Re: notebook LCD

[Paul Breeze paul.breeze@xxxxxxxx]

Dear all

Thanks for the tips about portable LCDs. Unfortunately the problem I
have is not with finding expanded mode. The problem is that when I
activate it the screen is still not filled. I suspect, as has been
suggested, that this is a hardware problem.

I do, however, have another solution to the coarseness of the
characters on an LCD, or any other DOS screen which may interest
others. For the past ten years I've been using a small dos utility
which switches screen fonts. It utilises fonts that are already
loaded into every video adaptor, and simply switches between them.
Until I came across this small program I was not aware that such a
variety of hardware screen fonts existed, but they do. The program
simply changes the font pixel height; the result is more or less
lines of text on the screen but by switching between different font
heights it is usually possible to find a visually more pleasing font
too.

For example, the standard font height is 16 pixels; this gives 25
lines of text in DOS. When I used a 15inch CRT I used a font height
of 14 pixels and was able to use 28 lines very comfortably using XY3
or XY4. (You need to change the screen length using SL otherwise the
cursor disappears off the end of the screen.) When I upgraded to a
15inch LCD desktop monitor I started using a font height of 13,
giving me 30 lines on the screen. And now, with my troublesome
portable LCD, I have found that by using a pixel height of 17 I get a
quite smooth looking screen font, but at the expense of two lines of
text because it only provides 23.

If anybody is interested, let me know and I'll post the program (It
is tiny.)

Paul Breeze

On Wed, 08 Nov 2000 02:11:56 +0900, Wolfgang Bechstein wrote:
>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


-- Paul Breeze, paul.breeze@xxxxxxxx on 08/11/2000