Previous | Table of Contents | Next

## Chapter 28
Reading VGA Memory

### Read Modes 0 and 1, and the Color Don’t Care Register

Well, it’s taken five chapters, but we’ve finally covered the data write path and all four write modes of the VGA. Now it’s time to tackle the VGA’s two read modes. While the read modes aren’t as complex as the write modes, they’re nothing to sneeze at. In particular, read mode 1 (also known as color compare mode) is rather unusual and not at all intuitive.

You may well ask, isn’t anything about programming the VGA straightforward? Well...no. But then, clearing up the mysteries of VGA programming is what this part of the book is all about, so let’s get started.

### Read Mode 0

Read mode 0 is actually relatively uncomplicated, given that you understand the four-plane nature of the VGA. (If you don’t understand the four-plane nature of the VGA, I strongly urge you to read Chapters 23–27 before continuing with this chapter.) Read mode 0, the read mode counterpart of write mode 0, lets you read from one (and only one) plane of VGA memory at any one time.

Read mode 0 is selected by setting bit 3 of the Graphics Mode register (Graphics Controller register 5) to 0. When read mode 0 is active, the plane that supplies the data when the CPU reads VGA memory is the plane selected by bits 1 and 0 of the Read Map register (Graphics Controller register 4). When the Read Map register is set to 0, CPU reads come from plane 0 (the plane that normally contains blue pixel data). When the Read Map register is set to 1, CPU reads come from plane 1; when the Read Map register is 2, CPU reads come from plane 2; and when the Read Map register is 3, CPU reads come from plane 3.

That all seems simple enough; in read mode 0, the Read Map register acts as a selector among the four planes, determining which one of the planes will supply the value returned to the CPU. There is a slight complication, however, in that the value written to the Read Map register in order to read from a given plane is not the same as the value written to the Map Mask register (Sequence Controller register 2) in order to write to that plane.

Why is that? Well, in read mode 0, one and only one plane can be read at a time, so there are only four possible settings of the Read Map register: 0, 1, 2, or 3, to select reads from plane 0, 1, 2, or 3. In write mode 0, by contrast (in fact, in any write mode), any or all planes may be written to at once, since the byte written by the CPU can “fan out” to multiple planes. Consequently, there are not four but sixteen possible settings of the Map Mask register. The setting of the Map Mask register to write only to plane 0 is 1; to write only to plane 1 is 2; to write only to plane 2 is 4; and to write only to plane 3 is 8.

As you can see, the settings of the Read Map and Map Mask registers for accessing a given plane don’t match. The code in Listing 28.1 illustrates this. Listing 28.1 simply copies a sixteen-color image from system memory to VGA memory, one plane at a time, then animates by repeatedly copying the image back to system memory, again one plane at a time, clearing the old image, and copying the image to a new location in VGA memory. Note the differing settings of the Read Map and Map Mask registers.

Previous | Table of Contents | Next

Graphics Programming Black Book © 2001 Michael Abrash