22 Sep
2004
22 Sep
'04
10:21 p.m.
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?
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.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
22 Sep
22 Sep
10:45 p.m.
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
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
23 Sep
23 Sep
7:44 p.m.
On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, William Donzelli wrote:
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.
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 
22 Sep
22 Sep
11:21 p.m.
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?
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.
I think I've got one. Or at least, I've got a weirdish Wyse PC. The
processor is on an ISA card that also has the keyboard connector, which is
a modular phone plug type. Weird.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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11:41 p.m.
I think I've got one. Or at least, I've got a
weirdish Wyse PC. The
processor is on an ISA card that also has the keyboard connector, which is
a modular phone plug type. Weird.
I think I used one of those machines as well, but I don't think it is the
PC+. This weird thing is a desktop machine with the same footprint of a
normal XT, but is only about 2 inches high. The innards are very clever -
in that pizza box they managed to put a custom motherboard (I recall it
uses 4 x 16K DRAMs, rather than the industry standard 1 x 64K chips),
spaces for a half height floppy and a half height hard disk, a power
supply with a tiny little fan (very powerful, however), and still have
space for two full size ISA cards.
The tube supplied with the unit was also very odd - a normal looking Wyse
thing, very similar to their terminals, but the phosphor (green) was very
long persistance. In an absolutely dark room, you could read the last text
on the screen 20 minutes (yes, minutes) after the thing was shut off.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
23 Sep
23 Sep
10:09 a.m.
On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, William Donzelli wrote:
I've got one of those also. The one I mention above is about half the
width of a normal PC/XT, but otherwise is a full-height box. It may have
originally been some shade of white or gray or beige but it's yellowed
now.
I think
I've got one. Or at least, I've got a weirdish Wyse PC. The
processor is on an ISA card that also has the keyboard connector, which is
a modular phone plug type. Weird.
I think I used one of those machines as well, but I don't think it is the
PC+. This weird thing is a desktop machine with the same footprint of a
normal XT, but is only about 2 inches high. The innards are very clever - in that pizza box they managed to put a custom
motherboard (I recall it
uses 4 x 16K DRAMs, rather than the industry standard 1 x 64K chips),
spaces for a half height floppy and a half height hard disk, a power
supply with a tiny little fan (very powerful, however), and still have
space for two full size ISA cards.
I never looked inside. I found it years ago at a thrift store and bought
it only because it was made by Wyse and was odd.
The tube supplied with the unit was also very odd - a
normal looking Wyse
thing, very similar to their terminals, but the phosphor (green) was very
long persistance. In an absolutely dark room, you could read the last text
on the screen 20 minutes (yes, minutes) after the thing was shut off.
I don't think I ever got a monitor with it.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
4:41 p.m.
In the old days of the XT and CGA, what text modes were supported?
Old days????
The CGA supported 80*25 and 40*25 text modes. The MDA supported 80*25 only.
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, the iBM cards could not do those.
-tony
7410
days inactive
7411
days old
6 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
aw288＠osfn.org -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
sastevens＠earthlink.net -
vcf＠siconic.com