[LispM-Hackers] Keyboard problem

[John Morrison]

Hi;

ford@objs.com wrote:
> Paul Fuqua wrote:
> > I can't remember if the main window was 1024x768, but you wouldn't want
> > to lose the who-line and mouse-doc line anyway, so just consider it
> > 1024x808.

I saw that some multisync monitors support some weird resolutions (my
DX700T is supposed to support 1024x882, which would've been nice), but
it seems, alas, that the "standard" SVGA fine resolution is 1024x768.

I admit I have not looked Real Hard into how easy it is to muck about
with screen resolutions in a reasonable code-economical way (*), but
maybe I could insist upon 1280x1024 and just draw into the 1024x808
subset of the screen.  I guess people could then play games with their
monitor adjustments.  Seems like kind of a waste.

I am given to understand that if I screw around with the VGA chipset
output frequencies (etc) then I risk setting people's monitors, houses,
and places of business (etc) on fire.  This is probably not a productive
thing to do, whatever the potential hack value.

> I wasn't recommending losing the who-line and mouse-doc line, just observing
> that there are about 60 vertical pixels currently allocated to them, and another
> unused 10 at the top, and that the same information might be creatively
> reengineered to fit in 40 to make 1024x768 viable, if that's important.
> 
> BTW, I got a little consulting work the other day that REQUIRES the use
> of an Explorer.  Could I be the only person on the planet so employed, or

Holy cow.  I must confess to real curiousity here.  What kind of work
requires the use of an Explorer???

> are there still people at Swiss Air using Explorers?  Hard to believe.  I know
> they were still buying them a couple of years ago.

(*) I stumbled across some weird mechanism for calling BIOS routines
from a "Virtual 8086" task running under protected mode, so I could use
BIOS calls to do lots of stuff like mucking about with video modes
(switching back and forth from a microcode console to the E3 window,
much like Linux does), or peripheral devices like disks, etc.  It's only
a few hundred lines of assembler, and it's already in NASM syntax (the
assembler I use), so I'm kind of tempted.  Does anybody know anything
about this?

-jm

-- 
==== John Morrison
==== MAK Technologies Inc.
==== 185 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, MA 02138
==== http://www.mak.com/
==== vox:617-876-8085 x115
==== fax:617-876-9208
==== jm@mak.com