Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!rodan.acs.syr.edu!fadushin
From: fadushin@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Phred Dushin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Hardware Screen Savers (Re: T
Message-ID: <1990Sep27.040610.3720@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 90 04:06:10 GMT
References: <7331.26FE9E16@fidogate.FIDONET.ORG>
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Lines: 31

>What would be better would be for Apple to implement some form of screen 
>blanking as a standard feature of their System software.  I would go for 
>that.  But then you'd get complaints from companies which make screen 
>blanking software.

This raises an interesting question.  There is a tiny (1k) "init"
called macsbug (not to be confused with the assembly debugger, though
they must be related somehow), which does a nice job blanking the screen.
What is exceptional about this software is that it operates even
after the user has selected shutdown in the finder.  For those of
us in the dark ages (with our macs:mac<macSE), selecting shutdown
does not shut the machine off.  It merely parks heads, gives you that
nice, "okay, turn me off" dialogue, or whatever.  I have not seen 
a screen saver besides this one that has this very nice feature.

You might be asking, what good is it?  Well, if you leave your mac on
24hrs a day like me, but you are concerned about leaving the heads
on your hard drive perilously close to your platter, selecting
shutdown before you leave the mac alone seems like a good idea.

Does anyone know why/how macsbug is able to do this, while none of
the other inits seem to be capable of it? 

Oh yeah.  Maybe this is a feature that could be built in to
the new system.  That would be a nice gesture for those of us who
can't scrape up the cash to enter the fun new world of adb.


Fred Dushin  				Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Internet:				Bitnet:
fadushin@rodan.acs.syr.edu 		fadushin@sunrise.bitnet