Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 00:04:35 -0700 From: "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> To: jmcoopr@webmail.bmi.net Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Win98+Linux+FreeBSD? Message-ID: <F2637ZZoudFwpsHgu1B0000a99c@hotmail.com>
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> > The commercial product "System Commander" allows a system to use an > > unreasonably large number of OS's by pulling some evil tricks. It works > > well, too. > > Unfortunately it REQUIRES a FAT or FAT32 drive to run off of. > > The guys that made it are good--They make ASM debugging tools and have > > created a custom font in BIOS for the program to make it look snazzy yet > > still be in text mode. (If anyone knows how to do this let me know) > > >Actually, it's very simple. All video adapters since EGA (those >claiming at least marginal VGA compatibility) have a software character >generator. All the BIOS does is supply the masters which are loaded up >into memory. There's an INT 10 interface to do this. The hard part is >actually mastering (re: designing the font) so it looks good. A long >time ago, in a place far, far away I wrote a CRT unit for Quick Pascal >that supported 80x50 mode on a Tandy 2000 (which has a different, but >functionally similar character generator to a VGA-compatible adapter). >I supplied my own custom 8x8 font and loaded it up to the character >generator. It's probably still rattling around in what's left of >CompuServe . . . :) Would you know of a place where I could get info on this? I was thinking of making a text-mode MPEG player that generates its own font once per frame to make the picture look less terrible than, say, an ASCII movie player if such a beast existed. (Am I a masochist or what?) The only ASM docs that I have are from Microsoft QuickC, back when Microsoft knew how to make useful documentation (read: not MSDN) I guess i'll need to write a completely different one for FreeBSD (being protected mode and all), but I am sure docs for doing so won't be anywhere near as much of a PITA to come across. Thanks! _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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