I might have confused some of the terminology, I should have said grayscale VGA .....sorry..: )

by writing a tsr like the old dos days ?

If you have an ATI Radeon card, you could run in opengl mode and use the grayscale shader in your Catalyst driver options.

or if your monitor supports it adjust the color....

I'm using an Nvidia geoforce4 MX440 (i'm not sure how to run this one in greyscale...been looking for 3 days) and my monitor cannot go to B&W.....: )

I don't know about a TSR, but maybe a mod on the VGA driver for dosbox to add a grayscale option....

If you have any other suggestions I appreciate the help....

Back in the dos days, I used a little program called (surprisingly) int10.com (or .exe), it was able to change various settings of the video card, including the monochrome flag. I seem to have lost it, and google wasn't helpful either, but perhaps you have more ideas how to find it.

Taken from Ralph Brown's Interrupt list:

INT 10 - VIDEO - PERFORM GRAY-SCALE SUMMING (VGA/MCGA) AX = 101Bh BX = starting palette register CX = number of registers to […]
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INT 10 - VIDEO - PERFORM GRAY-SCALE SUMMING (VGA/MCGA)
AX = 101Bh
BX = starting palette register
CX = number of registers to convert
Return: nothing
Desc: convert the RGB values of one or more palette registers such that the resulting values are grays with the same intensities as the original colors

And, better still.

INT 10 - VIDEO - ALTERNATE FUNCTION SELECT (VGA, MCGA) - GRAY-SCALE SUMMING AH = 12h BL = 33h AL = new state 00h enable […]
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INT 10 - VIDEO - ALTERNATE FUNCTION SELECT (VGA, MCGA) - GRAY-SCALE SUMMING
AH = 12h
BL = 33h
AL = new state
00h enable gray scale summing
01h disable gray scale summing
Return: AL = 12h if function supported
Desc: specify whether or not colors should be converted to gray scale when palette or color registers are loaded

Here you go. I tested it under NTVDM and it works. Compiled with Windows DEBUG.

How do I use that gray program???

Simply unpack it and run it before any application. I haven't tested it under DOSBox, but it WORKS under WinXP NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine - The emulated dos boxes).

dosbox doesn't support it (yet)

Damn! Nice try, though. 😀

Works nicely using Win9x in a Dos window, thanks!!
Now If I can just get it to work in dosbox so the programs slow down enough to be more enjoyable...: )

Qbix: does that mean that dosbox will either be able to run gray.com or include this fonctionality in an upcoming version???

Thanks again guys for the help.....

What Qbix is probably meaning is that the VGA function I used in gray.com isn't implemented yet into DOSBox and, thus, running gray.com under DOSBox DOES JUST NOTHING.

If this functionality is something you want without having to run a 3rd party utilitiy then requires it in the Wish List thread....

Should work in the CVS. But please be aware that gray.com
does not have any effect on games that program the pallette
themselves.

Would it be possible to make a TSR that hooks the interrupt and grayscales the palette whenever it gets changed? I suppose that would slow things down and create lots of artifacts though, plus it'd probably be easier to just modify DOSBox at the source level to output in grayscale.

That's all fine but I will side with the original poster and go even further... I want settings for real greyscale monitor, amber, and green. The last one musthave at least one second of afterglow. VGA paperwhite (which was odd beast, not exactly greyscale) would be piece of cake after that. At this point, as they say on Slashdot, /me ducks...