[net.micro.pc] ANSI.SYS and MS-DOS 2.0

stevens@hsi.UUCP (09/01/84)

We have an application that uses cursor addressing and screen
control (reverse video, etc.) on the PC.  It was developed under
PC-DOS using the ANSI.SYS driver, since that seemed the easiest
way to do it.  However, moving to the Burroughs ET-2000 and the
HP 150 I find that their implementations of MS-DOS 2.0 don't have
ANSI.SYS.

Is ANSI.SYS supposed to be standard MS-DOS 2.0, or is it another
IBM-only ?

	Richard Stevens
	Health Systems International, New Haven, CT
           ihnp4 ! hsi ! stevens

john@genrad.UUCP (John Nelson) (09/09/84)

I don't know about Burroughs ET-2000 or HP 150

I do know that the TANDY 2000 DOES have ANSI.SYS.

mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (09/11/84)

ANSI.SYS is certainly not IBM only - the AT&T 6300 comes with it.
(By the way, the AT&T 6300 seems like a winner - it's about twice
as fast as the IBM XT, costs about the same, and is so compatible
that Venix and Xenix both run unmodified on it at twice the speed
of the XT.*)

However, ANSI.SYS is far from a wonderful way to write your software.
It's not very complete (for example, it can't do ED, that's "clear
to bottom of screen" in English, and it ignores the parameters to
EL as well) and it's awfully slow.  Most useful IBM PC software is
forced to write directly into display memory.

* I work for AT&T but if you know me you know I'm not biased in favor
of AT&T products.