There is one major problem with the VESA standard. It was designed several years ago while people were still using 286 machines, so it is a real mode API with a 16 bit interface. You can still use it from a 32 bit protected mode system like djgpp, but this means that every time you call a VESA function the cpu has to switch into real mode in order to run the 16 bit driver code, and then it has to switch back into protected mode before it can return to your program. These mode switches are slow, and can be a real performance problem because you will often need to switch banks many hundred times while drawing a complex image. The VBE 2.0 API is a more recent extension to the original standard, and adds some features designed to improve the performance of protected mode programs.

Not every machine will have a VBE 2.0 driver installed. This can be detected by checking that the high byte of the vesa_info.VESAVersion field contains a value greater than or equal to two: if it does not, you have an old VESA 1.x driver that will not support any of the functions described in this document.

VBE 2.0 provides a new bank switching mechanism that can be used in a protected mode environment without the expensive switch to real mode. This is implemented as a small stub of relocatable 32 bit code provided by the VESA driver, which can be copied into your address space and then called directly to perform the bank switch, hardware scrolling, and palette setting functions. It is very easy to add support for this method into an existing body of VESA 1.x code, and the speed improvement can be dramatic.

The 32 bit code stubs are obtained by calling VESA function 0x4F0A, for example:

   typedef struct VESA_PM_INFO
   {
      unsigned short setWindow            __attribute__ ((packed));
      unsigned short setDisplayStart      __attribute__ ((packed));
      unsigned short setPalette           __attribute__ ((packed));
      unsigned short IOPrivInfo           __attribute__ ((packed));
   } VESA_PM_INFO;


   VESA_PM_INFO *vesa_pm_info;

   void *pm_bank_switcher;


   int get_vesa_pm_functions()
   {
      __dpmi_regs r;

      /* check that the driver is at least VBE version 2.0 */
      if (vesa_info.VESAVersion < 0x200)
	 return -1;

      /* call the VESA function */
      r.x.ax = 0x4F0A;
      r.x.bx = 0;
      __dpmi_int(0x10, &r);
      if (r.h.ah)
	 return -1;

      /* allocate space for the code stubs */
      vesa_pm_info = malloc(r.x.cx);

      /* copy the code into our address space */
      dosmemget(r.x.es*16+r.x.di, r.x.cx, vesa_pm_info);

      /* store a pointer to the bank switch routine */
      pm_bank_switcher = (void *)((char *)vesa_pm_info +
				  vesa_pm_info->setWindow);

      return 0;
   }

This code will give you a pointer to the protected mode bank switching function, but you cannot call this directly from C because it uses a special register based argument passing convention. A little bit of inline asm is needed to make sure the parameters go into the correct registers, eg:

   void set_vesa_bank_pm(int bank_number)
   {
      asm (
	 " call *%0 "
      :                             /* no outputs */

      : "r" (pm_bank_switcher),     /* function pointer in any register */
	"b" (0),                    /* set %ebx to zero */
	"d" (bank_number)           /* bank number in %edx */

      : "%eax",                     /* clobber list (we have no way of */
	"%ebx",                     /* knowing which registers the VESA */
	"%ecx",                     /* code is going to change, so we */
	"%edx",                     /* have to assume the worst and list */
	"%esi",                     /* them all here) */
	"%edi"
      );
   }

This routine is an exact drop-in replacement for the set_vesa_bank() function described in the previous chapter, but will run several hundred times faster!

VBE 2.0 also provides the ability to use a linear framebuffer mode in which the entire video memory can accessed as a single block at some location other than the standard 0xA0000, which gets rid of the need for bank switching altogether. This is both the fastest and the easiest way to program SVGA graphics, but unfortunately you can't count on it being supported by all hardware. Even if the card has a VBE 2.0 driver, many older boards don't support linear framebuffers at all, and a few of the more recent ones can only use linear addressing in certain resolutions.

Setting a linear framebuffer mode is extremely simple. After calling the find_vesa_mode() function, check that bit 7 of mode_info.ModeAttributes is set, to make sure that linear addressing is possible in this mode. Assuming that it is supported, when you call function 0x4F02 to select the mode you should put (mode_number | 0x4000) into the BX register, instead of just mode_number, and you will have a linear framebuffer!

The video memory is located at the physical address specified by the mode_info.PhysBasePtr field, but you must map this area into your address space before you can access it. This can be done with the code:

   __dpmi_meminfo mapping;
   int selector;

   /* map into linear memory */
   mapping.address = mode_info.PhysBasePtr;
   mapping.size = vesa_info.TotalMemory << 16;
   if (__dpmi_physical_address_mapping(&mapping) != 0)
      return -1;

   /* allocate an LDT descriptor to access the linear region */
   selector = __dpmi_allocate_ldt_descriptors(1);
   if (selector < 0) {
      __dpmi_free_physical_address_mapping(&mapping);
      return -1;
   }

   /* set the descriptor location and size */
   __dpmi_set_segment_base_address(selector, mapping.address);
   __dpmi_set_segment_limit(selector, mapping.size-1);

You can now write to any part of the screen using the selector that we just created, and without any need for bank switching, eg:

   void linear_putpixel(int x, int y, int color)
   {
      _farpokeb(selector, y*640+x, color);
   }

Finally, at the end of your program you should free the video memory mapping with the code:

   __dpmi_free_physical_address_mapping(&mapping);
   __dpmi_free_ldt_descriptor(selector);

It is also possible to use the "Fat DS" trick from <sys/nearptr.h> to access the framebuffer directly with a normal C pointer. This is a very appealing technique because it allows you to treat the entire SVGA screen exactly like a normal C array, but you should be aware that it won't work under some DPMI hosts (notably Windows NT and Linux DOSEMU), plus if you write all your code in this way it will be difficult to later add support for banked SVGA modes in case you ever need to make your program run on hardware without a linear framebuffer. But if you are happy to restrict yourself to systems that are capable of linear addressing and support the Fat DS method, you can set this up with the code:

   #include <sys/nearptr.h>

   __dpmi_meminfo mapping;

   if (!__djgpp_nearptr_enable())
      return -1;

   /* map into linear memory */
   mapping.address = mode_info.PhysBasePtr;
   mapping.size = vesa_info.TotalMemory << 16;
   if (__dpmi_physical_address_mapping(&mapping) != 0)
      return -1;

Drawing a pixel is now just a matter of getting a pointer to the video memory by adding the framebuffer address onto the __djgpp_conventional_base value, and then using array syntax to access individual pixels, eg:

   void nearptr_linear_putpixel(int x, int y, int color)
   {
      char *video = (char *)(mapping.address + __djgpp_conventional_base);
      video[y*640+x] = color;
   }

Before you exit from a program that uses the nearptr system, you should call the functions:

   __dpmi_free_physical_address_mapping(&mapping);
   __djgpp_nearptr_disable();

References

VBE.ZIP -

Example source for accessing a linear framebuffer with both near and far pointers, by Charles Sandmann.

SciTech Software -

If you don't already have a VBE 2.0 driver, the Display Doctor package provides reliable VESA implementations for a huge range of different cards.

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