{"id":16012,"date":"2026-04-04T11:11:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T18:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16012"},"modified":"2026-02-19T11:23:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:23:02","slug":"vga-programming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16012","title":{"rendered":"VGA programming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Ah, the good old days of using <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/INT_10H\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/INT_10H\">INT 10h<\/a>, AH=0x00 graphics modes to write directly to video memory at 0xA0000\/0xB0000\/0xB8000 (depending on the mode).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JhkkyQOtqkg?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@nirlichtman\">Nir Lichtman<\/a> walks us through some of the things I was teaching myself in middle school &#8211; writing VGA graphics in assembly (often using the great book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/programmersguidetotheegavgaandsupervgacardsbyrichardf.ferraro19943rdedition\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/programmersguidetotheegavgaandsupervgacardsbyrichardf.ferraro19943rdedition\">Programmer&#8217;s Guide to the EGA and VGA Cards<\/a><\/em> by Ferraro, Richard F.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I even wrote my own (terrible) little paint program that would then save the buffer into a file and reload it. What good times!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah, the good old days of using INT 10h, AH=0x00 graphics modes to write directly to video memory at 0xA0000\/0xB0000\/0xB8000 (depending on the mode). Nir Lichtman walks us through some of the things I was teaching myself in middle school &#8211; writing VGA graphics in assembly (often using the great book Programmer&#8217;s Guide to the EGA and VGA Cards by Ferraro, Richard F. I even wrote my own (terrible) little paint program that would then save the buffer into a&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16012\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,7,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-technicalprogramming","category-retro-computing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-4ag","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16012"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16016,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16012\/revisions\/16016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}