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| Author | Making software 'full screen'? (Read 16062 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Syntho
64 MB  Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer! 
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on: January 10, 2022, 08:46
There's a way to do this on modern operating systems but I don't know how to (or if you can) do it on System 7. I'd like to make certain software full screen so that all of my attention is on that software instead of being tempted to click through a hard drive or folder. Is there a way to do this? |
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #1 on: January 10, 2022, 10:37
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I usually just lower my resolution to what I need. Some games run in 640x480 for example, so I set it to that via the control panel before launching them so they'll run in full-screen. Lots of applications adhere to the Macintosh design guidelines and offer windows that can be enlarged to your liking. Any specific software that gives you headaches?
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #2 on: January 10, 2022, 15:17
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@Syntho it appears we have similar work flows. I too like to have the application I am working in be full screen mainly just to remove any temptations that will distract me, and boy am I easy to distract. There were some odd ball utilities that could do that. I have a video card in my SE/30 which would either output to an external monitor in color, produce a true grey scale on the internal screen, or produce a virtual workspace that was something like 640X3000(?) in black and white on the internal monitor that you could scroll around in. The big virtual work space on the internal monitor was what I generally used, and you could then make any window fill the entire viewing space, which sort of simulated a full screen application. My first computer was a Commodore and of course everything you did was full screen, and I did miss that when I moved to a Mac. The Mac in an odd sort of way was much easier to use, yet harder to do work on.
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ovalking
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128 MB Posts: 199
Reply #3 on: January 11, 2022, 14:26
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Hmm, a full screen app would really annoy me. It's useful for some applications like presentations / games, but I couldn't do any serious work stuck inside one window. If you open your chosen application, then quit the finder, does that help meet your needs?s
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #4 on: January 12, 2022, 01:13
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Ovalking, you just reminded me of an advanced little trick I used to use, mostly w/RAM disks: I would create a special system folder that substituted the Finder application with the program I wanted to run with its memory settings set to the maximum RAM I had available so I could take advantage of the extra RAM, although I think I used the trick mostly with programs I wanted to run as fast as possible so I loaded the special system folder on a RAM disk so that it would have enough RAM to run properly. This was specially helpful for certain games that would tend to run slow, like my favorite NES emulator, iNES, even if I loaded my games ROMs from my main hard drive. I used to rock my real NES until it died but still have all of my favorite original game cartridges in my garage somewhere.. man, those were the days!! 
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #5 on: January 18, 2022, 15:27
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Unfortunately many vintage programs use direct I/O routines that "glue" them to a specific hardware configuration. Back in the day accessing graphic HW could be a real bottleneck, for RAM was precious and memory chips were (very!) costly. Thus, most graphic calls were not buffered and as many mid- to low-end systems handled those calls via the CPU, spending time with fancy, schmancy screen output meant anything else had to wait (for your stuff to finish). Nowadays graphic calls are almost never made directly to the hardware layer. They are virtuslized a dozen times over, so mapping and scaling them to (almost) anything you like is just a matter of finding the right button to click. But two or three decades earlier if you bought a program written for a machine with 640x480 max. resolution and ran it a few years later on a box with XGA graphics, then there was no other way to make that "full screen" but to scale your entire desktop display back down to VGA. Same goes for B&W vs. color display - if the active application was coded for one, then anyone else had to follow. That was the "joy" of depending on direct HW calls.
Last Edit: January 18, 2022, 15:29 by 68040
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