Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!apollo!rehrauer
From: rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Screensaver (again)
Message-ID: <48e55978.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 27 Feb 90 15:26:00 GMT
References: <1874@clyde.concordia.ca>
Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM
Reply-To: rehrauer@apollo.HP.COM (Steve Rehrauer)
Distribution: na
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 29

In article <1874@clyde.concordia.ca> agostino@sherlock.CS.Concordia.CA (DELIGIA agostino) writes:
>I looked at Maccel2 (mouse accelerator) and it has a screensaver.  Actually,
>what it does is to altenately (every 15 sec) display the screen in normal and 
>reverse video.  Does this actually protect the screen over long periods of
>time?

The old Atari 8-bitters color-cycled after a few minutes of inactivity, as
a standard feature.  (Programs could disable it, sort of, by knowing where
and what value to poke into memory.)  Looked like they rotated colors every
5-10 seconds.  Never noticed any problems with burn-in on my old model 800.
(It did scare my 7 year old son, who now uses it, the first time it happened
to him, though.  He forgot to shut off the monitor, went away for a few hours,
and came back to find it color-cycling.  He thought he'd fried the machine by
leaving it unattended.  7-year-olds in the house are a good reason to have a
screen-saver... ;-)

So, how about it, KenB or AllanP?  Doesn't seem like it'd take much more
effort for you folks to add a "screen-saver vector" to TOS 1.8 than it
did to do a "rainbow Fuji" to TOS 1.4.  Sure would be more useful, too.

Have the vector point to a simple color-cycler routine by default; give
a few guidelines as to the "dooz 'n' donts" of installing custom savers;
make it something one can disable from the DESK menu (ala the Blitter --
actually, perhaps just allow selectable delay time to trigger, and let
0 mean "disable"?).  Relatively cheap way to earn more good will, seems
to me...
--
>>"Aaiiyeeee!  Death from above!"<< | Steve Rehrauer, rehrauer@apollo.hp.com
   "Flee, lest we be trod upon!"    | The Apollo System Division of H.P.