This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it. (March 2012)

Code page 437, as rendered by the IBM PC using a VGA adapter.

IBM PC or MS-DOS code page 437 is the character set of the original IBM PC. It is also known as CP 437, OEM 437,^[1] PC-8,^[2] MS-DOS Latin US^[3] or sometimes misleadingly referred to as the OEM font, High ASCII or Extended ASCII.^[2][4]

In a strict sense, this character set was not born as a code page but was simply the graphical glyph repertoire available in the 9 by 14 pixels-per-character font of the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) and the 8 by 8 pixels-per-character font of the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) cards of the original IBM PC. The ROM of the IBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) has an 8 by 14 pixels-per-character version and the VGA adapter expanded the character cell to 9 by 16 for the finer VGA resolution. Today, the character set is still the primary font in the core of any EGA and VGA compatible graphic card; i.e. the text you can see on screen when a PC reboots, before any other font can be loaded from a storage medium, is rendered with this "code page". 437 is default hardware Code Page for PC hardware sold in the US & Western Europe; systems sold in Eastern European, Arabic and Asian countries may differ.

All these display adapters have text modes in which each character cell contains an 8-bit character code point (see details), giving 256 possible values for graphic characters. This way, beyond the original ASCII graphical character set (values 32 to 126, 95 in total), the implementors put in ROM a handful of miscellaneous characters even for the range 0 to 31, reserved in ASCII for control (non graphical) purposes.

The code page has two main uses: as an information interchange code (through files and telecom), in which the values 0 to 127 play the same role as in ASCII plus the international text characters 128 to 175 (see the table below), and as a graphical resource for screen and printers (whereby a character can be displayed or printed by merely sending the appropriate by 8-bit code point), for which the full range can be used to build simple graphical presentations.

Alt Codes[link]

A legacy of code page 437 is the number combinations used in Windows Alt keycodes (where the user holds down the Alt key and enters a three-digit decimal code on the numpad) introduced in the first versions of MSDOS. The intention was that these numbers would change as the current character set was changed. But when Microsoft switched to more standard character sets (such as CP1252 and later Unicode) in Windows, so many users had memorized the numbers used by CP 437 that they were forced to replicate them (they added the ability to type a code in the actual character set by typing the zero on the keypad before the digits).

Characters[link]

The following tables show code page 437. Each character is shown with its equivalent Unicode code point and its decimal code point. See also the notes below as there are multiple equivalent Unicode characters for some code points.

Interpretation of code points 1–31 and 127[link]

Code points 1–31 and 127 (00–1F_hex and 7F_hex) may be interpreted as control or graphic characters, depending on the context. When used in a memory-mapped video display buffer, the code point is displayed as the graphic shown in the table of special graphic characters below. For printers the graphics context is established by a preceding control sequence in the data stream. In other situations, these code points are used as controls, as shown in the standard code page table.^[5]

Most fonts for Microsoft Windows include the special graphic characters at the Unicode indexes shown, as they are part of the WGL4 set that Microsoft encourages font designers to support. (The monospaced raster font family Terminal was an early font that replicated all code page 437 characters, at least at some resolutions.) To draw these characters directly from these code points, a Microsoft Windows font called MS Linedraw^[6] replicates all of the code page 437 characters, thus providing one way to display DOS text on a contemporary Windows machine as it was shown in DOS, with limitations.^[7]

Standard code page[link]

The following table shows the standard code page 437.^[1][8]

Along with the characters in the range 0 to 31 (00_hex to 1F_hex), which can be interpreted as ASCII controls as well as graphical dingbats, some characters have overloaded meanings. Implementers of translation to Unicode should note that these codes do not have a unique, single Unicode equivalent and the correct choice depends upon context:

