Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!conrad
From: Conrad.Bullock@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Conrad Bullock)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Undocumented video modes with MODE CO80,x
Keywords: VGA, full screen session, MODE
Message-ID: <1990Oct02.065611.29937@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 2 Oct 90 06:56:11 GMT
References: <2657@delos.stgt.sub.org>
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Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.
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In article <2657@delos.stgt.sub.org> boegehol@delos.stgt.sub.org (Harald Boegeholz) writes:
>I accidentally discovered an undocumented feature of the MODE command
>that I think may be interesting to some people on the net.

>12, 14, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46,
>47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60.

I discovered the same thing a few weeks back. Not only that, but a lot
of those will also let you have 40 columns - Try MODE CO40,12 - really
wacky!

I'm pretty sure that in the version that I'm using, the DOS Box lets
you have most (but not all) of those values - I think the missing ones
are basically 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59

>Strange, isn't it? Maybe someone can explain why exactly these numbers
>work...

On a VGA adapter, the text mode can be set to 200, 350, 400, or 480
scan lines, and the font used can be 8, 14, or 16 scan lines per
character. So 12 lines per screen is 200 scanlines, 16 line font, and 
so on.

My favourite mode is 34 lines - that is the maximum number of lines
possible before it switches down to an 8 scanline font - the 14 line
font is very readable.

Incidentally, OS/2 Brief will set the number of lines to any of the
above numbers, by putting -L??, where ?? is the number of lines, on
the command line, or in the environment variable.

Another 'undocumented' feature of OS/2 V1.2 that I only recently
discovered, is that it has proper unix wildcarding - for example, you
can dir *NW*, or dir *fg*ty.txt, etc.

>Harald Boegeholz (boegehol@delos.stgt.sub.org)


-- 
Conrad Bullock                     | Domain:   conrad@comp.vuw.ac.nz
Victoria University of Wellington, |     or:   conrad@actrix.co.nz
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