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Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 06:10:07 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199610212010.GAA27298@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: j_mini@efn.org, jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com
Subject: Re: Screen savers for syscons....
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
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>>   Lately I've been running FreeBSD 2.1.5-R with a MDA/Herc monitor, and
>> I've been slowly getting annoyed at the screen savers (or lack thereof)
>> for FreeBSD. Currently, I have to turn my monitor off, since the screen
>> savers supplied with FreeBSD won't work on my MDA adapter. Is it jsut me

>No, they definitely do work on mono, CGA, and EGA displays.  I have
>machines with each of these.  (I generally do not place a lot of 

Some may work.  Other obviously don't:

blank_saver: writes blindly the VGA TS registers.
fade_saver: write blindly to the VGA palette registers.
green_saver: writes blindly the VGA TS registers; writes blindly to magic
             EGA/VGA CRTC register (0x17 = CRTC mode, 0x80 bit = hold
             retraces).
snake_saver: fills screen with blanks; writes to magic MDA/CGA/EGA/VGA CRTC
             registers (14,15 = cursor address) to move cursor off screen.
             This should work for all adaptors.
star_saver: fills screen with blanks.  This should work for all adaptors.

Bruce