ral@pyuxqq.UUCP (04/02/85)
Tim Thomas: my mail response to your letter was not deliverable.
> I read an articles you posted to net.micro.pc about using simterm. I cant
> help you with your problem, but I was wondering if you could help me with
> mine. How do you use the ansi.sys driver? I have tried many different
> ways but cant get it to work. I tried putting it in the config.sys file,
> but to no avail. (i may have done that wrong though). Any help you could
> give me would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Tim Thomas
================================================================================
Here's how I've set up the ansi.sys device driver. I have a PC/AT
with hard disk (c:) on which I have copied the files from the DOS
disk and supplemental programs DOS disk to the subdirectories
c:\dos and c:\dosx, respectively. (You'll notice that I have PATH set
to pick up commands from these directories.)
In particular, the device drivers ansi.sys and vdisk.sys are in
the c:\dos directory.
I don't see a way to use the SHELL=... command to avoid putting
command.com in the root directory (I would prefer keeping it in c:\dos).
Refer to page 2-14 of the DOS Technical Reference Version 3.0
for definition of escape sequences for changing foreground and
background colors. For example, with these codes:
30 black foreground
31 red foreground
32 green foreground
33 yellow foreground
34 blue foreground
...
40 black background
...
43 yellow background
...
47 white background
The sequence
ESC[33;40m
sets yellow foreground on black background (ESC is escape character).
Here are the listings of my config.sys and autoexec.bat:
config.sys:
break=on
buffers=10
country=001
device=c:\dos\ansi.sys
lastdrive=c
autoexec.bat
PATH c:\dos;c:\dosx;.;c:\;c:\bin;c:\ctools
prompt $e[33;40m
prompt $p$g
cd sidekick
sk
cd ..
Notice that prompt expands $e to an ESC character.
Here's a partial listing of the root directory:
Volume in drive C has no label
Directory of C:\
TMP <DIR> 2-26-85 5:47p
DOSX <DIR> 2-26-85 11:23a
COMMAND COM 22042 8-14-84 8:00a
CONFIG SYS 73 3-27-85 1:52p
AUTOEXEC BAT 101 3-27-85 2:13p
BIN <DIR> 2-04-85 5:21p
DIAG <DIR> 2-13-85 9:19a
DOS <DIR> 2-14-85 4:21p
Jim Holtman responded to my note about not being able to set
colors in simterm. The reason is that simterm uses direct calls
to the BIOS instead of DOS calls, thereby circumventing any
ansi.sys commands that may have been executed. He's looking at
a way to set colors in simterm, he says.
Also, Bruce McLaud informed me that there is a limited capability
for turning on colors in simterm.
Type
echo '\033&d?\c'
where ? is H for green on black, B or C for black on white,
D, E, F, or G for blue on black, or H, I, J, K
for green on black.
I hope the above is enough to get you going.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Levenberg
Bell Communications Research (Bellcore)
3 Corporate Place
Room 2C-315
Piscataway, NJ 08854
(201) 981-6178
..!allegra!pyuxqq!ral