PeeCee Text

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Thu Sep 23 19:44:20 2004

>On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, William Donzelli wrote:
>> In the old days of the XT and CGA, what text modes were supported?
>> I have a Wyse PC+ - an oddball XT class machine - that could run DOS in
>> several weird text modes (96 and 132 column, I think). I remember using it
>> this way for some stuff, but often certain programs would barf (Norton
>> Commander being one of them).
>> Were these modes standard?
>
>No, but not especially rare.
>
>The "standard" text modes were:
>CGA: (startying at segment B800)
>0? B&W 40 x 25
>1? Color 40 x 25
>2 B&W 80 x 25
>3 Color 80 x 25
>
>MDA: (starting at segment B000)
>7 Mono 80 x 25
>
>Int 10, fn 0F would return which mode you were in.
>Almost all software supported modes 3 and 7. Some demented P.O.S.
>programs would insist on trying to display color, even if you had
>deliberately switched into mode 2.
>
>
>> I still have the PC+, and I doubt I will ever get rid of it for some
>> reason. It is a pretty weird machine, and I don't think many were made.
>
>Wyse made some fun weird stuff!
>I liked the Wyse 700 / Amdek 1280 monitor and "special" video board, that
>did 1280 x 800? b*w pixels, and could be easily coerced into 160 x 50 text

I at one point coerced my boss into getting me a big 19" monochrome
monitor for my work PC. It had a special graphics card from
Cornerstone in it, and I dubbed it a 'Super Hercules' monitor (the
'Hercules' monographics equivalent of SVGA). It had only Windows 3
drivers, though, for anything else it was a humungous 80x25 monochrome
monitor.

It was great running a GUI on a huge high-res Monochrome display for
the kind of stuff (programming embedded controllers) stuff I was doing
at that time.
Received on Thu Sep 23 2004 - 19:44:20 BST