VOGONS


First post, by videogamer555

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I was reading here about all the different VGA registers http://www.osdever.net/FreeVGA/vga/vga.htm and there are a LOT of registers. How many of these are actually implement in DosBox though? I would like to try writing some DOS software in assembly language, that would create some some exotic graphics modes not directly accessible with INT 10h (directly setting horizontal and vertical resolution to arbitrary values for example), but they require directly setting registers of the VGA card with the OUT x86 instruction. So I would like to know just how much of the VGA specification has been implemented in DosBox.

Reply 1 of 1, by VileR

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How much? 96%. 😀

VGA register behavior is emulated well enough, otherwise not very many games (and especially demoscene productions) would be supported. Most pieces of software that were even slightly speed-optimized bypassed the video BIOS and wrote directly to the hardware.
You probably shouldn't worry, unless your tweaked video modes include freakish stuff like fake 21-bit color and 100Hz refresh rates (e.g. Tran's Ambience/Luminati). For specific register behavior, you can check the source or just try it and see.

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