GLO-series: Turning off the Startup Screen

Startup screen.

GLO-216 and -416 displays start up with a default screen like the one shown here. The Programmer's Reference describes the ESC X0 instruction, which can be used to store a custom screen. But what if you want a totally blank screen at startup?

The following sequence will configure the GLO to start up blank: 12 27 88 48. That's four bytes consisting of clear-screen (12 decimal, 0x0C hex), escape (27 dec, 0x1B hex), uppercase X (88 dec, 0x58 hex), and the text numeral 0 (zero; 48 dec, 0x30 hex). Send that sequence once, and forevermore the GLO will power up with a blank screen. Well, unless you repeat the ESC X0 process with a non-blank screen.

Since we've been talking about Serial Sender, here's how to send the blank-startup-screen sequence from it: <12,27,88,48>

If you have your startup screen just right and want to prevent it from being changed--even by another ESC X0 instruction--you can write-protect the display by cutting the setup jumper, marked "Dsu" on the interface board. See the Hardware Reference for pix.