• 0 and 255 (FF_hex) both draw a blank space, as does 32 (20_hex). The use of 255 for U+00A0 Non-breaking space (NBSP) has some precedent in word processors designed for the IBM PC.
• 225 (E1_hex) is both the German sharp S (U+00DF, ß) and the Greek lowercase beta (U+03B2, β).
• 227 (E3_hex) is the Greek lowercase pi (U+03C0, π), but early fonts such as Terminal use a variant of pi that is ambiguous in case, and therefore can be used for the Greek capital pi (U+03A0, Π) or the n-ary product sign (U+220F, ∏).
• 228 (E4_hex) is both the n-ary summation sign (U+2211, ∑) and the Greek uppercase sigma (U+03A3, Σ).
• 230 (E6_hex) is both the micro sign (U+00B5, µ) and the Greek lowercase mu (U+03BC, μ).
• 234 (EA_hex) is both the ohm sign (U+2126, Ω) and the Greek uppercase omega (U+03A9, Ω). (Unicode considers the ohm sign to be equivalent to uppercase omega, and suggests that the latter be used in both contexts.^[9]).
• 235 (EB_hex) is the Greek lowercase delta (U+03B4, δ), but it has also been used as a surrogate for the Icelandic lowercase eth (U+00F0, ð) and the partial derivative sign (U+2202, ∂).
• 237 (ED_hex) is supposed to be used as Greek lowercase phi, but is mainly used as the empty set sign (U+2205, Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \varnothing

) and was also used as the Greek phi symbol in italics (U+03D5, Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \phi\,\! ) to name angles, diameter sign (U+2300, Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \varnothing ), and as a surrogate for the Latin lowercase O with stroke (U+00F8, ø).

• 238 (EE_hex) is both the Greek lowercase epsilon (U+03B5, ε) and the element-of sign (U+2208, ∈). Later it was often used for the euro sign (U+20AC, €).

Difference from ASCII[link]

Code page 437 is based on ASCII, with the following modifications:

• Codes from the C0 control range (00_hex to 1F_hex) and ASCII DEL (7F_hex) can assume their original function as control characters, but also function as graphic symbols when displayed in text mode from the screen buffer. For example, DEL and most of the C0 control codes are displayed graphically in a screen editor like MS-DOS Editor or when written to the screen via the DOS type command. The graphics include smiling faces, card suits, and musical notes. Code 127 (7F_hex), DEL, shows as a "house". This behavior is not specific to code page 437, but shared by all DOS code pages and so-called Windows OEM code pages, which generally resemble code page 437.
• The high-bit range, 128 to 255 (80_hex to FF_hex), is mapped to various symbols: a few European characters (accented Latin letters, etc.) in no particular order and not sufficient for representation of most Western European languages; box drawing characters; mathematical symbols; and a few Greek letters commonly used in mathematics and physics.

The repertoire of code page 437 was taken from the character set of Wang word-processing machines, according to Bill Gates in an interview with Gates and Paul Allen that appeared in the 2 October 1995 edition of Fortune Magazine:

"... We were also fascinated by dedicated word processors from Wang, because we believed that general-purpose machines could do that just as well. That's why, when it came time to design the keyboard for the IBM PC, we put the funny Wang character set into the machine—you know, smiley faces and boxes and triangles and stuff. We were thinking we'd like to do a clone of Wang word-processing software someday."

The selection of graphic characters has some internal logic:

