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From: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Andy Silverman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: TI PC Graphics
Message-ID: <7646@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 4 Feb 89 03:19:09 GMT
References: <630@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP>
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Reply-To: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Andy Silverman)
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Organization: University of Pennsylvania
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In article <630@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP> leckie@enelc.uucp () writes:
>The TI Professional Computer has a reasonably good graphics screen
>(700 x 300 x 3planes), however, it is incompatible with the "standard"
>graphics cards (IBM-EGA,-CGA,-VGA, Hercules etc.). As I understand it,
>programs that use graphics should communicate with the hardware through
>BIOS, via interrupts. This being the case, would it be possible to
>write an interrupt handler that would intercept commands to the
>"standard" cards and send the information (suitably modified) to the
>TI graphics adapter. Is anyone aware of the existence of such an
>"emulate" utility.

Well, it would be nice if all those graphics programs wrote to the screen
using the BIOS, except the sad truth is that BIOS graphics routines are
invariably SLLLOOOOWWWWWW, and to achieve blazing-speed-graphics all the
major programs determine what video adapter is in use and then write directly
to screen memory and/or manipulate the screen controller ports.  Since the
TI Professional has such non-standard hardware and non-standard memory
mapping, writing such an interrupt handler would be essentially impossible
since interrupts are rarely used in graphics programming.  Incidentally, TI
includes a program EMULATE.COM with the TIPC which allows emulation of the
text modes and solves a few other minor incompatibilities, but unfortunately
graphics is not among them.  Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings...




Andy Silverman
Internet: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu
CompuServe: 72261,531