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.