This sounds like a problem with the particular bits of video RAM
that the DOS/BIOS screen font gets loaded into.  Since this gets
reloaded from ROM at boot time, any corruption of the font data must
be in ROM and is probably not easily fixable.
  Having the same kind of problem with various characters in multiple
positions sounds to me like a bad connection between this bit of RAM
and the rest of the video system.  A service technician might be able
to track it down, but my suspicion is that this may cost more than a
3.11 system is worth.

David Gillett


On 18 Aug 2001, at 18:18, james martiny wrote:

> I have a lexbook se10 notebook running win 3.11.  Text characters
> that appear on the screen at bootup, all dos text, and text in the
> cmos setup screens have garbled charaecters.  Most characters that
> are bad have the next ascii value.  t's are u's, r's are s's etc.
> The cmos screens also have many exclamation marks (!) all over the
> screen.  win 3.11 seems to run ok.  The initial cmos screen has
> the date and time changing wildly.  I have run virus checks for
> dos and 3.11 and they have been clean.  Is this just a cmos
> battery issue? or a MB problem?  I was leaning towards the cmos
> battery idea , but even a dos prompt and typing in dos commands
> have changed charecters.  Whwy would the cmos battery have
> anything to do with the system after bootup and OS load?
>
> james martiny

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