• Table rows 0 and 1, codes 0 to 31 (00_hex to 1F_hex), are assorted dingbats (complementary and decorative characters). The isolated character 127 (7F_hex) also belongs to this group.
• Table rows 2 to 7 (except character 127, 7F_hex), codes 32 to 126 (20_hex to 7E_hex), are the standard ASCII printable characters.
• Table rows 8 to 10 (8_hex to A_hex), codes 128 to 175 (80_hex to AF_hex), are a selection of international text characters.
• Table rows 11 to 13 (B_hex to D_hex), codes 176 to 223 (B0_hex to DF_hex), are box drawing and block characters. This block is arranged so that characters 192 to 223 (C0_hex to DF_hex) of the rows 12 and 13 (C_hex and D_hex) have all right arms (except 217 (D9_hex)) or right filled areas (except 221 (DD_hex)), and this is due to the following technical reason:^[10] the original IBM PC MDA display adapter stored the code page 437 character glyphs as bitmaps eight pixels wide, but for visual enhancement displayed them every nine pixels on screen (eight plus an additional gap). Thus characters with connections at their right edge had to duplicate their eighth pixels to avoid visual interruptions in the designs built up with them. This pixel extension is done by special hardware circuitry, and only this character subset is affected.
• Table rows 14 and 15 (E_hex and F_hex), codes 224 to 255 (E0_hex to FF_hex) are devoted to mathematical symbols, where the first twelve are a selection of Greek letters commonly used in physics. Characters 244 (F4_hex) and 245 (F5_hex) are the upper and lower portion of an italic long S, the symbol used as the integral sign (∫), and they can be extended with the character 179 (B3_hex), the vertical line of the box drawing block. Characters 249 (F9_hex) and 250 (FA_hex) are almost indistinguishable: the first is slightly larger than the second, which resembles the typographic middle dot (·). The character 255 (FF_hex) is merely blank, and acts as a kind of non-breaking space in order to arrange math formulae.

Internationalization[link]

Code page 437 has a series of international characters, mainly values 128 to 175 (80_hex to AF_hex). However, it lacks many characters important to several Western languages:

• Spanish (Á, Í, Ó, Ú), French (À, Â, È, Ê, Ë, Ì, Î, Ï, Ô, Œ, œ, Ù, Û), and Portuguese (Ã, ã, Õ, õ).
• German sharp S (ß) shares its code point with the beta symbol (β).
• Scandinavian lacks Ø and ø. Character number 237 (ED_hex), the empty set symbol, could be used as a surrogate, but its spacing is awkward for display within a word. To compensate, the Norwegian and Danish code pages (865 and 861), replaced cent (¢) with ø, and yen (¥) with Ø.
• Most Greek alphabet symbols. (They were included in the Greek-language code pages 737 and 869.)

Along with the cent (¢), pound sterling (£) and yen/yuan (¥) currency symbols, it has a couple of European currency symbols: the florin (ƒ, Netherlands) and the peseta (₧, Spain). The presence of the last is unusual, since the Spanish peseta was never an internationally relevant currency, and also never had a symbol of its own; it was simply abbreviated as "Pt", "Pta", "Pts", or "Ptas". Spanish models of the IBM electric typewriter, however, also had a single position devoted to it.

Later MS-DOS character sets, such as code page 850 (DOS Latin-1), code page 852 (DOS Central-European) and code page 737 (DOS Greek), filled the gaps for international use with some compatibility with code page 437 by retaining the single and double box-drawing characters, while discarding the mixed ones (e.g. horizontal double/vertical single). All code page 437 characters have similar glyphs in Unicode and in Microsoft's WGL4 character set, and therefore are available in most fonts in Microsoft Windows, and also in the default VGA font of the Linux kernel, and the ISO 10646 fonts for X11.

See also[link]

• Alt codes
• ANSI
• ANSI art
• ASCII
• ASCII art
• Semi graphical characters
• Western Latin character sets (computing)
• Terminal (typeface)

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} "OEM 437". Go Global Developer Center. Microsoft. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/cc305156. Retrieved 22 Sep 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b} "OEM font". Encyclopedia. PCmag.com. http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=OEM+font&i=48292,00.asp. Retrieved 15 Nov 2011. 
3. ^ "Code Page 437 MS-DOS Latin US". Developing International Software. Microsoft. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc195060.aspx. Retrieved 14 Nov 2011. 
4. ^ Note: Code page 437 is an extended ASCII code page, but is not the extended ASCII, because numerous incompatible extensions exist.
5. ^ "00437". Code pages by CPGID. IBM. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/cp/cp00437.html. Retrieved 14 Nov 2011. 
6. ^ MS LineDraw - Version 2.00
7. ^ WD97: MS LineDraw Font Not Usable in Word
8. ^ "cp437_DOSLatinUS to Unicode table" (TXT). The Unicode Consortium. http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/PC/CP437.TXT. Retrieved 14 Nov 2011. 
9. ^ The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard 4.0, Chapter 7, "European Alphabetic Scripts", p176. PDF version
10. ^ Richard Wilton, Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 Video Systems, 1987, Microsoft Press.

