[net.micro.amiga] Leaving the Amiga On and screen burnin

mwm@dunsel.berkeley.edu (Mike Meyer) (09/21/86)

In article <6@ritcv.UUCP> new7582@ritcv.UUCP (Norman E. Wright <NEW>) writes:
>I think this is true. Thermal stress from turning components on and off
>can sometimes cause more wear and tear than leaving them on.

I asked questions about that when I first bought my Amiga. The answer
(from someone at C/A) was "the Amiga was designed to be left on."
Leave the CPU on, with disks in all drives to avoid checks for
inserted disks.

>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?)

If someone has a monitor that doesn't burn in, I'd sure like to hear
about it.

I know of at least two things that try and solve this problem. I wrote
a little program that puts a digital clock on a black (000) screen,
and pushes it around at random. On Fish disk #35 you can find PopCLI
from The Software Distillery. PopCLI will black your screen out if
there is no input activity for an adjustable period of time.

(PopCLI also catches Left-Amiga-ESC and runs a settable command,
defaulting to NewCLI. Hence the name. The Software Distillery should
be congratulated for what they've done, and encouraged to continue
doing it. If only their policies looked more like those of the Free
Software Foundation.)

The problem with both of these is that a black Amiga screen isn't
black, it's kinda grey. The retrace lines (I assume they are retrace
lines) stay on, even in interlace mode. My solution is to run PopCLI
and let it black the screen if I'm going to gone for a short period of
time (less than a couple of hours). Other than that, I turn the
monitor off. Could somebody please tell me if the "black" of a 000
screen will prevent burnin, and if not, how long the screen should be
black before turning it off becomes a better option?

	Thanx,
	<mike

perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) (09/23/86)

An up-coming issue of Amazing Computing will have a hack which does what PopCli
is said to do. That is, after a period of time, blank the  screen (actually, my
program puts  up  some  moving  eye  candy). Written  about   six months ago, i
doesn't use an input event handler to time idle time (I didn't want to get into
that at that time). Instead it uses a hack truely deserving that term.

Anyway, why not just turn your monitor off and leave the Amiga on? Doesn't the
monitor use more juice anyway? Or decrease the brightness and contrast and use
a screen-blanker and...

Perry

6105530@PUCC.BITNET (Daniel Kimberg) (09/25/86)

A friend of mine who runs a BBS in Philadelphia told me he leaves his
machine on almost all the time, often for many days at a time, with no
problem.  He does leave the monitor off, too, which burnin or no does
get hot.  And no big problems that I've heard of.
 
                                                      -Dan

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

In article <1319@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, mwm@dunsel.berkeley.edu (Mike Meyer) writes:
> The problem with both of these is that a black Amiga screen isn't
> black, it's kinda grey. The retrace lines (I assume they are retrace

Try turning the intensity down on your monitor.  I leave my 1090's 
intensity at the detent and I don't see any gray on a 000 screen.

vanam@pttesac.UUCP (Marnix van Ammers) (09/28/86)

I've had my amiga since mid May and it has been turned off only
a few days here and there and two weekends.  So it's been off
a total of about 1 week and on for about 16 weeks.  Right now
it's been on for about 8 weeks.  I do turn the monitor off
whenever I leave for more than 15 minutes or so.  Anyway I
haven't had any problems.  I do sometimes worry what would happen
if the fan failed.  I hope hope hope that there is some kind of
thermal shutdown device in there.

My previous computer (which I still have) has been on for about
5 years minus about 10 power outages.  It's still on and still
running fine.  It's a Lobo Max-80 128K 5Mhz/Z80/CPM/LDOS machine.
It doesn't have (or need) a fan.  It's a computer in solid metal
keyboard chassis.  By the way it's for sale if anyone is interested.

Marnix
-- 
Marnix A.  van\ Ammers
Home: (707) 644-9781		Work: (415) 545-8334
{ihnp4|ptsfa}!pttesac!vanam	CIS: 70027,70

eric@cti.UUCP (Eric Black) (09/29/86)

My Amiga has been powered-up pretty much continuously since I got it last
December.  I turn it off only if I'm sure I won't be using it for a couple
of days or more.  I do, however, turn the monitor on only when I'm using it
(it's a Sony KV-1311CR).  Leave disks in all four drives and they don't
click checking to see if there's a disk in there (folks in Los Gatos
have said that even the disk checking should be able to go on for
years, but even so it's an annoyance coming from four floppy drives!).

Look for a "Fade-To-Black" type of program here soon, which intercepts
Intuition input and passes it directly on; if there is no input for
some timeout period, it diddles the color tables incrementally so the
screen fades.  Any input, keyboard or mouse, pops the colors back.
To be posted soon...


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