bobl@tessi.UUCP (Bob Lewis) (12/19/89)
I recently upgraded my PC/XT to Word 5.0 and am experiencing problems with graphics mode on my Hercules (clone)-driven display. I'd like to know if anyone else out there has come across something similar. My configuration is, I think, fairly common, if antiquated: a Hercules display (for resolution) and a CGA display (for color). MODE switches nicely from one to the other as desired. The Hercules card is jumpered to start up with only 32K, so as not to stomp on CGA's memory. The symptom is that in graphics and print preview mode, the mouse erases some of the pixels it passes over. The symptom is independent of the Hercules card jumpering and it goes away if the CGA card is removed. This only happens with Word 5.0. Word 3.11 was quite happy to work fine on whatever monitor it was started from. Other Hercules and CGA graphics programs continue to peacefully coexist. I've spoken with Microsoft and they claim that Word 5.0 makes the assumption that the user has a single monitor on the system at all times. The guy I talked to had never heard of anybody using dual monitors. One of his suggested workarounds (I believe he was only half-serious) was "get a VGA". Apparently, I'm the first person to report this problem. I'll admit that CGA isn't exactly state-of-the-art, but I can easily imagine a system with Hercules and EGA monitors to satisfy the same resolution/color tradeoff. But perhaps the problem doesn't happen on that configuration. The thing that surprises me is that Microsoft QA didn't try Word 5.0 on a dual-monitor configuration of any sort. Microsoft said they'd like to see a list of names and addresses before assigning any resources to it. So I'd like to hear from anybody out there who is using Word 5.0 on a dual-monitor system and whether or not they've seen this problem. - Bob Lewis bobl@tessi.UUCP