[net.micro.amiga] Intro and Leaving Amiga On

new7582@ritcv.UUCP (Norman E. Wright) (09/20/86)

In article <214@zen.BERKELEY.EDU> chapman@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Brent Chapman) writes:
>
>Why wouldn't we want to leave the Amiga on?  Most people I know (myself
>included) with Amigas never bother to turn them off, unless they have a
>major crash, or something like that.  (BTW, isn't it better to leave
>micro-type equipment turned on anyway, assuming it is sufficiently
>ventilated?  Something about reducing stress on components from heat
>expansion and contraction...)
>
I think this is true. Thermal stress from turning components on and off
can sometimes cause more wear and tear than leaving them on.
However, I also wonder about the crt.  Many of the junk and
scrap electronic shops I visit have lots of monitors with burned
in patterns from being left on too long.  Its probably a good
idea to leave something running that changes the display
from time to time if you are going to leave the Amiga on all the time.
(Maybe this doesn't really apply to the latest
and greatest CRTs, though) (comments?)

Hello,
This is my first posting to any net* newsgroup so be gentle with the flames.
By way of introduction, I am a new Amiga owner, but I have been watching this
newsgroup for several months, so I almost think I know some of you.
I'm a software engineer at Xerox and a student at RIT.
As a new Amiga owner/user I'm wondering if this newsgroup is
tolerant and/or responsive to naive and inexperienced questions
about any aspects of Amiga.

One more thing,
Several people have talked about the vt100 program.
It was posted here but that was before I got
my Amiga and the posting was corrupted somehow.  I didn't keep
a copy of it at the time, and it doesn't seem to be here anymore.
Any ideas as to how I could locate a copy would be appreciated.

Norm Wright
- standard disclaimers, (available for small fee :-) ) 

daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (09/22/86)

> Keywords: hello CRT monitor
> 
> However, I also wonder about the crt.  Many of the junk and scrap electronic 
> shops I visit have lots of monitors with burned in patterns from being left 
> on too long.  

Still a problem.  Either switch off the monitor when not in use (ya still can 
leave the Amiga itself on), or get a copy of a PD program called PopCLI.
This program will (1) give you an instant CLI in response to an Amiga-<ESC>
combination, like the SHELL key on an Apollo computer, and (2) blank the
screen after a specific time in which no input takes place.  The blanking
is done by creating a black, 1 bit plane screen in front of anything else
that's running.  Any input event will remove this blanking.

> 
> Norm Wright
> - standard disclaimers, (available for small fee :-) ) 
-- 
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Dave Haynie    {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh

	"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and
	 for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
							-Gotama Buddha

	These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike Meyer) (09/24/86)

In article <761@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes:
> [PopCLI and] blanking
>is done by creating a black, 1 bit plane screen in front of anything else
>that's running.  Any input event will remove this blanking.

I can't resist. The key words are "any input." So...

A Mac-freak friend was over, and we were looking at something on the
Amiga. Hadn't done an input for a while, so PopCLI blanked the screen.
I cussed, said "I told you not to do that!", hitting the desk the
Amiga was sitting on with the word "told." The screen comes back on.
Mac-freak friend's mouth drops open, and stays that way for many
minutes while I laugh at him. He then spends 5 minutes not figureing
out how I did it.

It's a simple thing. "Any input" includes mouse motion input. Hitting
the desk jiggles the mouse enough to make it cause input. Viola, the
screen comes back on.

For a touch of irony, this trick was shown to me by an Apple salesman
peddling the Lisa....

	<mike

walker@sas.UUCP (Doug Walker) (09/25/86)

In article <6@ritcv.UUCP>, new7582@ritcv.UUCP (Norman E. Wright) writes:
> > (is it better to leave Amigas on to reduce stress of power-on?)
> I think this is true. Thermal stress from turning components on and off
> can sometimes cause more wear and tear than leaving them on.
What about the constant clicking of an empty Amiga drive?  This can't be
good for the drive, can it?  And if you leave a dis IN the drive, it seems
to me that that would be worse. . .

> However, I also wonder about the crt.  Many of the junk and
> scrap electronic shops I visit have lots of monitors with burned
> in patterns from being left on too long.  Its probably a good
> idea to leave something running that changes the display

POPCLI is the best thing to leave running.  It will blank your display
completely after a specified timeout period.  BTW, POPCLI2 is available
from the Software Distillery BBS (919)471-6436 300/1200/2400 with source,
a workbench icon and enhancements.  You can now get rid of the CLI which
spawned POPCLI, for instance.  I'll try to get John Toebes to post it
to the net.

eric@cti.UUCP (Eric Black) (09/30/86)

In article <179@sas.UUCP> walker@sas.UUCP (Doug Walker) writes:
>What about the constant clicking of an empty Amiga drive?  This can't be
>good for the drive, can it?  And if you leave a dis IN the drive, it seems
>to me that that would be worse. . .

The folks in Los Gatos say that it should be able to click for years.
I dunno.  Even so, if you put a disk in the drive, how can it be
worse, since the drive is NOT spinning except when accessed (and for
a short period thereafter)?  When ADos notices that the disk has
gone away (via the DSKCHG signal from the drive), it starts looking
for one (oh, if only the drives had a "I just got a disk" signal as
well as the "I just lost my disk"...).  When it discovers a disk
in the drive, it verifies the file system structure (a simplified
version of the kind of thing "fsck" does for UN*X), and assumes that
the disk is still there until it goes away.

If your power is flakey, as mine is during the rainy season, you may
not want to have a real disk in the drive when power goes into
yo-yo mode.  Yes, I know you should be able to power down the computer
(and power it up) with disks in the drives and not mung the bits
thereon, but I've never ever trusted my important bits to that belief.
Put a scratch (NOT a scratched) disk in the drive when you go to
bed (or work), and it will keep the drives from clicking.

Soon I'll be thinking seriously about getting an UPS...  especially when
I have a hard disk on my system!


-- 
Eric Black   "Garbage In, Gospel Out"
UUCP:        {sun,pyramid,hplabs,amdcad}!cti!eric