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ROM Character Sets Are Slowly Disappearing

DMAC recently learned of another unheralded change in video adapter card's ROM with some of the newer cards. The three character sets originally in the vga video adapter ROM have become one or two -- and only garbage lets you know.

Most image users know that the DMACI environment variable sets both the density and the character size for imaging. Densities (V:) can be as follows:

LOW     640x480x16
HIGH     800x600x16
HIGH1   1024x768x16
SUPER  1208x1024x16

And the characters (F:) can be as follows:

SMALL   8x8
MED        8x14
BIG          9x16
BIG1        10x18
BIG2        12x30
BIG1 and BIG2 are currently supplied by tables in the bin directory bit10x18.aid and bit12x30.aid. The next release will have to supply BIG and MED tables also -- because they no longer are in the ROM on some video adapter cards.