From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Wed,  5 Nov 2008 10:39:57 +0000
From: Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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	<3e1162e60811040825m22b885d0q1fc0ba3cfb60a02a@mail.gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] punched cards live
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> The print routines in the BIOS I knew of took a length parameter in the
> CX register (also IIRC)

These were string routines. Service 0x0E of interrupt 0x0A (now that I
think better perhaps it wasn't 10 = 0x0A, rather 0x10 = 16) provided
character output.

> Running protected mode servers really wasn't all THAT bad. :-)

Did you ever use a DOS "extender" like DOS/4GW? I didn't but whenever I saw
its startup message I knew the program I had run was cool... and prone to
crashes.

--On Tuesday, November 04, 2008 8:25 AM -0800 David Leimbach
<leimy2k@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 7:25 AM, Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> i think it's a tradition at this point to use 0x20 and not 0x00 to
> fill a fixed-with signature.  ata identify device uses 0x20 to fill
> out fixed-width fields like the serial number.  i'd be interested
> where this tradition popped up.  0 would make more sense.
>
>
> I risk being wrong--as always--and say it must have popped up in a normal
> ASCII environment. 0x20 = 32, the ASCII code point for a simple
> whitespace. BIOS routines know how to display a whitespace, or any ASCII
> character, in text mode. I remember somewhere back in time I could load
> AL with an ASCII character, call interrupt 0x0A service 0x0E, and have
> the character printed on the screen and the cursor moved one character to
> the right. This was (is?) fairly standard and time-proven. And it worked
> (works?) everywhere, at least in the PC world.
>
>
>
>
> DOS string routines used $ character termination. (AX = 09, DX=(address
> of $ terminated string) INT 21h, if IIRC).
>
>
> The print routines in the BIOS I knew of took a length parameter in the
> CX register (also IIRC)
>
>
> Why do I sometimes still yearn for the simplicity of DOS?  Maybe it's
> Vista that makes me feel so.  Maybe it was the amount of stuff we could
> do with so very little RAM back then.  Running protected mode servers
> really wasn't all THAT bad. :-)
>
>
> Perhaps I'm just getting old.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --On Monday, November 03, 2008 7:06 AM -0500 erik quanstrom
> <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> This courtesy of the ACPI spec: ""RSD PTR " (Notice that this
> signature must contain a trailing
> blank character.)"
>
> So where do we get the guys who design this stuff? Can we send them
> back? Or put them in an infinite loop in a time machine (oh wait see
> the subject).
>
>
> i think it's a tradition at this point to use 0x20 and not 0x00 to
> fill a fixed-with signature.  ata identify device uses 0x20 to fill
> out fixed-width fields like the serial number.  i'd be interested
> where this tradition popped up.  0 would make more sense.
>
> - erik
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>