IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof

From: Iggy Drougge <optimus_at_canit.se>
Date: Sun Sep 30 21:00:57 2001

Tony Duell skrev:

>> Tony, I think you are correct as I've never seen a clone mb with BASIC in
>> ROM, but I *have* seen clone boards -- including early Pentium boards --
>> which would cough up "no rom basic" if they didn't find a bootable device.
>> Oddly enough the text of this message is always displayed in 40-column

>Just in case somebody is using a CGA card connected to a TV :-)

Time and again, I've read (in old literature, of course) that TVs wouldn't
support 80-column modes. I say that's bollocks. The Amiga has a perfectly
readable 80-column mode on TVs. Old (1.x) versions of the OS could be set to
run in 60 columns instead, but that feature was later on removed (Mind you, by
then, you could set any font as the system font). I know I've got great
eyesight, and I'm thankful it survived all those years staring at an
interlaced fuzzy RF picture on a TV, and I'm certain that it would never have
been certified by any authority as ergonomic, but 80 columns on a TV, even
through RF, and certainly through composite, YC or RGB, is quite doable. At
least if you've got decent circuitry generating the picture (the output of old
RF modulators is seldom nice, often hideous or laughable, and I know that it's
not just due to corrosion).

--
En ligne avec Thor 2.6a.
Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
Received on Sun Sep 30 2001 - 21:00:57 BST

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