"Off screen" character columns

[+OLD CS1]

TI notes that columns 1, 2, 31, and 32 are off the edges of most screens. In my experience, this has never been the case and I have freely written programs to use those columns.

 

Of course, with emulation this is not an issue at all, but I am writing my programs to work on both emulated and real hardware. Has anyone ever run into the outer two columns, or part of them, being off-screen? Would it be considered "bad etiquette" to use these columns?

[+adamantyr]

TI notes that columns 1, 2, 31, and 32 are off the edges of most screens. In my experience, this has never been the case and I have freely written programs to use those columns.

 

Of course, with emulation this is not an issue at all, but I am writing my programs to work on both emulated and real hardware. Has anyone ever run into the outer two columns, or part of them, being off-screen? Would it be considered "bad etiquette" to use these columns?

 

If you had your TI hooked up to a TV using the RF modulator, you could get cases where the first two and last two columns were cut off. Usually only the first and last were really bad, but the curve of the video signal sometimes made the edges hard to see on both sets of columns.

 

With a composite monitor, you don't usually have problems seeing all 768 positions. I wouldn't worry about it, program for the full-size screen.

 

Adamantyr

[Tursi]

Yep. That's just hold-over from the old concept of TVs with round screens that cut off the edges of the picture.

[+OLD CS1]

Thanks, that was my guess on the matter, but it is good to have others' opinions. I have to correct myself: we had one TV that cut off half of columns 1 and 32, but no other TV I ever used had that problem. In particular, B&W TVs were awesome, showing all 32 columns and very crisp, clear pixels. I did a lot of font programming on B&W TVs.

Edited December 12, 2010 by OLD CS1

[lucien2]

I HAD to bring my old console back to life, to test the TurboForth cartridge.

It has been switched on only once in the last ~25 years (10 years ago, when I back up the tapes with Tape994a).

 

So, here I see the first column is only half displayed. Is there a way to adjust the horizontal position ?

 

Edited October 10, 2016 by lucien2

[jacquesg]

I am one of those who still uses an old colour TV and I also lose column 1 and part of column 2 when running TurboForth. The same is probably happening on the opposite edge but I have not noticed.

 

The only other Forth that I have ever used is Wycove Forth and it has an ability to start a screen 2 columns in on the left side. I am still very much a novice with Wycove and even more so with TurboForth but it keeps my old brain cells churning. <grin>

 

Jacques

[matthew180]

Until I get a chance to do a cap-kit on my 13" TI black/silver monitor, I'm using a new-ish tube TV (Toshiba, flat tube, 3 composite inputs, s-video, RF, and antenna) and I lose the 1st and half the 2nd column!! The stupid TV does not have *any* analogue adjustments on the back either, so I took it apart. But, much to my chagrin, the inside does not have *any* adjustments either!! Even the freaking horizontal coil was fixed (they *always* have a tunable slug that controls the horizontal size.) It is all digital now and controlled by 1 SMD IC.

 

After a *lot* of digging around on the 'net I finally found that you can access a special service mode via the remote control, and one of the 24 adjustments is horizontal size. However, of course, it was absolutely disabled and did not change the horizontal size AT ALL. There *were* two other adjustments related to horizontal though, and through those I could choose between chopping off left columns, right columns, or some amount of equal columns on both sides. This really sucked too, since I was trying to test and confirm sprite behavior on real hardware so I could make sure the F18A was doing things correctly.

 

I guess the moral is, you can't really count on there not being columns cut off if someone is using a real TV, and then it depends on what setting they have available on that TV. However, I still hold the opinion that you should use the whole screen and let the end user deal with it. 32 columns is already small enough!