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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
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 <M5Kdna9J29x7W6DfRVn-3g@comcast.com>
Subject: Re: Bare metal text I/O in Ada
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:40:52 -0600
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Date: 2005-03-21T15:40:52-06:00
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<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message news:M5Kdna9J29x7W6DfRVn-3g@comcast.com...
> >keyboard input and text output to EGA / VGA on a bare metal (no
> >operating system) AMD (Intel clone) platform.
>   No PC-style BIOS ROM either?

If you have access to the BIOS ROM, it's pretty easy. But the BIOS doesn't
function in protected mode, and most compilers these days are 32-bit
protected.

One possibility would be write some code to call the BIOS, switching modes
as needed. That's how DOS-Extenders worked, and they're not that
complicated. Debugging the code might be fun, though. It certainly would be
better to access to the BIOS than to write new drivers for the keyboard and
video screen (which would essentially be a copy of the BIOS).

I can help you with the BIOS calls needed (our text windowing package did
this for all of its I/O), but we always assumed the existence of a DOS
Extender.

                           Randy Brukardt