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#### Smooth Panning

The first thing you’ll notice upon running the sample program is the remarkable smoothness with which the display pans from side-to-side and up-and-down. That the display can pan at all is made possible by two VGA features: 256K of display memory and the virtual screen capability. Even the most memory-hungry of the VGA modes, mode 12H (640×480), uses only 37.5K per plane, for a total of 150K out of the total 256K of VGA memory. The medium-resolution mode, mode 10H (640×350), requires only 28K per plane, for a total of 112K. Consequently, there is room in VGA memory to store more than two full screens of video data in mode 10H (which the sample program uses), and there is room in all modes to store a larger virtual screen than is actually displayed. In the sample program, memory is organized as two virtual screens, each with a resolution of 672×384, as shown in Figure 23.2. The area of the virtual screen actually displayed at any given time is selected by setting the display memory address at which to begin fetching video data; this is set by way of the start address registers (Start Address High, CRTC register 0CH, and Start Address Low, CRTC register 0DH). Together these registers make up a 16-bit display memory address at which the CRTC begins fetching data at the beginning of each video frame. Increasing the start address causes higher-memory areas of the virtual screen to be displayed. For example, the Start Address High register could be set to 80H and the Start Address Low register could be set to 00H in order to cause the display screen to reflect memory starting at offset 8000H in each plane, rather than at the default offset of 0.

Figure 23.2 Video memory organization for Listing 23.1.

The logical height of the virtual screen is defined by the amount of VGA memory available. As the VGA scans display memory for video data, it progresses from the start address toward higher memory one scan line at a time, until the frame is completed. Consequently, if the start address is increased, lines farther toward the bottom of the virtual screen are displayed; in effect, the virtual screen appears to scroll up on the physical screen.

The logical width of the virtual screen is defined by the Offset register (CRTC register 13H), which allows redefinition of the number of words of display memory considered to make up one scan line. Normally, 40 words of display memory constitute a scan line; after the CRTC scans these 40 words for 640 pixels worth of data, it advances 40 words from the start of that scan line to find the start of the next scan line in memory. This means that displayed scan lines are contiguous in memory. However, the Offset register can be set so that scan lines are logically wider (or narrower, for that matter) than their displayed width. The sample program sets the Offset register to 2AH, making the logical width of the virtual screen 42 words, or 42 * 2 * 8 = 672 pixels, as contrasted with the actual width of the mode 10h screen, 40 words or 640 pixels. The logical height of the virtual screen in the sample program is 384; this is accomplished simply by reserving 84 * 384 contiguous bytes of VGA memory for the virtual screen, where 84 is the virtual screen width in bytes and 384 is the virtual screen height in scan lines.

The start address is the key to panning around the virtual screen. The start address registers select the row of the virtual screen that maps to the top of the display; panning down a scan line requires only that the start address be increased by the logical scan line width in bytes, which is equal to the Offset register times two. The start address registers select the column that maps to the left edge of the display as well, allowing horizontal panning, although in this case only relatively coarse byte-sized adjustments—panning by eight pixels at a time—are supported.

Smooth horizontal panning is provided by the Horizontal Pel Panning register, AC register 13H, working in conjunction with the start address. Up to 7 pixels worth of single pixel panning of the displayed image to the left is performed by increasing the Horizontal Pel Panning register from 0 to 7. This exhausts the range of motion possible via the Horizontal Pel Panning register; the next pixel’s worth of smooth panning is accomplished by incrementing the start address by one and resetting the Horizontal Pel Panning register to 0. Smooth horizontal panning should be viewed as a series of fine adjustments in the 8-pixel range between coarse byte-sized adjustments.

A horizontal panning oddity: Alone among VGA modes, text mode (in most cases) has 9 dots per character clock. Smooth panning in this mode requires cycling the Horizontal Pel Panning register through the values 8, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. 8 is the “no panning” setting.

There is one annoying quirk about programming the AC. When the AC Index register is set, only the lower five bits are used as the internal index. The next most significant bit, bit 5, controls the source of the video data sent to the monitor by the VGA. When bit 5 is set to 1, the output of the palette RAM, derived from display memory, controls the displayed pixels; this is normal operation. When bit 5 is 0, video data does not come from the palette RAM, and the screen becomes a solid color. The only time bit 5 of the AC Index register should be 0 is during the setting of a palette RAM register, since the CPU is only able to write to palette RAM when bit 5 is 0. (Some VGAs do not enforce this, but you should always set bit 5 to 0 before writing to the palette RAM just to be safe.) Immediately after setting palette RAM, however, 20h (or any other value with bit 5 set to 1) should be written to the AC Index register to restore normal video, and at all other times bit 5 should be set to 1.

| By the way, palette RAM can be set via the BIOS video interrupt (interrupt 10H), function 10H. Whenever an VGA function can be performed reasonably well through a BIOS function, as it can in the case of setting palette RAM, it should be, both because there is no point in reinventing the wheel and because the BIOS may well mask incompatibilities between the IBM VGA and VGA clones.

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Graphics Programming Black Book © 2001 Michael Abrash