Readers’ Feedback

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions you would like to see addressed in this column, write to "Readers' Feedback," COMPUTE!, P.O. Box 5406, Greensboro, NC 27403. Due to the volume of mail we receive, we regret that we cannot provide personal answers to technical questions.

PCjr 80-Column Switching Simplified

In the March 1986 installment of this column you explained how to put the PCjr in 80-column mode with the MODE command from MS-DOS. That method works fine, but the MODE command takes up a fair amount of disk space and is not particularly fast. This BASIC program creates a 16-byte machine language program named CLICK&80.COM that not only activates 80 column mode, but also turns on keyboard click. The ML routine executes much faster than MODE and saves disk space as well. You can execute the program by typing CLICK&80 from the DOS prompt or as part of an AUTOEXEC.BAT file which executes automatically when you boot the computer.

10 T=0:OPEN "CLICK&80.COM" FOR OUTPUT AS 1

20 FOR J=l TO 15:READ A$:N=VAL(“&H”+A$)

30 T=T+N:PRINT#1,CHR$(N);:NEXT:CLOSE 1

40 IF T=1380 THEN PRINT "FILE SUCCESSFULLY CREATED":END

50 PRINT CHR$(7);"***** ERROR IN DATA STATEMENTS ****": END

60 DATA 1E,33,C0,50,88,1,4,CD,16,88

70 DATA 3,0,CD,10,CB

- David Howorth

Thank you for the program.