[John Rogers]

Now and then we have posts about computer issues or questions or to gather ideas. I am curious how many of you have actually made a program(s) that solve a particular problem or help others to get something done? Here's mine:

In 1985 I had retired from the US Navy and was starting to work for the US Navy at 32 Street Navy Base as a "computer technician" which covered everything. Where I was working we had those tan colored Zenith Z248s and most programs were text based. We came up with the idea to hold noon hour computer classes on the PC, applications, operating system and actually some security. One of the other guys (no women yet) has nearly blind and he used a huge screen so he could write databases (DB2) but not help with the classes as he could not see those Zenith displays well. My Assembler Language class at night covered how to manipulate various areas of a PCs memory, including B000 and B800 which is where PCs do their display calculations. A close check with a magnifying glass and a check in my Microsoft hardware reference showed that any letter or number was made of what are called "Pixels", usually 6x9 for standard sized text.

About this time the Borland Company had sold a suite of small apps including a small text editor and memory manipulator called a TSR or Terminate Stay Resident so you could write up a small Assembler to hot-key in and increase the number of pixels so text could be as big as you wanted and later drop it back to regular size.

So after I did the program I had Michael test it and he made characters so large only TWO fit on the small Zenith display so now he could also teach. I decided to make this a "shareware program" and put a standard bit of text about donating $$$ if you liked it. Well about 4 months later I got a letter from a fellow in New Foundland who was using my little program to make the text larger on the screen he had running a shortwave radio display showing his transmits and received information. Wow there was also a check for $25 and I was overjoyed for sure.

Today now you can use the system parts of the OS to change text but I'll never forget that letter and check.
John Rogers the old racer