Speed of text editors on 808x platform

[Chuck Guzis]

On 26 Mar 2007 at 16:14, Dave McGuire wrote:

>    For early PC editors, having to go through the BIOS is the big  
> display update bottleneck.  Some programs achieved very fast screen  
> updates by writing directly to the display memory.  The venerable  
> list.com comes to mind.

...which brings to mind Jim's comment on WordStar.  IIRC, there were 
two versions of WS for DOS.  One that used normal terminal I/O and 
one that used direct screen I/O.  Of course, the display matters a 
lot on a PC-XT; CGA can't be updated without snow nearly as quickly 
as MDA/Herc.

I do have a WS 4.00 for MS-DOS, which I didn't see in your list.  
It's the direct-write version.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous...

You could always run Windows and Notepad.  (Windows will run from a 
floppy if configured that way).  Note that I'm talking about 1985 
Windows that runs on a PC with CGA/Herc/EGA.  VGA hadn't been 
invented yet.

Cheers,
Chuck