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What is a BGI Driver? |
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History |
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About the drivers |
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Copyright |
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Download |
InitGraph ('SVGA', Mode, GetEnv ('BGIPATH'));
What is a BGI Driver? History About the drivers Copyright Download
BGI stands for "Borland Graphics Interface". It is (was) the common graphic interface for the DOS based Borland compilers. Borlands own drivers did not support fancier graphics cards or other graphics devices.
I've developed BGI drivers for graphics cards, printers, plotters, and even a driver that creates PCX images. I've sold these drivers from 1991 to '94. After that time, the drivers were available for free. I always planned to make also the sourcecode available, but lazyness on my part prevented that until end of 1997. At that time, I rebundled the archives and included the source.
All drivers are available in a real mode and a protected mode (16 bit) version. The drivers come with complete docs, lots of sample code and the source code. However, all documentation files including the comments in the source are in german!. If you know how to use BGI drivers, this is probably not a problem. Just have a look into the supplied sample programs.
SVGA.BGI - BGI driver for SVGA cards
The SVGA driver supports many cards that were popular at that time. It has
also a VESA mode and should support any VESA 1.2 compatible card in this mode.
Only 256 color modes were supported. Compared to other drivers available,
this one is really fast. The driver will detect S3 cards and
will use hardware acceleration for these cards. There's also a special 386
version available that is faster for some operations. See the docs for more
information.
PRINTER.BGI - BGI driver for printers
The driver supports HP LaserJet/DeskJet printers and EPSON compatible
printers. It is possible to drive non EPSON compatible dot matrix printers
using a printer definition file describing the needed control sequences. The
driver has a virtual memory manager and is able to use EMS, XMS, DPMI memory
or a disk file when building the page image.
PLOTTER.BGI - BGI driver for plotters
The driver is able to drive a HP-GL plotter up to a paper size of A3. Most
BGI commands are translated in apropriate plotter commands, some others
(FillStyle for example) are emulated by line patterns.
PCX.BGI - BGI driver that creates PCX images
The PCX driver does always create files. Using some non-standard interface, it
is possible to use almost any resolution for the PCX image. The driver is a
descendant of the printer driver with the print output routine replaced by a
PCX format converter, so it uses the same memory management as the printer
driver and is able to created really large images. The archive for this driver
doesn't contain sources because they share most files with the the printer BGI
driver. So if you need the sources, please download the sources for the
printer driver.
This software is provided 'as-is', without any expressed or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:
- The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
- Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
- This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
Please note also, that the phone numbers and addresses in the docs are no longer valid. In addition, I do not support the drivers any longer. So, please don't send me mails about non working stuff or improvement requests. If you do really need additional features you may hire me. See my companies web page for more information.
All drivers are available at the MU Software ftp server.
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