4 ms·

I never had a Hercules, but that virtual desktop automatic panning was a general feature of XFree86. It was especially useful back then when we had CRTs capabl

I never had a Hercules, but that virtual desktop automatic panning was a general feature of XFree86. It was especially useful back then when we had CRTs capable of myriad native video modes. In XFree86 you'd switch through them with ctrl-alt-+ and ctrl-alt--, the monitor's video mode would change but the virtual desktop size stayed the same. Whenever the monitor showed less than the entire virtual desktop, the viewport would pan within the virtual desktop when the pointer moved past the screen edges.

ksaj 7y ago
Yup exactly. I think most people didn't realize if they set X for a square screen, they could scroll all over the place. I'd forgotten that it was called a viewport. And of course, my favourite was all the custom/customizable video modes that Hercules had silently lurking on the board. Some of the early 32-bit desktops (like the 32032) used 4-colour Hercules at 1024x1024. I don't think 16 and 8 bit PeeCees were capable of going that far, though.