guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) (07/19/84)
Hello, world\n I am writing some C programs that need to do fancy things to the screen like scrolling subwindows. On UNIX I use curses for this, but for the PC I hope to use the BIOS interrupt 10 hex, "video output". It's quite easy to use from C, given a way to issue an interrupt and the documentation in the Technical Reference Manual. Now the following important question arises: Is there any hope that this works on a PC that claims to be "compatible" with the IBM-PC? In short, how "compatible" is a compatible machine? I assume it runs MS-DOS (I even require MS-DOS 2.0), but what's universal beyond that? Thanks in advance. If I receive interesting mail, I will summarize to the net (send uninteresting mail at your own risk). Help me, you will help to stamp out "BASIC". (How's that for a flaming subject.) -- Guido van Rossum, "Stamp Out BASIC" Committee, CWI, Amsterdam guido @ mcvax
geller@rlgvax.UUCP (David Geller) (07/26/84)
Televideo systems are VERY VERY VERY compatible with IBM PC's. In fact, I've been doing direct ROM BIOS scroll stuff for quite a while now. There have been reports that some of the routines are slower than they should be but I haven't seen this to be true. Their ROM BIOS has all of the same calls as IBM's ROM BIOS. On that note I should express my amazement at the flap made about compatible systems and their IBMish ROM BIOS routines. I mean it would be sooo easy to create a bunch of functions that 1) do the same things as IBM's, 2) take the exact same arguments, and 3) process at the same slow speed. What's the flack about? Is everyone that afraid of big blue that they can't even try??? (or they just might be smart enough to try a different, faster, more advanced approach to the things IBM'S ROM BIOS trys to do). I'd like to see some replys. Perhaps there are some legal issues I'm not aware of...I'm just a byte buster... rlgvax!gelller (david Geller)
dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (07/27/84)
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BIOS calls, especially the more widely-used ones, are available on PC
compatibles. Only the MSDOS machines like the TI pro are lacking.
Even the Tandy 2000 has the IBM BIOS calls; I have tested them
fairly thoroughly.
D Gary Grady
Duke University Computation Center, Durham, NC 27706
(919) 684-4146
USENET: {decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary