ANSI.SYS

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ANSI.SYS is a device driver that implements part of the ANSI escape sequences specified in ANSI X3.64 in PC-compatible DOS . The implementation was originally part of MS-DOS 2.0 from 1983. In addition to MS-DOS 3.x and newer, a compatible driver is required. a. also included in PC DOS from IBM and DR DOS from Digital Research , but also in OS / 2 . Numerous other operating systems and programs mostly offer an emulation that is compatible with MS-DOS-ANSI.

Due to the widespread use and the filename, the term ANSI driver is often ANSI.SYSequated with , although the abbreviation ANSI actually stands for the American National Standards Institute in general. The ANSI standard X3.64 with the title Control Functions for Coded Character Sets was later withdrawn in favor of ISO / IEC 6429 to avoid double normalization.

ANSI BBS

The quasi-standard of the ANSI-X3.64 specification was in the 1980s, in the time of the Bulletin Board Systems , BBS for short, the implementation contained in MS-DOS from MicrosoftANSI.SYS . The device driver is based on the IO.SYSANSI functions contained in MS-DOS 2.0. As of MS-DOS version 3.x, the driver can be loaded DEVICE=ANSI.SYSinto the if required CONFIG.SYS. This can save valuable conventional memory when the ANSI functions are not required.

Microsoft's ANSI driver contains only a part of the functions and takes the implementation of the Zenith Z-19 (or Heath H-19, the terminal version of the Heathkit H89 ) from 1979 as a reference. The MS-DOS-ANSI driver implements 11 commands and 3 extensions from the ANSI-X3.64 specification.

When BBS clients became popular, which in turn mainly ran on MS-DOS and variants thereof, Microsoft's implementation for MS-DOS became the de facto standard, since it could be assumed that every user had at least one ANSI.SYSavailable. Other ANSI drivers for DOS therefore mostly took the Microsoft implementation of ANSI X3.64 as a reference, but functions were also often added. For example, some BBS clients offer their own ANSI interpreters. One of the most popular extensions only there is ANSI music , and the. a. implemented by Qmodem and TeliMate.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Norton : The Peter Norton Programmer's guide to the IBM PC . Microsoft Corp., 1985, pp. 386 ff . ( Full text in Google Book Search).
  2. ↑ Hajo Schulz: ANSI driver under Windows ME. In: Heise online . January 29, 2001 . Retrieved March 9, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b SKELIO.ASM. ( ASM ) In: MS-DOS 2.0 source code . Microsoft , 1983, accessed on March 8, 2019 (the ANSI routines can be found from line 468 onwards).
  4. ↑ Glossary. In: The BBS Library. Retrieved March 9, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Kermit 95 and QmodemPro for Windows 95. In: The Kermit Project. Columbia University, July 1996, accessed March 9, 2019 : "QmodemPro appears to be primarily targeted at the BBS / ZMODEM user community. It has excellent ANSI terminal emulation, supports ... 'ANSI music', and so forth, ... "
  6. ^ ANSI Music - The Technical Details. ( TXT ) Retrieved on March 9, 2019 (English): "... two major comm programs that support ANSI music: TeliMate and Qmodem."