Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!sri-unix!ctnews!pyramid!prls!philabs!linus!mbunix!jcmorris
From: jcmorris@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Joseph C. Morris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: colors under ansi.sys and codeview
Message-ID: <33530@linus.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jun 88 22:30:54 GMT
References: <1769@loral.UUCP>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: jcmorris@mbunix (Morris)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean,  VA
Lines: 24

In a recent article jlh@loral.UUCP (The Mad Merkin Hunter) writes:
>                                                                codeview
>seems to have decided on it's own that I want black and white.
>
>          When said background is anything but black I have a black border  
>around my (beautiful) display.

Last things first: the EGA doesn't give you a border on the display...more
properly, it gives you one, but it's always black.

The most likely source of the loss of color support (based on too many
similar experiences) is that you've started running some new program which
doesn't bother to leave the display mode like it found it.  Two recent
examples I've run into are Computer Associates' accounting packages and
MEC's MASS-11 word processing program.  If you've got a way to see what
the current mode setting is (e.g., using Microsoft's WHAT program),
you'll probably find that you are now in mode 2; mode 3 is where you
should be with an EGA.  Try using the MODE  CO80  command and see
if the colors reappear.  (Some programs don't bother to check the mode
before sending color orders to the screen and will display colors even if
the screen claims to be in mode 2...and will succeed.  Others, like
Norton Utilities and apparently Codeview, honor the current screen mode
and don't try to color an apparently B&W screen.)

Good luck.