40 Column Text Mode problem

[donjohnson24]

Hi,

Back in the 70s or 80s I wrote a c program for running a Tote at a Race Night - an evening where films of horse races are shown for people to 'bet' on the winner. Not really betting - more like a raffle - but my program enabled the odds for the eight runners to be displayed and updated as people placed 'bets', adding to the 'racecourse' atmosphere.

The program works completely in Text mode, mainly in 40-column mode to give large letters and numbers on the screen. (originally I used TV screens driven from the computer by a TV booster/multi output unit) The system worked fine in CGA, and even when VGA came along.

However, with the modern displays, I had a problem with the 40 column layout appearing twice, as though the screen was in two columns on an 80 column screen. Playing around with compatibility modes on my main PC enables a 'proper' display to appear, but I cannot get it to show correctly on my MAXDATA laptop.

At the advanced age of 69, I've forgotten most of what little I knew about c, so I am rather at a loss as to how to solve the problem - hence my arrival here.

I have attached the program to this post, in the hope that someone might have some ideas to help this old geezer.

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

[donjohnson24]

Regarding my post above, I realise that to running the program is easier if there is a data file available, so I have attached RACENITE.DAT which is the file with horse names etc.

I have also attached RACENITE.EXE which is the compiled program.

These files are in racenite.zip - the DAT file should be in the same directory as the EXE file

On starting the program, enter '5' and 'L' to load the data file

Then enter '3' to go to the main user screen - this should be a SINGLE view of the horses and odds filling the wholes screen

NOT a half screen or a repeated half screen

I hope that this makes sense.

(Please remember I wrote this a long time ago!)

[nucleon]

What operating system are you running this on?

[csurfer]

I tried your original C file Racenite.c on Windows OS on TC compiler and it is running fine without errors. And no display problem too.

[donjohnson24]

Operating system is Windows Xp - on PC and Laptop.

Only the laptop gives the problem

[nucleon]

It seems that no one (so far) has come up with a simple solution. If you really want this, you can write your own "gotoxy", "cprintf", "textattr", etc., but have them work in GUI mode. Then you can pick whatever font size you wish. This would not be very difficult, but you have to know Windows programming, which can be somewhat difficult to learn.

[donjohnson24]

Thanks for the suggestion - I have often thought about doing that sort of thing over the years since I first rewrote a much simpler Basic program in c, but never got round to it.

I know that as a retired person I should perhaps take the time to try to learn the necessary, but have to admit that my poor old brain might not be able to cope. :confused:

I beginning to reach the conclusion - after some more experimentation - that the problem is actually to do with the display adapter in the laptop not recognising such an out-of-date display mode, so perhaps if I am called upon to use it, I'll have to dig out a more ancient machine to run it on.

My apologies if I have wasted anyone's time :icon_redface:

It seems that no one (so far) has come up with a simple solution. If you really want this, you can write your own "gotoxy", "cprintf", "textattr", etc., but have them work in GUI mode. Then you can pick whatever font size you wish. This would not be very difficult, but you have to know Windows programming, which can be somewhat difficult to learn.