Re: Running DOS programs in full-screen mode in XP

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Alan Heubert  on Fri, 05 Nov 2004
05:32:54 +0530

Alan:

> Robert, can you tell me what those instructions were that you gave Leslie
> for getting XyWrite to fill the screen? I've had no success in filling up
> the screen in XP Home/SP1. It's not specific to XyWrite: I can't get the
> DOS command prompt to fill the screen either. In full-screen mode both
> programs run in a little box in the middle of the screen, with about two
> blank inches all around. I've played with all the options in the properties
> dialog box, and I'm sure that's not where the answer lies. I'm using an HP
> notebook I bought a few months ago, a Pavilion ZV5000, model # dl228av

You're right: the answer lies not in Properties (although some people have
found that if you look on the Compatibility tab, and check "640x480 screen
resolution" that does it). The answer, in general, lies in one of three
places: the BIOS; the Control Panel ==> Display ==> Settings ==> Advanced tab,
where specific settings for your video adapter are located; or (especially with
notebooks) a "Function key"+F-key combination ("Function key" is not an F-key,
it's usually a little extra key located near the Windows "Start" key at lower
left, often a different color than other keys e.g. blue, and generally labeled
"Fn"). With Dell, the combo to use IIRC is Fn-F7; with Gateway it's Fn-F3.
*BUT* the Fn+F-key combo is (not always but) *usually* an on-the-fly temporary
measure, good for the current session only; when you re-launch the FullScreen
DOS session, you get small fonts and a tiny sub-space of the screen again
(generally in the center, but sometimes upper-left). *Permanent* solutions
generally lie in the other two places. It is machine- and hardware-dependent;
every manufacturer has a different solution. If you're not familiar with the
BIOS, well, it's time to get wet. You can access the BIOS only at boot time,
usually by holding down F1 or F2 when the machine initially boots (*before* it
loads an operating system). Everybody should be familiar with how to get into
their BIOS -- it's an important place to visit now and then.

The key word to look for (usually) is "expansion": screen expansion, DOS
expansion, some sort of expansion. What they mean by that is that they are
blowing up EGA or CGA screen sizes (320x240, 640x480, whatever) to the full
size of your screen. This problem is unique to notebook screens, LCDs, and
plasmas. Ordinary CRT monitors (which still have the best resolution in top
end units, not to mention the best color by FAR, and are the ONLY units that
can be truly calibrated for color to, say, 6500 degrees Kelvin [daylight],
which is important for photography and video) -- ordinary CRTs *scale* any
image without difficulty. They are analog; they can do anything they want.
But pixellated screens have a fixed relationship between digital info and
pixels. If you've got 1400 pixels across, say, you damn well better have 1400
pieces of information to fill them, otherwise you're gonna have some empty
pixels. So expansion doubles, triples, quadruples the number of pixels
assigned to one piece of digital data. In short, it's a cheap kludge, but a
desirable one unless you want to wear jeweler's loupes. Some of the better
manufacturers like IBM have ways of smoothing and contouring the result, so
that it doesn't look so bad. Dell, by contrast, looks godawful. Decent
computers, mind you, but they cut corners. You get what you pay for.

You have to do some exploration to find the answer for your system. If all
else fails, your manual, tech support, Google for your specific machine,
whatever. There is almost always a permanent answer.

We have touched on this subject many times. I should be clear that I am
talking here about tiny fonts and complete images of the XyWrite application
occupying a small area of the screen in FullScreen DOS -- not about Xywrite
appearing in the top _half_ of the screen or spilling off the bottom of the
screen -- those are both font and "Window Size" issues). Here are a few
references (poke around in the threads they belong to -- I see that Wolfgang
Bechstein was succinct & right on the money -- regrettably, some of the people
who experienced this problem never bothered to tell us their solution -- others
are so vague that you can't tell whether they're complaining about small
FullScreen or a Desktop window -- Michael Norman is quite right when he
suggests that our use, in this MailList, of "DosBox" is not quite the standard
interpretation of the term. We seem to mean by it a Desktop Window. But
elsewhere in computerdom DosBox generally means any DOS session, anywhere. I
find the word "console" similarly ambiguous):

http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/xysearch.cgi?xywrite/2003/msg02364.htm
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/xysearch.cgi?xywrite/2001/msg01267.htm
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/xysearch.cgi?xywrite/2001/msg00878.htm

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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