svgakit.doc

VESA 图形编程的汇编子程序库

                      The SuperVGA Test Library
                      -------------------------

The SuperVGA Test Library is a set of routines for working with SuperVGA
video cards that have a VESA VBE comliant Video BIOS. This library was
an offshoot from the development of the Universal VESA VBE, which is an
installable TSR to provide VESA VBE video BIOS extensions for most
SuperVGA cards. It is intended to show how to program the SuperVGA
cards through the VESA VBE and uses some of the more powerful features
that the latest standard include in your own software. It was not
designed with speed in mind, but more as an explanatory and exploratory
tool.

This library supports many of the extended features of today's SuperVGA
adapters, such as being able to separately set the read and write banks
and support for extended page flipping. This is all done via the
standard VESA VBE programming interface.

NOTE: All source code is formatted with 4 space tabs, including the
      assembly language source.

NOTE: This library has '386 specific code in it, so it will _not_ work
      with machines without a '286 or lower processor. Some of the code
      such as the screen clearing code etc uses fast 32 bit string
      instructions to run at full speed on new VESA VLB Local Bus
      video cards.

Using it in your own programs
-----------------------------

The SuperVGA test programs all call upon a single C library to access the
SuperVGA using the VESA VBE programming interface. You can use this
same library to provide SuperVGA support in your own applications, or
you can take the source code for the library as a starting point and
expanding on it from there.

As the library was not designed with speed in mind, some of the functions
such as line drawing can be sped up significantly by recoding them in
assembly language.

Microsoft C compatability
-------------------------

I have now included both a Borland linkable version of the library,
and a Microsoft C 6.0 linkable version of the library. Since all of the
assembler code is written in TASM's ideal mode (because I _hate_
MASM mode, and it is too much of a pain to swap over) the assembler
files will need to be assembled with TASM, not MASM. You should not need
to do this however, since you can use the pre-assembled object files
that come in the svga_msc.lib file.

Test programs
-------------

The library has five test programs, for 16 color, 256 color, 32k color,
64k color and 16 million color SuperVGA video modes. Simply run the programs
and follow the instructions. The code in these test program should give
you an idea of how to use the SuperVGA routines in your own programs.

Note that the test programs require a VESA VBE compliant SuperVGA in
order to run, so if your video card does not have the VESA VBE in the BIOS,
then you will need to install the Universal VESA VBE before running the
test programs.