Re: iMac 333 Display Questions

["David H. Gutteridge" <david%gutteridge.ca@localhost>]

On Sat, 17 Nov 2018, at 10:10:44 -0500, Henry Bent wrote:
>I just set up an old tray-loading grape iMac with 8.0 and it's running well so far.  I have some questions about the display, though.
>
>How do I blank/turn off the display (machfb) from the console?  Right now the monitor is on 24/7 and I am concerned about screen burn-in.

There is a command screenblank(1), but I infer its functionality is
very dependent on particular drivers. The only Macs I have use genfb,
and I haven't been able to get it to work for me. Though,
wsfontload(8) and wsconsctl(8) do work for me on that same hardware,
to give a different example.

>How do I choose a different console resolution for machfb? I get "machfb0: initial resolution 640x480 at 8 bpp" when I boot, but it's not clear how I would go about selecting a different resolution.  Is this something I can change at runtime or would it only be a kernel option?  Ideally I'd like to use 1024x768x24, which I know the hardware is capable of.
>
>Is it possible to adjust the screen position?  In OS 9 I know that this can be done in software.  I suppose I can boot into OS 9 and adjust it from there, but it would be convenient to be able to do it from NetBSD.
>
>Thanks in advance for any assistance, and please copy me on any replies as I am not subscribed to the list.

May I ask why you don't simply use X to handle most of these issues?
E.g., you can adjust resolution with a config file (typically), and
various window managers will blank the screen by default, e.g.
wm/blackbox in pkgsrc, which is my go-to for this vintage of hardware.

Beyond that, I'm not much help, I'm afraid. Michael (macallan@) is the
real authority on this topic.

Regards,

Dave