Historical: Typewriter

When I was a kid, I wrote this assembly program that would play with the VGA fonts (I wrote a whole bunch of programs that messed with the VGA fonts) One particular program that comes to mind is one that shifts the lines on the VGA font one scan line upward, making it look like it was typed on a typewriter with an errant key.

SCANLINES	equ	16
SHIFT		equ	 2

.model small
.code
	org	100h
main	proc
	mov	ax,1130h	; read char vector
	mov	bh,06		; 8*16 vga/mcga
	int	10h

	mov	ah,0		; read char
	int	16h
	cbw
	push	ax
	
		
	mov	cl,4		; map of offending char
	shl	ax,cl
	add	bp,ax
	add	bp,SHIFT	
	
	mov	cx,SCANLINES-SHIFT	; save char bitmap
	push	ds
	push	es		
	pop	ds
	pop	es
	mov	si,bp		; ds:si->original map
	lea	di,charmap	; es:di->our buf
	cld
	rep	movsb	
			
	mov	ax,1100h	; set char
	mov	cx,1
	pop	dx
	mov	bh,10h		; 8*16 vga/mcga
	lea	bp,charmap
	int	10h

	mov	ax,4c00h
	int	21h
main	endp

charmap	db SCANLINES dup(0)	; init to 0 as last lines must be blank
	end	main

History: Executing a program in DOS

A common trick in the old days was to execute an application from within another. Here is some code example of how that was normally done:

.model tiny
.code

ExecBlk	Struc
	Psp	dw	?
	Cmdline	dw	?
	CmdSeg	dw	?
	FCB1	dw	?
	FCB1seg	dw	?
	FCB2	dw	?
	FCB2seg	dw	?
ExecBlk	ends

	org	100h

main	proc
	lea	bx,pspblk
	mov	sp,bx
	call	resize	

	mov	execb.psp,0		; copy our environment
	mov	execb.cmdline,80h	; pass command line as is
	mov	execb.FCB1,5ch
	mov	execb.FCB2,6ch
	mov	execb.cmdseg,cs
	mov	execb.FCB1seg,cs
	mov	execb.FCB2seg,cs
	lea	dx,execf
	push	ds
	pop	es
	lea	bx,execb
	mov	ax,4b00h
	int	21h
merr:
	mov	ax,4c00h
	int	21h
main	endp

resize	proc
	add	bx,15
	mov	cl,4
	shr	bx,cl
	mov	ax,cs
	add	bx,ax
	mov	ah,4ah
	int	21h
	jc	merr
	ret
resize	endp


execf	db	"PAT.COM",0		; ASCIIZ pathname of file to be execd
execb	ExecBlk	<>
_stack	dw	1000h dup(?)

pspblk	label	byte

	end	main