fireworks mode

   1.  The  mode  a  machine  is  sometimes  said  to  be  in when it is
   performing a {crash and burn} operation.

   2.  There  is  (or  was)  a more specific meaning of this term in the
   Amiga  community.  The  word  fireworks  described  the  effects of a
   particularly  serious crash which prevented the video pointer(s) from
   getting reset at the start of the vertical blank. This caused the DAC
   to  scroll  through  the entire contents of CHIP (video or video+CPU)
   memory. Since each bit plane would scroll separately this was quite a
   spectacular effect.

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {mode}]