Extended ASCII codes

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I have several questions related about Extended ASCII codes:
1. Why are there two different key combinations to generate characters? For example, Alt-0162 and Alt-155 both generate the cents character,

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This page at cplusplus.com may answer some of your questions.

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Is there a manner in which one may invoke the ASCII codes on a laptop?? I have found they only work on a PS/2 keyboard, but have heard there is a way to implement them on notebooks.

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I presume you are referring to the requirement that the numeric keypad is used on a ‘standard’ keyboard?
I would expect this to be defined by the notebook manufacturer – did you ?

(On mine I need to use a combination of and then use the keys with additional numbers on them : MJKLUIO789)

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Yes, sir, I am referring to the numeric # pad. Uhhhh….what is ‘rtfm‘ ??

I did not find any reference to any sequence combinations to message the ASCII codes w/ manufacturer’s literature. I am presently on the horn w/ Fujitsu to see if someone there may know……..

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what is ‘rtfm’ ??

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It’s short for “Read the Freakin’ Manual” A favorite of the Linux camp!

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In addition to the link provided by Leif:

Alt+nnn results in extended ASCII characters, used in MS-DOS.
Alt+0nnn results in ANSI characters, used in Windows.

Standard keyboards have keys for most characters with ASCII (or ANSI) code below 128. There is no difference between ASCII and ANSI in this range.

In the days of MS-DOS, to type other characters, you had to resort to Alt+numeric codes to type characters with an (extended) ASCII code above 128. Some programs had workarounds, but they were different from program to program. As a legacy, Alt+nnn still produces these extendend ASCII characters.

Before word processing programs could do graphics, the only way to get lines, borders etc. into your document was to create them from characters. The extended ASCII characters in the range 176-223 (Hex B0 – DF) are meant for this.
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With the advent of graphics, there was less need for these characters, so it was decided to have more international characters in the ANSI set, such as capitals with diacritics.
Nowadays, in Unicode, the character set is much larger then 0…255.

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