External links[link]

• IBM Code Page 437 reference chart
• IBM PC memory-mapped video graphics to Unicode on official Unicode site

v t e Character encodings Character sets Early telecommunications ASCII ISO/IEC 646 ISO/IEC 6937 T.61 sixbit code pages Baudot code Morse code Chinese telegraph code ISO/IEC 8859 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13 -14 -15 -16 Bibliographic use ANSEL ISO 5426 / 5426-2 / 5427 / 5428 / 6438 / 6861 / 6862 / 10585 / 10586 / 10754 / 11822 MARC-8 National standards ArmSCII CNS 11643 GOST 10859 GB 2312 HKSCS ISCII JIS X 0201 JIS X 0208 JIS X 0212 JIS X 0213 KPS 9566 KS X 1001 PASCII TIS-620 TSCII VISCII YUSCII EUC CN JP KR TW ISO/IEC 2022 CN JP KR CCCII MacOS codepages ("scripts") Arabic CentralEurRoman ChineseSimp / EUC-CN ChineseTrad / Big5 Croatian Cyrillic Devanagari Dingbats Farsi Greek Gujarati Gurmukhi Hebrew Icelandic Japanese / ShiftJIS Korean / EUC-KR Roman Romanian Symbol Thai / TIS-620 Turkish Ukrainian DOS codepages 437 720 737 775 850 852 855 857 858 860 861 862 863 864 865 866 869 Kamenický Mazovia MIK Iran System Windows codepages 874 / TIS-620 932 / Shift JIS 936 / GBK 949 / EUC-KR 950 / Big5 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1361 54936 / GB18030 EBCDIC codepages 37/1140 273/1141 277/1142 278/1143 280/1144 284/1145 285/1146 297/1147 420/16804 424/12712 500/1148 838/1160 871/1149 875/9067 930/1390 933/1364 937/1371 935/1388 939/1399 1025/1154 1026/1155 1047/924 1112/1156 1122/1157 1123/1158 1130/1164 JEF KEIS Platform specific ATASCII CDC display code DEC-MCS DEC Radix-50 Fieldata GSM 03.38 HP roman8 PETSCII TI calculator character sets WISCII ZX Spectrum character set Unicode / ISO/IEC 10646 UTF-8 UTF-16/UCS-2 UTF-32/UCS-4 UTF-7 UTF-1 UTF-EBCDIC GB 18030 SCSU BOCU-1 Miscellaneous codepages APL Cork HZ IBM code page 1133 KOI8 TRON Related topics control character (C0 C1) CCSID Character encodings in HTML charset detection Han unification ISO 6429/IEC 6429/ANSI X3.64 mojibake

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (May 2010)

The Basics
The Basics at the Oxford Art Factory, 2010
Background information
Origin	Melbourne, Australia
Genres	Rock
Years active	2002–present
Labels	Independent, Albert Records
Associated acts	Gotye, Down Hills Home, Dog With Wheels, Blood Red Bird
Website	The Basics Official Website
Members
Wally De Backer Kris Schroeder Tim Heath
Past members
Michael Hubbard
Notable instruments
Lead guitar, drums, bass guitar.

The Basics ( /ˈbæzɪtʃ/ BAZZ-ich) are a three-piece band from Melbourne, Australia, formed by Wally De Backer and Kris Schroeder in 2002. Their style has been described as anything from 'indie-pop' to 'rock'n'roll' to 'pop-rock', though their records show they span a wide range of genres, including reggae, ska, country, and electro-pop. They are "recognised as one of Australia's hardest-working bands".^[1]

With close to 1000 shows in their ten-year career, their live performances are well-known for their sense of humour and energy.^[2]

Formation[link]

The Basics were formed after Kris met Wally at a party in Melbourne.^[3] The event was to see off the young aspiring producer, who was about to depart for Los Angeles, and together with a number of musician friends, the two jammed on some blues-rock standards. Later that night, they bonded over a mutual love of The Beatles, 70s and 80s cartoon theme songs and old Sierra adventure games.

