[ On 2011-11-10 at 23:35:48, Wilfred van Velzen wrote to Scott Little ]

 WV> I think it does both. It certainly does direct screen writes (the B800
 WV> address is in the code). But there are also lots of geninterupt()
 WV> calls.

What interrupts is it generating?  int21h is DOS (probably for stdio),
int10h is video BIOS (probably to move/hide the cursor).

 SL>> both of which should be portable to a Win32 console without too
 SL>> much trouble
 WV> Maybe, if I knew how (do you mean using the conio.h family of
 WV> functions?) and it wouldn't be too much work I might be tempted. But I

Not directly.  conio.h looks to use DOS/BIOS calls, so it's
line/stream-oriented rather than a screen buffer.

The main reasons for using $B800 were speed and the fact that writing
anything to the lower-right cell using DOS automatically scrolled the
screen up, so if it's not doing anything else some simple wrapper functions
to set the cursor position and avoid the lower-right cell would suffice.

Win32 (and OS/2, AFAIK) has a buffer-oriented console, so code using $B800
is directly portable, but since *nix terminals are stream-oriented there's
no equivalent.

Win32: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682073(v=vs.85).aspx
OS/2: is dead ;)


--- He does the work of 3 men.... Larry, Moe & Curly.