Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!attctc!chasm
From: chasm@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Charles Marslett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 132 columns by 50 lines
Summary: Technical Service Question # 1 (in frequency)
Message-ID: <10895@attctc.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 9 Jan 90 04:53:14 GMT
References: <4731@itivax.iti.org>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 33

In article <4731@itivax.iti.org>, dhw@itivax.iti.org (David H. West) writes:
> In article <1881@bucket.UUCP> leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) writes:
> |kevins@CIE.UOREGON.EDU writes:
> |>[...] can I set up my screen to display
> |>text in 132 columns and 50 lines long?
> |
> |[...] you either need some sort of superVGA card or one of the
> |monochrome cards that supports 132 column. We have some from Everex 
> |that work well.
> 
> Have you found a way to get DOS to recognise the extra lines?  I
> have no problem establishing the smaller-font text modes using VPMODE, 
> but DOS still insists on scrolling at the 25th line, though this is
> no longer at the bottom of the screen.

The problem here lies in ANSI.SYS nearly all the time (a few versions of
DOS 3.x also mess it up, but most are functionally correct).  If you have
ANSI.SYS installed, remove that line from your CONFIG.SYS, and see if that
fixes the problem.

After finding the problem, you may have a substitute ANSI.SYS from the VGA
card vendor (on the utility disk that, hopefully, came with it), or you can
patch ANSI.SYS and/or DOS.  I have done so (not much fun) -- mostly you have
to scan the files for compares of DH with 0x18 or 0x19 and then look at the
disassembled code around them to find the one that needs to be changed.

I have had to just skip some misguided optimization in the two cases I patched
(a Compaq ANSI.SYS and MSDOS 3.2 if I remember correctly).

> -David West       dhw@iti.org

Charles Marslett
chasm@attctc.dallas.tx.us