Displaying Graphics in BIOS

Question

Using MASM32 is it possible to display bitmaps stored in a binary file embedded with the executable to the console?

Can anyone show me how?

Addendum: I'm not talking about a full fledge GUI here. Just the ability to display character bitmaps on the screen. They would be stored as 8x8 binary images in a file that we link to the executable.

Heteromerous

Answer 1

You can do anything using MASM you could do with C or C++. However, using MASM doesn't give you any special abilities (you will still need to access the filesystem, for example), so if this is an attempt to get round the problems pointed out in answers to your previous question, you are out of luck.

Secor

I wanted to get a clean take on the same problem and didn't want to cloud the thread. I know NASM has the incbin directive that can link a binary file into the executable. But I'm not sure a MASM32 equivalent. – Heteromerous

Also I'm not talking about a full fledge GUI here. Just the ability to display character bitmaps on the screen. They would be stored as 8x8 binary images in a file that we link to the executable. – Heteromerous

@user274217 Using MASM in any form will not let you do what you asked about in the original question - you cannot access a file without a filesystem! – Secor

Curious you made the distinction of MASM and not assembler, So if I switched to NASM and used incbin is what I'm after possible? – Heteromerous

@user274217 MASM is just a tool. If you are asking, can you from the BIOS blit a sequence of bits stored in the BIOS (not in a file) to the screen, then yes you can. You will need some way of accessing the graphic card's hardware, not using the OS. – Secor

Keep it simple enough (VGA and lower) and you can do the graphics access (albeit slowly) through the standard BIOS calls. You may be lucky and have a graphics card that has VESA BIOS support, which would give you access to newer modes too... Hardware access is MUCH faster, but BIOS is simpler to program and more portable. – Urias