionality to the Mac line.

It was indeed hardware-- you could control parameters like how far it dimmed
and how long it took through some routines hung off of TRAP #5.  I think
that this kind of screen blanking would have to be handled by the video
board rather than the Mac itself, at least in the Mac IIs, though Apple
could help things along by providing standard interfaces that did useful
things like SetBlankingTime, etc.

(The Lisa had two other features that no current macs have--- one is that
it could set the contrast via software, the other is that not only could
it turn itself off, it could TURN ITSELF BACK ON after a given interval...)
--
Matthew T. Russotto	russotto@eng.umd.edu	russotto@wam.umd.edu
      .sig under construction, like the rest of this campus.