try loading ansi.sys

Hello Davros,
You mean I have to use a booted image to achieve that?
Actually, at first blush, I don't want to use a booted image.

I am especially interested in how the hardware renders the underlined and blinking characters.
Thanks
Jack

It seems like we can only imitate it
I can see that ykhwong build has implemented blinking characters, not underlined characters, yet?

[Thread moved to DOSBox General Section]

lucky7456969 wrote:

I would like to know what the working principles of blinking and underlined characters in original hercules hardware are? They j […]
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I would like to know what the working principles of blinking and underlined characters in original hercules hardware are? They just superimpose underline pixels on the original characters or they just use different character sets?

Do you think it is possible to add these features to dosbox?
Thanks
Jack

Pretty sure the original Hercules had just one 9x14 character set in ROM, so for underlined characters it superimposed a row of pixels, just like an IBM MDA.

DOSBox 0.74 supports both blinking and underlined text just fine... where exactly is the problem?

dev_con.h

1		case 'm':               /* SGR */
2				for(i=0;i<=ansi.numberofarg;i++){ 
3					ansi.enabled=true;
4					switch(ansi.data[i]){
5					case 0: /* normal */
6						ansi.attr=0x07;//Real ansi does this as well. (should do current defaults)
7						ansi.enabled=false;
8						break;
9					case 1: /* bold mode on*/
10						ansi.attr|=0x08;
11						break;
12					case 4: /* underline */
13						LOG(LOG_IOCTL,LOG_NORMAL)("ANSI:no support for underline yet");
14						break;

I just saw this line yesterday. So how can I test the underlining work? I mean what program can test the characters for viewing?
Thanks
Jack

lucky7456969 wrote:

So how can I test the underlining work? I mean what program can test the characters for viewing?

Maybe an old DOS word processor?

in GWbasic / QuickBasic you can use the "COLOR a,b" statement to get normal, intense, reverse, underline, blinking, and various combinations in monochrome text - see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/35148 (love the fact that MS still has this stuff up on the web).

This BASIC program will display a chart of all possible combinations, as in the screenshot above:

110 CLS : DEF SEG=&HB000 : LOCATE 18,1
220 FOR ROW=&H0 TO &HF
330   FOR COL=&H0 TO &HF
440     FOR I=0 TO 3 : POKE ROW*160+COL*8+I*2+1, 16*ROW+COL : NEXT I
550     POKE ROW*160+COL*8+2, ASC(HEX$(ROW))
660     POKE ROW*160+COL*8+4, ASC(HEX$(COL))
770   NEXT COL
880 NEXT ROW

Hercules was based on MDA, and a similar chart for MDA is here... there are a few differences from what DOSBox shows (maybe DOSBox is correct and Hercules really differed from MDA here, I don't know).