VGA Driver

[Rico]

Hey,

I'm looking for some simple, easy to understand, VGA driver code, or even a tutorial which clearly describes how mode switching works, what the registers mean and how they affect the working of it all.
All I can find is very complex code (i.e. mobius source or newos source) or incomplete code (the simple hobby os'es).
FreeVGA is a really nice source, but doesn't talk about how mode switching works. Then I have some code from giese, but it just shows the vga register values and no description.

Can anybody point me to the right direction on where to find some more specific but easy to understand information?

[Dex4u]

A good example of using this way to switch vga modes in pmode, is in BOS,
http://bos.asmhackers.net/index.php
get "BOS version 0.04, with source" from the down load part.

[bubach]

and the docs i used is here: http://bos.asmhackers.net/docs/
in the folder vga_without_bios or whatever it's called..

[Rico]

Thanks, BOS looks very nice, I can learn a lot from it.
While we're on the topic, are there more interesting hobby os projects like BOS which are not to complex and still in active development. A couple of years back there was unununium, also a really nice project but now dead as hell, too bad

[Dex4u]

unununium was based on v2os, which is what Dex4u is based on, Dex4u also is simular to BOS.
You can down load it here: http://www.dex4u.com/
Old forum here: http://dex.7.forumer.com/
New forum here: http://jas2o.forthworks.com/dexforum/

Theres also menuet : http://www.menuetos.net/

PS: Here are same demos i made, that may help
http://www.dex4u.com/images/DemoVesa.zip
http://www.dex4u.com/images/cdpod.zip
The first demos switch to and form pmode to mode switch,
from text to vesa .

The other demos a pmode OS with basic 640x480 32bpp gui, vesa fonts, keyboard input, ATAPI driver, including cdplayer in less than 512 bytes.
Note: both demos, needs vesa2.

[Pype.Clicker]

sure. we collected some of them in the FAQ.

Whether a specific one will be more or less easy to understand will depend on how close your design and knowledge is from the author's