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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mandrill!gatech!udel!rochester!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!roper
From: roper@june.cs.washington.edu (Michael Roper)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MS Windows 2.03 Software Development Kit
Keywords: How to get 16 colors in MS Windows
Message-ID: <5180@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 25 Jun 88 20:47:41 GMT
References: <9588.1988Jun23.17:43:16@mill.me.toronto.edu>
Followup-To: comp.graphics
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 36

couch@mill.me.toronto.edu writes:
>
> Pixels in a scanline are represented by one bit per colour.
> The problem with this arrangement is that only eight colours 
> can be specified.  I want to use the full 16 available with 
> the VGA standard.

Microsoft Windows has always used 3-plane bitmaps because
they were concerned about performance.  However, there is
at least one driver for EGA systems which supports 4-plane
bitmaps, providing 16 colors.  The driver is called "EGA-16"
and is available for about $40 from:

hDC Computer Corp.
15379 N.E. 90th St.
Redmond, WA  98052

phone (206) 885-5550
fax   (206) 881-9770

Unfortunately, it does not support VGA, although it works
fine with a VGA in EGA mode.  hDC is currently working on
VGA-64, which would provide 64 colors in some VGA modes.
I don't know when they expect to ship.

EGA-16 also comes with a Windows utility for setting your
16-color palette (from up to 256 available).

If it matters, I work for hDC, although not on EGA-16.


-- 
Mike Roper
                                      *  "I think I'm going to sneeze."
ARPA:  roper@june.cs.washington.edu   *  "A Klingon?"  "Sneeze?"
UUCP:  ihnp4!uw-beaver!uw-june!roper  *  "It's the only kind I know."