Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pilchuck!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Recommend a C compiler? (frivolous comment)
Message-ID: <2106@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 21 Aug 89 21:34:16 GMT
References: <660054@hpclwjm.HP.COM> <17200@ut-emx.UUCP> <1989Aug17.162646.21826@utzoo.uucp> <1SV1br#8yFGct=eric@snark.uu.net>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 14

In article <1SV1br#8yFGct=eric@snark.uu.net> eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>Much as I hate to defend IBM, and loath as I am to contradict you, I submit
>that including 'VGA' as a piece of junk is untrue and unfair.

VGA has one inexplicable bug. That's the inability of it to be in text and
graphics mode *simultaneously*. I've used a number of Japanese MSDOS machines,
and all of them had that ability. It requires little overhead in terms
of circuitry. The big advantage of it is you can use a debugger in text
mode and have your app running in graphics mode, on the same screen! You
don't need the dual monitor kludge.

Another benefit is that since the text and graphics modes are independent,
and use separate video ram, TSRs can pop up in text mode without trashing
the graphics mode.