wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (12/27/86)
Hi, Happy Holidays, Several people asked me to mail them patches for Wordstar to make it show 43 lines on computers with EGA cards. I would have mailed individually, but we are having some bugs in outgoing mail to individual sites. The article that follows is a paraphase of one that originally showed up in mod.ibm-pc. There is only one problem with the patch. There is an error somewhere in the code that does scrolling in Wordstar. Normally, you won't see the bug since it doesn't take a lot of time to scroll the 24 line screen. With 43 lines, the time is longer due to the fact that there are nearly twice the number of characters to move around. You can repeat the problem by pressing the f10 key and then press f9 before the bottom of the file has been reached. The problem crops up if a disk access is required to get between the front and end of the file. Once the entire file is in memory, you can press f10 -- f9 as fast as you want. What happens is the system just hangs, only to be reawakened with ctrl-alt-del. You can repeat the bug on a regular screen, but you've got to be real, real fast! I only ran into this when I accidentally fat-fingered f10 & f9 together. The hardware was an 8MHz Epson Equity III and an AST 3G+ EGA card. --Bill ============== intended Email follows (the patch) ================ Hi, Below are some script commands that patch ws.com to make it compatible with the 43 line display mode of the IBM ega and its colnes. I have tested this with my own card, an AST Research, EGA card with 256K and found that the color display version functions as advertised. I have not had the opportunity to test the monochrome version, as I do not have access to a mono monitor. The scripts were obtained from the moderated IBM news group on Usenet. I appologise for having lost the name of the original author. I believe that the original appeared somewhere between issue 70 & 79 of the digest. How to do it: Either cut below and kermit the file up to your IBM pc (or compatible), or enter with your favorite editor. I used EDLIN myself. If you use a word processor, make sure that you create in non document mode. WSSCRIPT would be a handy name to use for the script file. Obviously, before you do anything, make sure that you have a backup copy of ws.com stored away, just in case... The easiest way to proceede is have DEBUG.COM (from DOS or MS-DOS), your script, and WS.COM all in the same directory on one of your drives. You can use the redirection feature of DOS to allow DEBUG to read commands from a file, rather than having to type them in yoruself. Use the form: DEBUG < WSSCRIPT. Here's what happens. DEBUG reads the script as it needs commands. It fetches WS.COM, then changes the logical name. DEBUG then hand assembles in the necessary patches. Once the changes are in, DEBUG writes out the the patched file with the new logical name, leaving your original WS.COM intact. Note that the lines in the script file have to be normal text, ending with carriage returns. The blank lines in the script are meaningful, and must be included for proper operation. ------------cut here: this script makes wsega.com for color------- N WS.COM L N WSEGA.COM E 248 2B A 2A4 JMP 2E0 NOP JMP 302 NOP A 2E0 MOV AH,03 MOV BL,00 INT 10 MOV [0308],CX MOV AX,0003 INT 10 MOV AX,1112 MOV BL,00 INT 10 MOV AX,1200 MOV BL,20 INT 10 MOV CX,0007 JMP 030A MOV AX,0003 INT 10 MOV CX,0000 MOV AH,01 INT 10 RET W Q ---------cut here: script for ega monochrome displays-------- N WS.COM L N WS43.COM E 248 2B A 2A4 JMP 2E0 NOP JMP 302 NOP A 2E0 MOV AH,03 MOV BL,00 INT 10 MOV [0308],CX MOV AX,0007 INT 10 MOV AX,1112 MOV BL,00 INT 10 MOV AX,1200 MOV BL,20 INT 10 MOV CX,0007 JMP 030A MOV AX,0007 INT 10 MOV CX,0000 MOV AH,01 INT 10 RET W Q ----------------cut here: end of the script files---------- This should do it. The new versions of Wordstar produced function just as the original, except that the display should have 43 lines visible. Note that the version of ws that I tried this on was version 3.31. Bill Mayhew, EE Division of Basic Medical Sciences Northeastern Ohio Universities' College of Medicine Rootstown, OH 44272 USA (216) 325-2511 (wtm@neoucom.UUCP)