From: ulrich.diez@alumni.uni-tuebingen.de   
      
   Hello!   
      
   I try to create some real-mode DOS-application by means   
   of Borland Pascal 7.0. I need to know the linewidth (in chars)   
   of textmode-screen. In the google-archives I found some   
   newsthread "detection of character-amount that fits in one   
   line of screen (no CRT unit)" which took place some months   
   ago at comp.lang.pascal.borland. Here is a small summary:   
      
   "Samuel Fleischer"   wrote:   
   >Is it possible to detect the amount of characters which fit   
   >into one line of the screen without using the CRT-unit   
      
   "Wolfgang Ehrhardt" wrote:   
   > Try reading from the BIOS data area   
   >  screncolums = memw[$40:$4a];   
      
   "Femme Verbeek" wrote:   
   > Note that this does not work on all computers. Especially the new ones   
   > where old DOS biossing is often neglected.   
   > It will also not work in protected mode.   
      
   I know that reading from the BIOS data area directly does not   
   work from within protected mode as in protected-mode   
   memory-paging is used instead of direct segment:offset-addressing.   
      
   But what's about computers where "old DOS biossing is often   
   neglected" ? What does this mean? (If a machine neglects "old   
   DOS biossing" - is it possible at all to boot it up (e.g. via bootdisk)   
   with some real-mode MS-DOS ?)   
      
   Thanks   
      
   Ulrich   
      
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