On 2017-11-04 20:50, dmccunney wrote:
On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 3:32 PM, <userbeit...@abwesend.de> wrote:
I tried to find ZANSI.SYS but found that it is nowerdays really hard to
get... Finally I found it there:
https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/net/user/tytso/msdos/screen/
Another source is here: https://www.pcorner.com/list/GRAPHUTI/ZANSI12.ZIP/INFO/
(I don't currently have a program installed that can unpack the ARC
files provided by your source.)
Thanks! I also would have prefered a ZIP, but on Linux there is ARC
available, e.g. on Debian via "apt install arc".
So, ZANSI Version 1.2 is from Thomas Hanlin III, who used NANSI 2.2 from
Daniel Kegel as a basis. The source code is included. It is from 1987.
The other common ANSI.SYS replacement was NNANSI.SYS, from Tom Almy,
available from http://almy.us/dospage.html
NNANSI was implemented as a TSR COM file instead of being a driver.
This is useful if you use things like DOSbox, which doesn't support
drivers loaded from CONFIG.SYS.
(I use DOSbox to run some old DOS apps on an Android tablet, with
NNANSI loaded as a TSR.)
Okay, I will try NNANSI as well. Hope I remember it until then. I'll
save it now and hopefully use what I have, so NNANSI might be it.
I remember that I preferred ZANSI.SYS over NANSI.SYS and all other ANSI
drivers, because ZANSI was more light-weight i.e. it used as little RAM as
possible while at the same time being the fastest ANSI driver out there (at
that time). Sure, not all functions from NANSI are included, but what I was
after was the accellerated text output only.
I load NNANSI as a TSR high here, so the difference in size isn't a big factor.
Another plus for NNANSI is support for the VT-100 Add Line and Delete
Line sequences that are missing in ANSI and NANSI.
I'm not sure if I need that. The sole purpose for ANSI on my system used
to be accelleration of output speed. I remember that on my original
hardware, something like a 25 MHz 386SX, dir used to be really slow at
the bottom of the screen, once it had to shift the line up. I do
remember that after using ZANSI.SYS this was considerably faster - not
slightly, but very much so.
So IF FreeDOS was ment not only for modern systems but also for real retro
hardware, I think it may be of interest to also include the option to choose
ZANSI over NANSI.
FreeDOS was intended to be DOS compatible and used in place of MSDOS,
so it can run on retro hardware.
I know. I just wished FreeDOS included ZANSI.SYS as an option, a
replacement for NANSI.SYS.
Although I don't know if parts of ZANSI were included in later NANSI
versions.
Cheers,
A.
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