Consider this: text is not great for the even "wear" of a CRT. Most symbols only use a portion of the full character cell, so indistinct blocks of the used portions of the cells get burned-in over time. Of course a blank screen is easiest on a CRT, but if you want the eye candy then it's better to use a screensaver that exercises ALL pixels evenly.

hmmm interesting, didn't think of that ...
I found a package through internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geoc … 850/strss12.zip
DOTTY and STRFIELD seem good enough , they are just some dots moving in black background , will that be better for a crt?

I considered using a "dpms standby" screen screensaver but I wanted something to show that the machine is powered...plus all I could find for now are TSR ones, I just need one that is like a normal program

Anything is okay for short-term use, but if you're looking at hundreds or more hours then even wear becomes an issue. DOTTY would be bad for even wear; STRFIELD might be okay if it is random.

DPMS sleep for the CRT combined with with something like DOSIDLE for the CPU would be easiest on the system and possibly on your power bill. 😉

Two words: Norton Commander! 🤣

I imagine something like this could be easily made in QuickBasic, Turbo Pascal or other programming language, then compiled into a simple EXE or COM program. Here's the pseudocode for a basic one that would display the time at a random location on the screen, changing the location every ten seconds.

1:BeginProgram
2Set X=Random(0,79)
3Set X=Random(0,24)
4Set LoopCount=0
5:BeginLoop
6Check For Key Press, Goto Exit If True
7Set LoopCount=LoopCount+1
8If X+CharLength(TIME)>79 Then Set X=79-CharLength(TIME)
9Print TIME At Location X,Y
10Pause For 1 Second
11If LoopCount=10 Goto BeginProgram
12:Exit
13Clear Screen
14Exit To DOS

Of course, this could be easily modified to adjust how often the position changes.

tayyare wrote:

Two words: Norton Commander! 🤣

THIS! I do the same, when I'm about to leave the machine for a bit I just type nc<enter>

well, I use NDN and it does have a screensaver option but it's kind of meh to run a filemanager in order to get a screensaver after a while :p

SS.BAT:

1FDAPM VGAOFF
2PAUSE
3FDAPM VGAON

Best screensaver you can get 😀

Alternatively, you could enable DPMS in your BIOS so your screen turns off automatically after x minutes, without using any TSRs.

^ nice one, it works perfect... not what I was hoping for but it seems a better screensaver 🤣
I already set in BIOS the HDD sleep timeout and it works nice but I prefer manual control over the screen... fdapm did the trick just fine

keropi wrote:

well, I use NDN and it does have a screensaver option but it's kind of meh to run a filemanager in order to get a screensaver after a while :p

One most probably run a file manager for many other purposes, already. Well, actually I run it all the time I'm not in Windows 3.1 or not playing games. And having many fun screen savers on hand while doing it is just nice (floppies is my favorite 😀 ).

To say the truth, I can't imagine a DOS PC without having NC. Heck, I installed it even to DOS based CNC machines and industrial purpose built computers that I took care of over the years. In my country, it was so common during the days, many people was believing that it was part of the DOS itself. 🤣

yeah, nc/xtree was so popular here as well people thought that they were DOS...
personally I only run NDN for my filemanagement , I prefer typing commands and using helper batch files I create 😀

keropi wrote:

^ nice one, it works perfect... not what I was hoping for but it seems a better screensaver 🤣
I already set in BIOS the HDD sleep timeout and it works nice but I prefer manual control over the screen... fdapm did the trick just fine

You can switch off your harddrives with fdapm too, try FDPAPM SPINDOWN 😉

and the best filemanager is no file manager. Just 4dos + gnu fileutils.

I have to agree with Norton Commander, those flipping floppies can't be beat for keeping your screen save.

It appears that NC's SAVER.EXE can be used as a standalone program without the need of any other file... it launches with a random screensaver each time you run it. I unpacked the executable in hopes that I can find some command switches to manually select a screensaver but I can't find anything atm

edit:
well it opens NORTON.INI and picks up the selected scrensaver and then it also needs the *.nss files to work for screensavers that use gfx
else it just picks a random one from the internal non-gfx ones , it would be nice to control that manually