Windows 2000 Cursor and Screen Lines Problems

[Marshall Weatherman]

I recently began running PBDOS 3.5 in a maximized command prompt window in Windows 2000 and found two things I would like to change.

The cursor does not move quickly or smoothly in the PB editor screen. This was not a problem in Win98. The cursor does move quickly and smoothly in the command prompt window before I start PB.

When I select the 43/50 lines per screen option in PB, 50 lines appear on the screen rather than the 43 lines seen in Win98. Any way to get 43 lines in Win2000?

Any other gotcha's in Win2000 using PBDOS that I haven't found yet?

Thanks,
Marshall

[Lance Edmonds]

In Windows 2000, what you call "DOS" is actually a 32-bit emulator called NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine). Hence, the console window may behave a little differently to what you have been used to with Windows 9x (which uses mostly 16-bit code to provide DOS services, etc). Internally, the two are completely different!

The availability of particular console sizes (such as 43 line mode) will depend on the fonts you have available, your graphics card driver, and your hardware. It is not clear (to me) that it is actually possible to use 43-line mode in the IDE under any version of Windows 2000, but I have not been able to check this on many Win2K machines thus far.

You may have some success at making the IDE more "responsive" by adjusting the "Detect Idle Time" slider in the Properties of PB.EXE (or the shortcut that you use to run PB.EXE).

Please let us know if this helps...


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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Tom Hanlin]

One of the depressing "features" of NT and Windows 2000 is a distinct
lack of responsiveness in console handling. If you search through the
Microsoft Knowledgebase, you'll find a couple of tweaks which will
help a little. Eventually, you actually get used to the sluggishness:
I find that I don't even notice it any more.


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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Marshall Weatherman]

Hi Lance and Tom, thanks for the replies. Adjusting the "Idle Sensitivity" in the Properties has no effect on the cursor movement. After looking more closely at the cursor action, I now don't think there is a speed problem in how long the cursor takes to move across the screen. The problem is that the cursor jumps about five or six positions at once while the right arrow key is held down. Thus there is not the smooth movement that I saw in DOS and Win98. When depressing a key normally, there is no noticable lag, it's only when a key is held down continuously. I suppose I'll get used to it in a few days.

Regarding the 43-line issue, I run multiple monitors with one adapter being a SIS6326 and the other a Matrox Millennium, both use the Microsoft Win2000 drivers. Nothing that I can change in the Properties has resulted in a 43-line screen on either graphics adapter.

Marshall

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