China DOS Union

This was introduced in some collected volume. It originally explained how to detect it with C; later I implemented it in QB. Now that I've found the program, I'll post it here. As long as you use one variable to save the detection result and prepare two sets of displays, it can automatically adapt to whether there is a Chinese character support system.

REM Automatically detect the Chinese character support system in a BASIC program
DEF SEG = &H40
mode = PEEK(&H49)
OUT &H3CE, &H6
result = INP(&H3CF) AND &HF
PRINT "mode="; mode, "result="; result
IF mode = 3 AND result = 5 THEN
PRINT "You are now in a direct-screen-writing Chinese character support system"
PRINT "What you see now is Chinese"
ELSE
IF mode = 3 AND result = 14 THEN
PRINT "Is not any CCDOS in the memory ,It's it ?"
PRINT "So , You only see the English"
ELSE
IF mode = 18 AND result = 1 THEN
PRINT "You are now in a non-direct-screen-writing Chinese character support system"
ELSE
PRINT "I Can't know which display mode ."
END IF
END IF
END IF

Change this line in the program:

IF mode = 3 AND result = 5 THEN

to:

IF mode = 3 AND (result = 1 or result = 5) THEN

otherwise it won't be able to correctly determine whether the Chinese character support system is loaded under Chinese character support systems such as AW97 and XZL in the DOS window of Win9x/ME, or under pure DOS.

I also have a piece of Quick BASIC code for determining whether the Chinese system has been started. I'll upload it another day to share with everyone.

CALL TestCcdos
SYSTEM

SUB TestCcdos
DIM a%(50)
DEF SEG = VARSEG(a%(0))
RESTORE
FOR I% = 0 TO 37
READ D%
IF I% = 4 THEN
D% = VARPTR(a%(49)) MOD 256
ELSEIF I% = 5 THEN
D% = VARPTR(a%(49)) / 256
END IF
POKE VARPTR(a%(0)) + I%, D%
NEXT I%

CALL ABSOLUTE(VARPTR(a%(0)))
DEF SEG
IF a%(49) = 0 THEN
PRINT
PRINT "This is a test program!"
PRINT "If you run it under Chinese System, Program will show GB Chinese char message."
PRINT
SYSTEM
ELSE
PRINT "This is a Chinese test program!"
PRINT "Copyright: Golden Lion Computer Software Studio, Dou Jiehui"
PRINT "Email: kinglionsoft@idvweb.com"

END IF
END SUB

DATA &H50,&H53,&H56,&HBE,&H00,&H00,&H2E,&HC7,&H04,&H00,&H00,&HB8,&H00,&HDB,&HCD,&H2F
DATA &H3C,&HFF,&H74,&H09,&HB8,&H10,&HDB,&HCD,&H10,&H3C,&HFF,&H75,&H05,&H2E,&HC7,&H04
DATA &H01,&H00,&H5E,&H5B,&H58,&HCB

Bumping this old thread.
A question for everyone: after detecting whether the Chinese character support system is loaded like this, is it possible to add a new DOS environment variable?
Microsoft's method is to call a batch file again to set the environment variable: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/43691/zh-cn
vbdos's Environ can only modify or delete DOS environment variables that already exist, but it cannot add new environment variables.
That's very inconvenient. Is there any way to directly add an environment variable in QB?

[ Last edited by xugaohui on 2009-7-5 at 11:03 ]

No need for environment variables, just 7 lines of assembly code will do!
mov dx,3C4h
mov al,02
out dx,al
mov dx,3C5h
in al,dx
cmp al,03
On the next line, use JZ for English DOS or JNZ for Chinese DOS.
That's exactly how it's done in my VTmagik.com.
;jz EnDisp, jnz CcDisp

I don't understand assembly or C. What I had in mind was using a program to detect whether it's a Chinese environment, then setting the environment variable cn=1, so that any batch file under DOS could determine whether the current environment is Chinese. That would make it very convenient to create batch programs with Chinese and English displays. In Qb too, Chinese and English prompts could be entered. I checked Pascal as well and there is no command for adding environment variables.
Microsoft's website always gives this kind of explanation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69846/zh-cn
I'll try looking at PowerBASIC's help to see whether PEEK$ and POKE$ can solve the problem, though I guess that method isn't very good.

Tests show that PEEK$ and POKE$ don't work, because there are multiple Program Segment Prefixes PSP in memory, so a lot of environment variables can be found, but there's no way to know which one is the correct one.

[ Last edited by xugaohui on 2009-7-5 at 15:37 ]

The assembly in post #6 translated into BASIC is as follows:
REM Automatically detect the Chinese character support system in a BASIC program
OUT &H3C4, 02
result = INP(&H3C5) AND &HF
IF result = 3 THEN
PRINT "MS/PC DOS"
ELSE
PRINT "CCDOS"
END IF
END

Thanks, Benshi, the one above is simple and effective.
vbdos itself can't set environment variables, but the system statement can return a DOS errorlevel, which can be called very well in a batch file, and is even better to use than environment variables.

A further question for Benshi: after wbat loads ccdos, there are problems when operating controls with the mouse. How can QBasic write a program to check whether the mouse driver is loaded?
Too many articles online call interrupts directly. That makes the generated file too large, and it's also inconvenient.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/37882/zh-cn
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/28171/zh-cn

Please refer to "Porting QBASIC's interrupt calls in QB and extending absolute address calls" (http://www.cn-dos.net/forum/viewthread.php?tid=48086&sid=e1w9ca)

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