Re: Does an enhanced //e _ALWAYS_ have 80 col. support?

[Oliver Schmidt <ol.sc@web.de>]

Hi Craig,

>>But what I still don't understand: You say that all machines contain
>>the firmware. Does it mean that it is "visible" at $C300 even if
>>there's no card installed in the AUX slot?

>If you're looking to just use the mousetext characters, I'm pretty sure you 
>can
>set them to on without *any* 80-column card installed

Obviously there's some misunderstanding: I do use mousetext characters
regardless of 80 col support by hitting the softswitch for the
alternate charset ($C00F), not by calling the firmware. From my
perspective this is correct as I don't call the firmware for printing
characters either. Instead I poke them directly into the video memory.
I read the 80 col softswitch ($C01F) to know if I'm in 80 col mode, if
yes then I hit $C054 resp. $C055 for poking into the right memory.

Hopefully this makes my two questions clearer:

1. Is it okay to read the 80 col softswitch ($C01F) for detecting 80
col mode even if there's no 80 col card installed at all?

2. How do I detect that an 80 col card is actually installed? Checking
for the existence of the $C300 firmware seems to be wrong from what I
understood from your answers.

Oliver