I have an old laptop with a fresh install of MS-DOS 6.22

ThinkPad 385XD
Pentium 1 233MHz
32MB
2GB
800x600 screen that's currently at 640x480

The software I'm trying to run needs to display 80 columns by 50 rows. But when I tried running the following:

MODE CON: COLS=80 LINES=50

I get a message saying I need to install ANSI.SYS

I currently have an ANSI.SYS file in my C:\DOS directory, but it is blank. What do I need to put into this file? Thanks in advance!

EDIT:

I solved it:

I needed to load ansi.sys driver in order to get it to work.

For future reference I edited my config.sys file to read:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH
FILES=30
devicehigh=c:\dos\ansi.sys

This might be straightforward for you guys, but I've never had the benefit of using a native DOS computer before. 😊