Initially, they played around Melbourne as an acoustic guitar/drums combo, starting at The Opposition in Frankston and the House of Fools in Footscray, where in late 2002 they met Michael Hubbard and later invited him to join them on electric guitar.^[4] Though lacking any real experience with the instrument, Kris willingly purchased his first bass guitar, and the trio was born. During this time, the group start performing songs with more complicated three-part harmony.

During late 2002 and early 2003, The Basics recorded and released an album called Get Back through MGM Distribution. They began what was to become regular tours of the East and West coasts of Australia.

2004-2005: Current lineup[link]

Tim Heath joined the group in June 2004, after Michael decided to pursue his solo career, which has included being one half of Down Hills Home.^[4] Tim was reportedly the only person to reply to an advertisement in Melbourne's Beat Magazine looking for a new guitarist. Tim apparently answered the advertisement - which said the applicant "must have a love of 50s and 60s rock'n'roll" - thinking that he would be meeting "a couple of old guys to play with on the weekends over some beers". They soon recorded For Girls Like You.

The Basics in 2005 continued to tour and play small festivals, and after releasing For Girls Like You through MGM Distribution, they departed for a national tour of Australia, which lasted for two months and took them to every Australian state and territory. Stuart Padbury, a young Melbourne sound engineer, joined them on much of this tour. On returning, the band began demonstrating songs for a new album.

2006-2009: Touring and soundtracks[link]

In 2006, The Basics began recording what was to become known as Stand Out/Fit In. Taking several months, it was not completed until the end of the year, despite intentions to have it released in June. Instead, they held a successful 'album preview', where each of the tracks was demonstrated in 'rough form' accompanied by a music video for each (produced by Melbourne photographic artist James Bryans). The band also talked about the origins of the songs. This event brought a lot of attention to the band for the idea's originality. They pre-released a radio single 'Just Hold On' from the album. The band were invited to play the hugely popular Homebake Festival in Sydney, where they received a great response, after being introduced onto the stage by a short stocky Asian guy with big calves ("one of the highlights" wrote The Daily Telegraph).

In 2007, the band departed on a tri-state residency which saw them play Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane every week for the month of April - a bold move which brought further attention to the band for its original idea.^[5] Riding on the wave of this tour, Schroeder, De Backer and Heath departed on their first overseas tour which saw them performing 26 shows around Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom.^[6] They also toured twice more up the East Coast, one of which was with popular Japanese band The Bawdies. Their song 'Rattle My Chain' was used in a series of commercials for Volvo Australia. The song 'Hey There!' featured in the British film The Bank Job - starring Jason Statham - and was used as the backing for a February 2007 short film directed by Tim Longhurst called The Rip. Their song 'Better' was featured in a surfing documentary about the invention of the shortboard in 1967.

In 2008, the band appeared on Australia's Channel 9 for Australia Day celebrations, performing two of their songs - 'Just Hold On' and 'Hey There!' - to an estimated audience of 2 million. Securing an Australian Government grant, they embarked on a two-month tour of Australia, specifically targeting "culturally underprivileged groups" in rural and regional schoolchildren and Indigenous communities. The programme had them holding masterclasses and performing alongside Indigenous groups in the remote Northern Territory and Queensland.^[7][8] Their initiative also had them raising money for the charity Lifeline^{[disambiguation needed ]}, their contribution to which was recognised with a plaque at the end of the tour. Season two of Californication starring David Duchovny featured their cover of the classic 'Have Love, Will Travel', most famously covered by 'The Sonics'.

