Xref: utzoo alt.msdos.programmer:700 comp.sys.ibm.pc:38291
Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!cmh117
From: CMH117@PSUVM.BITNET (Charles Hannum)
Newsgroups: alt.msdos.programmer,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: i/o routines and non-standard video modes
Message-ID: <89320.130954CMH117@PSUVM.BITNET>
Date: 16 Nov 89 18:09:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: PSUVM.89320.130954CMH117
References: <2090@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU> <2980@einstein.ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>
 <2092@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU> <2544@alva.tut.fi>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 7

The problem is that while Turbo's own screen package will take advantage of
whatever size screen you are using, DOS (not necessarily BIOS) is hard-coded
to work with only the first 25 lines of the screen.  The problem here is that
to do anything else, DOS would have to automagically sense the current screen
size, which, since it uses BIOS calls, would tremendously slow down screen
I/O.  OS/2 can solve this problem easily, because it *always* knows what size
the screen is.