• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

System 7 simple screen saver

tbohen

Member
Looking for the lightest weight screen saver out there.

Personally I would just as soon have it blank the screen.

Or are there any power management options to turn the screen off? I want to leave my SE/30 on all the time and want the screen saver for the literal purpose of saving the screen from burn in, I care little for decoration.

Thanks!

 

prattp

Member
I've just updated a program I used to use and uploaded it to sourceforge:

http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/examples/blacken.html

Blacken paints the entire screen black, and stays that way until a key is pressed or the mouse is clicked. The program itself is 3k. The archive includes the source. It is trivial modification of the Mini vMac utility TestSync, and I happened to be revising the Mini vMac extras just now, so it was simple to make Blacken.

 

beachycove

Well-known member
Basic Black: I knew I'd forgotten one, and likely the best one for your needs.

It was freeware, was well regarded, and was widely distributed on magazine covers and such in the mid-90s, so it should be available on archive sites. Works in System 6 and 7.

 

Scott Baret

Well-known member
If you've got an SE/30, the easiest way to blank the screen without having to worry about using RAM, disk space, and resources is to simply turn the brightness knob under the Apple logo all the way down.

 

Mars478

Well-known member
But isn't it still displaying stuff on the screen? The Electrons are still being put on the screen right? or am I wrong about the workings of a CRT?

 

Anonymous Freak

Well-known member
They are being sent, yes; but the gain is so low that nearly none of them are hitting often enough to light up the phosphors.

It's the phosphors on the back of the front-glass that matter. They are what "burn in". The dimmer knob actually turns the gain down on the electron gun, so that it sends out fewer. A dimmer screen is less prone to burn-in. (And even if it does, it burns in with less intensity; which can be overcome by displaying an opposite image at higher brightness for a shorter period of time. Of course, then you're just burning in the rest of the screen to match; which results in a dimmer screen overall.)

 

tyrannis

Banned
Basic Black: I knew I'd forgotten one, and likely the best one for your needs.
It was freeware, was well regarded, and was widely distributed on magazine covers and such in the mid-90s, so it should be available on archive sites. Works in System 6 and 7.
Basic Black 1.5.1 is available in MC68000.org Download Central - it uses the tiniest amount of memory possible.

 
Top