I'll address his first suggestion for clearing the screen, and if someone can
help me make it work, I won't worry about the other two.

Below is a short program that I wrote to test the ClrScreen procedure suggested
in Timo Salmi's FAQs (#117.)  Calling this procedure does indeed clear the
screen, but then I cannot write anything to the screen after that.  According
to Borland's Turbo Pascal "Language Guide" (p. 144), the CRT unit's ClrScr
procedure should clear the screen and also return the cursor to the upper
left-hand corner.  Perhaps Salmi's substitution does not do everything that
ClrScr does.

I have inserted comments in the following to show where Salmi's lines begin and
end.  All that I try to do in this little program is to call the ClrScreen
procedure and then write a new line on the screen.  The output screen dutifully
goes black but then the new line of text does not appear on the screen.  In
fact, the output screen remains blank for all programs until I exit the
compiler and restart it.  What else must I do to write to the screen after
calling the ClrScreen procedure?

Many thanks!
Pat

program clrscreen_tst;

(*Salmi's code begins here.*)

(* Clear the 80 x 25 screen without the Crt unit *)
  procedure ClrScreen;
  type ScreenType = array [0..1999] of array [0..1] of byte;
  var ColorScreen : ScreenType Absolute $B800:$0000;
  begin
    FillChar (ColorScreen, SizeOf(ColorScreen), 0);
  end;

 (*Salmi's code ends here.*)

What happens if you write characters to the odd or even positions of the
screen area?  One should be gaudy, the other legible.

If you don't mind the cursor ending up on the last line rather than the
first,
     for J := 1 to NumberOfLines do Writeln ;
will clear the screen quickly enough for most purposes at 400 MHz (but
maybe not on the original IBM PC!).

A GoAtXY (TSFAQP#124) should put the cursor at the top, or a direct Int
$10 *should* work:

procedure GoXY(X, Y : byte) { Position Cursor } ; assembler ;
asm  mov ah,$02 ; mov bh,0 ; mov dh,Y ; mov dl,X ;
  { Michael Kennedy says some old systems may need Push BP, Pop BP }
  push BP ; int $10 ; pop BP  end {GoXY} ;

BTW, I expect that your program IS writing to the screen, but in black-
on-black, as alluded to in TSFAQP.

In Timo's code, one should use not FillChar but FillWord, to fill the
screen with character-attribute pairs, where the character is #$20=space
and the attribute is what it needs to be.  The snag is that FillWord is
not available as standard, though it may be easy to write (PS?).

Try Timo's, but filling with #$20 bytes - it should clear the screen to
green, and you may be able to write on it.

When you do find out what the real problem was, please post the
explanation here.

    Again, John, thanks for your generous reply.  I'll give your suggestions a
try tomorrow!

If the user is content to convert what they want for each word to fill
the generic variable Dest, then the following is fine.

As with FillChar, *no* checking is done so it is up to the user to make
sure that Count of *words* is correct.

Procedure FillWord(var Dest; Count, what:word); assembler;
asm
   LES DI,Dest
   MOV CX,Count
   MOV AX,What
   CLD
   REP STOSW
end;

Routine posted 1999-05-09 in c.l.p.b by Pedt Scragg :
    procedure FillWord(var Dest ; Count, What : word) ; assembler ;
    asm  LES DI,Dest ; MOV CX,Count ; MOV AX,What ; CLD ; REP STOSW  end ;
This should be useful in particular for filling the screen buffer, where
What = (TextAttr shl 8) + Ord(Character). It can be tested with, for
example,
    FillWord(Ptr(SegB800, 0)^, 2000, ($2400+Ord('*'))) ;

I must update some programs with it.  

    Which fix do you recommend as being the easiest to install for a person
just beginning to learn Pascal?  The fixes listed  in the FAQs (which I did
read before posting any messages here) all seemed equally daunting and tough to
understand.

      I would also like to hear from any other Turbo Pascal newbies as to their
success  in using  the recommended fixes.

     Your suggestion of the looped Writelns along with GoAtXY (with the Tsuntg
unit) worked fine as a substitute for ClrScr for my simple  purposes.  Many
thanks!

Have you checked my list in the Runtime Error 200 FAQ ?
See my homepage.

Uses RDelay,CRT,Printer;

     Many thanks for the advice.  I already had the Roger E. Donais info
downloaded but I had run into snags trying to get it set up to run.
      After some fooling around with the files, I discovered that my problems
were due to a lack of file-management "skills" more than anything else.  In
order to compile the RDelay.pas, one needs also to have Donais's Util.pas unit
compiled.  In order to compile the Util.pas, one also needs to have Util01.pas
on hand.  My problem was in not fully understanding that the compiler would
only look in the *active* directory for those files.  I kept thinking that it
should be looking among *all* the files in the TP folder ... that the
designated active directory only applied to when you were "manually" opening
files with the compiler.  Not so. ( An elementary mistake?  You bet.  But I'll
also bet that I'm not the only beginner who has committed this screw-up, so
that's why I'm elaborating on it here.)
      After moving the compiled .tpu files to the Units folder, it now appears
that placing RDelay before CRT in the uses clause does indeed eliminate the
Error 200 message.  I haven't given it a thorough test yet, but it sure looks
encouraging thus far.

       Many thanks, Mike!