Re: notebook LCD

[Wolfgang Bechstein wolfie@xxxxxxxx]

Paul Breeze  wrote:

> I've recently acquired an IBM laptop PC which appears excellent, but
> with one slight drawback; a DOS screen will not fill the LCD.
> [snip]  Does anybody know of a way of getting DOS modes on such a
> display to fill the screen.

This topic has come up before. The answer is manufacturer-specific.
On my Compaq Armada laptop, hitting the key combination Fn-T (Fn
being a special function key of the laptop keyboard) toggles the DOS
display between wall-to-wall real estate marred by somewhat coarse
characters and a smallish but sharper 640x480 patch surrounded by
unused screen portions. This little trick is not mentioned in the
manual, but a call to tech support brought it to light. I suggest
that you ask IBM about what the solution for your particular model is.
I believe one should exist.

I also have heard about various methods for the flat LCD displays
that are increasingly replacing CRT monitors on desktops. Some of
these involve choosing the screen mode from a display menu before
bootup.

Recently, I briefly played with a Sony Vaio desktop machine that
comes standard with a 15-something inch TFT display. To my pleasant
surprise, I discovered that the DOS mode already filled the whole
screen without needing any special fiddling.

The problem of character coarseness when running real full-screen DOS
is due to the hardwired nature of LCDs but there are also certain
workarounds, and the problem is not the same on every display (the
above mentioned Vaio was quite passable). This may not work for
everybody, but on my Compaq, running an old DOS utility that
apparently switches the screen mode (even ancient DOS has several)
gives me much sharper characters than in the default condition
immediately after toggling to full screen.

Wolfgang Bechstein
wolfie@xxxxxxxx