Some time back I gave {COMMO} a try and decided against it because I
really liked having at least 28-33 rows on the screen and {COMMO} didn't
have those modes built into it.  It could call a program to do it, but I
didn't happen to have any at the time.
I've since bought Procomm Plus for DOS (and discovered I don't really
like it.... ).  It doesn't have the 28 mode built in either, but
it does have the option of switching to another mode.  But the 28 mode
isn't a standard mode, so that didn't help.
I finally decided to do something about it.
I've accumulated a number of programs that switch to odd screen sizes.
20x12, 40x50, 80x30, 80x28, 80x33, 80x60 and almost everything in
between, and on my card, even up to 132x60.  (All of these and more, are
real text screen modes, not graphics modes pretending to be text mode.
Some modes are easier to get into than others, too!)
But none of them were real video mode programs.  They were just stand
alone programs that switched the mode and ended.  And if you ran another
program that switched the mode, you lost your custom mode.
So I decided to write one.  Since it would have to be a TSR and fairly
small, I wrote it in assembler.  I'm not good in assembler, and in fact,
can't stand 80x86 nmemonics, but I managed.  (How Fred Brucker manages
to do something the size of {COMMO} I have no idea.)
I tried numerous variations, including one that added several new video
mode numbers, but I finally decided that really, all I wanted was 80x28.
3 extra lines for BBSing, allowing a status line in the comm program, or
allowing for the WildCat! BBS bug where it lists 2-3 more files than
your screen can hold.  (I would have prefered 80x33, but that's a bit
more effort.)
So, I hardwired it for that mode and stripped out all the extras and
came up with a .com program that had only a 256 byte resident portion.
And that includes the ability to unload itself, and be turned on or off.
What it does is patch into the INT 10h video mode change and when
somebody tries to switch into mode 3 (the normal 80x25 mode), it
switches into my 80x28 mode instead.
Not every program can handle odd screen size.  Those are generally
either old ones that are hardwired for a particular known/expected video
mode or play with the odd sizes themselves and gets the VGA registers a
bit confused. Simply doing another "MODE CO80" from DOS will reset
everything.
When you run the program, simply do a /? to get help.
Here's the uuencoded version of it.  Hope somebody else finds it
usefull.
begin 644 newvideo.zip
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M!```#``````````!`"``````````3D575DE$14\N0T]-4$L%!@`````!``$`
*.@```)@#````````
`
end
--- QScan/PCB v1.18b / 01-0162
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