fireworks mode

n. 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.

