Also in the works: I'm making the necessary tweaks to the Lucid, Write-ROM, Data, and Thought apps inside of SuperROM to make them fully Ultrascreen aware.
This will eventually result in a new "SuperROM 2.0" release for the M100, T200 and NEC that will actually take advantage of Ultrascreen's 60x10 (NEC/M100) & 60x21 (T200) screen modes. This will finally make Ultrascreen much more useful, and arguably how things would have been back in 1988 had Ultrasoft & PCSG collaborated. Gary On Mon, Oct 26, 2026 at 5:54 PM Gary Weber <[email protected]> wrote: > When I set out to build Ultrascreen for the NEC, and later to produce > full annotated source for SuperROM to support the port to the NEC as well, > it might have looked like two independent projects. Surprise! They were > really one. > > A binary can be patched, but it can't easily be combined with anything. > Creating the reassemblable source for Ultrascreen let me carry it to the > NEC PC-8201, the Tandy 200 and the Olivetti M10. Doing the same for > SuperROM, with every routine properly labelled, turned PCSG's ROM from > fixed application images into code that can be relocated, trimmed and, most > importantly, extended. > > So, why go through the effort to do all of that? > > The real goal was to combine Ultrascreen's 60x10 small-font display with > at least a few of the apps from SuperROM (Lucid, Data, & Thought) into one > single option ROM. The big payoff is that the apps don't just run under > Ultrascreen and render their original UI correctly (which they did NOT even > do at the start); they were modified to actually use it properly. For > instance the spreadsheet can now render six columns (A–F) and eight rows > instead of four by six, doubling the number of cells on screen. Switch back > to SCREEN 0 and Lucid still draws the classic 40x8 sheet. > > A lot of testing still needs to happen. But, I figured I'd give you all a > sneak peek. > > First, the original Lucid you're used to: > [image: image.png] > -- -- -- > Lucid+Ultrascreen: > [image: image.png] > Thought+Ultrascreen: > [image: image.png] > > It's really in the early stages here. I'm currently working on this for > the NEC, but I fully intend to back-port all of it for the Model 100 and > Olivetti M-10. (And who knows, maybe also for the T200...) I did have to > sacrifice *Write* to bring Ultrascreen into the option ROM. And > unfortunately, there was just no room in ROM to add the additional support > for Ultrascreen even if it were left as a RAM version of the display > driver, so something had to be removed from ROM regardless. > > Anyway, a new "Lucid / Data / Thought / Ultrascreen" ROM is still in an > alpha state. I'll let you know when things progress far enough to release > a beta version. And thanks to B9 for all the help testing Lucid-NEC, and > to John Hogerhuis for testing Thought-NEC. I'll get as many fixes in > place as possible before releasing anything. > > -- > Gary Weber > [email protected] >
