Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!stiatl!bagend!jan
From: jan@bagend.uucp (Jan Isley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: The next screen saver feature?
Message-ID: <1990Sep18.011146.1185@bagend.uucp>
Date: 18 Sep 90 01:11:46 GMT
References: <13599@hydra.gatech.EDU> <11276@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Organization: 1 Bagshot Row, the Shire
Lines: 27

>A momentary power outage this summer caused all the workstations in the
>CS department here to go down and automatically reboot.  An officemate's
>machine got hung midway during its reboot sequence for some obscure reason,
>after displaying about 20 lines of boot messages.  Since his machine was
>hung, the usual software screen saver wasn't up and running.

>The flicker happened on a Saturday.  By the time he came in Monday and
>discovered the problem, the boot messages were burned into the 19" monitor.

Burned into the monitor in a few days?!  A small exageration is pardonable
but a monitor that brands itself in 2 or 3 days is certainly not!  How 
about a few more details and have you shot the salesnoid yet.

>I think the lack of screen activity (*just* the screen!) should be detected
>by hardware, which could generate a "screen needs blanking" event.  If
>no software screen-saver responds to that event, a simple hardware screen
>blackout should be triggered.  Lots of those old 80x25 character-based
>terminals did hardware screen-blanking; I'm sure the Mac could, too.

Certainly.  I am looking at a Wyse 60 that is several years old with no
ghosts on the screen.  It dims itself after 15 minutes.  I had a vt100
with no screen blanking that took years to leave a ghost on the screen.

jan
-- 
Signatures!?                          | Jan Isley  jan@bagend
We don't need no stinking signatures. | known_universe!gatech!bagend!jan