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Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:17 am
by Craze Frog
I can't get the "bright" console colours (8-F) to work in vmware, when I use them as background colours. When I use them as foreground colours everything works fine.
This gives me bright green on green:
While this gives me green on green:
What's up?
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:26 am
by CodeCat
The last bit in a colour does not necessarily make the colour bright if it's used as a background. There are some VGA settings that control its actual use, but I think by default it makes the text blinking rather than the background bright.
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:33 am
by Craze Frog
Oh, but it doesn't blink either.
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 8:24 am
by Love4Boobies
What do you mean? It's doing exactly what you told it... And it is blinking... it's just blinking green on green...
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 8:41 am
by Craze Frog
When I say it's not blinking, I mean it's not blinking. So if I use $A0 I get black on dark green, and with $20 I get exactly the same. No blinking.
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 8:43 am
by Combuster
I think it has to do with the fact that emulating a VGA environment with blinking enabled is relatively slow since it requires you to draw things over and over. That and VMs/emulators tend to have slightly broken VGA suppport.
You can have a look at
AC register 0x10 - blinking can be enabled and disabled and it might just be off by default.
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 9:28 am
by Love4Boobies
No - even in emulators, it's on by default. Look at the colors. It's a blinking green foreground over a green background. That's why you can't see the blinking...
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 9:40 am
by Craze Frog
Love4Boobies wrote:No - even in emulators, it's on by default. Look at the colors. It's a blinking green foreground over a green background. That's why you can't see the blinking...
I just told you that even if I set the foreground to black and the background to bright green, I get a foreground of black and background of dark green without blinking. It's not green on green, it's black on green, and it's not blinking.
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 9:43 am
by Love4Boobies
Maybe it's just the emulator itself. For instance, I know that on Windows older than Vista (haven't tried on either Vista or 7) blinking doesn't work in the console, unless in fullscreen mode. QEMU's support for text mode stinks. Maybe it's Virtual PC to blame... Try writing some dummy code on a floppy disk and booting with it, to check if your blinking code works.
Re: Unable to get "bright" colours in vmware
Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 1:44 am
by Brendan
Hi,
CodeCat wrote:The last bit in a colour does not necessarily make the colour bright if it's used as a background. There are some VGA settings that control its actual use, but I think by default it makes the text blinking rather than the background bright.
Yes.
Try
"Int 0x10, AX=0x1003" and see if you can enable background intensity.
I wouldn't worry about blinking - if it does work it's ugly anyway.
Cheers,
Brendan