MORNING STAR REFERENCE CARD =========================== Morning Star by Christopher Antos Copyright (c) 1990-1993, All Rights Reserved -- COMMAND LINE OPTIONS ------------------------------------------------------ /I this option must be used to install Morning Star into memory. /U this option is used to uninstall Morning Star from memory. /T use this option to view the current settings. /Y use this option to install Morning Star without using EMS memory; Morning Star will not be able to run saver modules to draw designs, though. /- disables Morning Star from automatically engaging; hotkeys still work, though. /+ reenables automatically engaging after the time limit has expired; NOTE that /- and /+ are nestable, ie, if you use /- twice, you must use /+ twice to enable Morning Star. /D disable Morning Star completely; even hotkeys don't work. /E reenable Morning Star (after using /D). /S save a copy of the current settings. /R restore settings from a saved copy. /R- forget all saved settings. The following switches can be turned OFF by following them with a minus sign (-). Options with a star (*) next to them are ON by default. /B blanking only; never draw the design, just blank the screen. /F fade out to blank when blanking the screen. /G * Ghost mode (see section "Ghost Mode"). /H alternate method of blanking the screen; some VGA cards require this option to work correctly. /M * watch for mouse movement or clicks and restore the screen. /P enable password protection; screen will not restore until the correct password is entered and [Enter] is pressed. /V watch for video activity and restore the screen; usually this is not necessary. /Wn sets time limit to n minutes; Morning Star waits until n minutes have passed without any activity and then engages. /Zn set which COM ports to watch; COM ports recognized are 1-4, use 0 to clear the list of ports to watch, eg. /Z1 watches port 1 and whatever other ports were already being watched, /Z01 watches only port 1. -- HOTKEYS ------------------------------------------------------------------- [LeftShift]-[RightShift] - engage Morning Star. [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[<] - turn Morning Star off (hear one beep). [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[>] - turn Morning Star on (hear two beeps). [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[/] - pop up control panel. -- CONTROL PANEL ------------------------------------------------------------- The control panel can only pop up in text mode. Use the mouse to change settings, or use the keyboard. MOUSE: Left button - select something. Right button - close the control panel. KEYBOARD: [Tab] - jump to next control (eg. button, list box, etc). [Esc] - close the control panel. [Space] - select something. Use the control panel to change Morning Star's settings, the settings for individual saver modules, to select which saver module to run, and which video driver to use. -- MSCONFIG ------------------------------------------------------------------ Use the program MSCONFIG.EXE to change the default settings and change the password. MSCONFIG creates a configuration file (MORNSTAR.INI) which belongs in the same directory where you keep MORNSTAR.COM. Note that Morning Star and VGA Moire can share the same configuration file! -- GHOST MODE ---------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to a friend in Arizona (Gary Dobbins), Morning Star has a special new mode which makes it compatible with modem redialers and also with networks. Morning Star will allow DOS programs to continue processing even while it is drawing designs. It draws bits and pieces of the designs during the time when other programs are idle. This means that you can leave Morning Star on while your terminal program is dialing and it will draw designs until your modem connects to another computer. Then it will restore the screen for you. Once you are connected, however, it will only blank the screen to avoid interfering with high-speed file transfers. -- IMPORTANT NOTES ----------------------------------------------------------- ** Never install or remove Morning Star from a menu system. Always do it from the DOS prompt (you can use a batch file if you want to) or in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. ** Morning Star does not work in conjunction with Windows. It automatically disables itself to avoid crashing Windows. ** The first time you install Morning Star (or if it cannot find the configuration file), it will pop up the control panel to let you pick a video driver. ** Morning Star *requires* EMS memory in order to run saver modules and draw designs. It only takes 9k of normal memory, but reserves 80k of EMS memory. When it engages, it tries to allocate even more EMS memory, but it frees this memory when it is done with it. VGA Moire does not use EMS memory, but uses 24k of normal memory. ** If you have a modem and Morning Star is watching the COM port to which it is connected, you will see the border color flash whenever the phone rings. Now you can wear headphones while working on your computer and still "hear" the phone when it rings! ** DESQview - Morning Star may be incompatible with DESQview. However, try setting it to ignore the mouse and always blank the screen (use options /M- /B). ** SuperVGA - Some SuperVGA cards (particularly those with Tseng Labs chips) are *NOT* 100% IBM compatible, and there may be minor problems when restoring the screen (eg. in Word for DOS, the background colors may blink). ** GAMES - Most games are incompatible with screen savers. We recommend turning off Morning Star (use the control panel or option /D) before running video games.