In 2009, The Basics for the first time enjoyed the support of Australian radio network Triple J, which had reportedly snubbed the band's previous material.^[9] The singles 'With This Ship' and 'Like A Brother' were added to the station's playlist, and momentum carried The Basics overseas for a second tour of the United Kingdom and Norway, and also a series of shows in Dublin, Ireland. They were joined by the longtime front-of-house engineer Stuart Padbury, who had been mixing them since 2005. The band was often seen in the Grafton Street Mall in Dublin, busking to promote their concerts there. Their second show in Oslo, Norway, saw the band perform with Hot Tub, one of the members of the Norwegian boy band "Boyzvoice", in his first performance for several years. Season Eight of Scrubs featured the song 'Lookin' Over My Shoulder'.

Despite all this promise, the band's album Keep Your Friends Close - produced and part-recorded by Peter Cobbin at London's Abbey Road Studios - though enjoying many favourable reviews,^{[10][11][12][13]} failed to impress Richard Kingsmill, music director of Triple J. This effectively ended the band's apparent upward spiral and the resulting album launch tour was reportedly "trying".

2010: Hiatus and live album[link]

In 2010, following the band's fourth stint at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and the recording of a yet-unreleased live album, an indefinite hiatus was announced on the band's websites. This was in part due to the impending release of a new album produced by Wally for his Gotye project, and also to reported tensions within the band following the previous year's disappointments.

However, this hiatus was soon broken with a two-month residency at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne, which saw an apparent return to form.^[14] The band's EP "Wait For You" enjoys airplay on Triple J.^[15] The Basics also played a one-off show at Sydney's Oxford Art Factory.^[16]

On 20 August 2010, The Basics released their fourth LP /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/, available free and exclusively from their website for digital download^[17]. The band had reportedly moved to expand their listenership through this free giveaway, though 300 "Deluxe" CD/vinyl versions have been printed. /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ was recorded at the Northcote Social Club on 6 February, "in front of a live studio audience", and like the previous record, was mixed by Peter Cobbin at Abbey Road Studios. Technically a self-titled album, the phonetics spell out the accurate pronunciation of the band’s name. Kris Schroeder: "For years we’ve worked at bringing our live energy into the studio and thus far it’s been a bit hit-and-miss. Our trick this time was to pull a switcheroo and bring the studio to us instead; the result is the best and closest to us we’ve sounded yet."

Melbourne thespian and Dog With Wheels bassist David Bramble - friends with Heath from university days - has occasionally joined the band on tour, playing keys, often while sporting a large moustache. Other guests have included Jake Mason (saxophone), also of Cookin' on 3 Burners and The Bamboos^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Gideon Brazil (saxophone, flute), Simon Imrei (guitar and vocals) and Monty MacKenzie (saxophone).

Covers have often made an appearance from various sources: to date, some of the bands covered have been Cream, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, New Kids on the Block, Richard Berry, Sonny Curtis and The Crickets, JJ Cale, Harry Nilsson, Bill Scott, Ryan Adams and The Coasters (via The Beatles for their cover of Three Cool Cats).

Members[link]

Current

• Wally De Backer - drums, vocals (2002-present)
• Kris Schroeder - bass, vocals (2002-present)
• Tim Heath - guitar, vocals (2004-present)

Former

• Michael Hubbard - guitar, vocals (2002-2004)

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Get Back (15 January 2004)
• Stand Out/Fit In (5 May 2007)
• Keep Your Friends Close (25 September 2009)
• /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ (20 August 2010)

EP[link]

• For Girls Like You (11 July 2005)
• Lookin' Over My Shoulder (10 February 2007)
• Like A Brother (5 June 2009)
• Wait For You (21 May 2010)

Singles[link]

• Call It Rhythm & Blues (20 August 2004)
• Just Hold On
• With This Ship (22 February 2009)

Upcoming projects[link]

The band is taking a three year hiatus, with an announced return to the stage together in early 2014. Wally De Backer launched Making Mirrors under his Gotye act in August 2011, Tim Heath will be touring and recording with Blood Red Bird, and Kris Schroeder recorded a solo EP titled, Patience in the Face of Control, before leaving Australia to work with the Red Cross in Kenya for a two year sabbatical.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Myspace Website