textarea that works for blocks of text and keeps length of each line

Have a cgi web screen with various input fields plus a textarea of 5 rows,
50 cols (columns).
The data field is 250 bytes.
Moving the 250a to the textarea should always have byte 51 starting 2nd
line, 101 starting 3rd line, etc.
CSS controls colors, fonts, etc, but nothing specific to textarea.
Chrome and IE don't match, and both jumble the appearance where the
textarea is always shorter than the 50 characters (in IE, and longer in
Chrome) and wraps to the next line.
<sample>
LINE1TENxxSECOND10xxTHIRD10xxx
FOURTH10xxFIFTH10xxxLINE2TENxx
SECONDTEN...

There is plenty of room for the whole 50 bytes to fit within page.

<td><textarea name="LONG" rows="5" cols="50"
wrap="soft"><data></textarea></td>
Many hours of google, w3schools,stackflow, etc and trying lots of stuff has
not improved the issue.
I have put textarea in it's own table, but no difference. I am assuming
it's width affected by other input type="text" on same panel.

Users really want the ability to paste in up to 250 bytes and then edit it
into 5 lines of 50 (it's a description that comes from other sources).
Later printed on form and the alignment in the textarea has to match
print..

This to me seems a standard data entry issue for web applications.
Is "textarea" just unsuitable for this kind of entry? It worked better in
older browsers.
Has anyone found a definition that works in the current web world (this app
is for customers and they have various browsers. App's been up for 16
years.
Jim