Linear VGA RAM possible?

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#358

From: jskubick
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 02:38

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Is it possible to forget segmentation altogether and treat RAM on
the VGA card as 1 contiguous chunk of memory on a 486 (assuming that
I'm planning to write a program using 486 assembly language in protected
mode with linear ram addressing)? Am I wrong in assuming that a 486 can
map the RAM on a VGA card (well, an S3 card to be exact) to a 1 meg
contiguous area addressable by the 486 as normal RAM? This is not merely
an academic question. I just bought a 486 PC 2 months ago, but I used to
be a fairly adept Amiga ML programmer (well, I still am, though I'm a PC
owner now...) I'm planning to write an R-Type - type game this summer 
that will put a 33mhz 486 and S3 card to good use (I'm not planning to
sell the game commercially, so I don't have to care whether it runs on
anything less). All of the books I've read on VGA programming mention
accessing VGA ram in 64k segments, though they all seem to be at least 
2-3 years old, and I'm hoping that they simply don't mention linear
VGA ram access because 3 years ago the 486 hadn't yet come into general
use. Thanks for your help!

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Message-ID: <1992Apr15.223840.13334@umiami.ir.miami.edu>

Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!ames!ncar!news.miami.edu!umiami!jskubick

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!ames!ncar!news.miami.edu!umiami!jskubick
From: jskubick@umiami.ir.miami.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Linear VGA RAM possible?
Message-ID: <1992Apr15.223840.13334@umiami.ir.miami.edu>
Date: 16 Apr 92 02:38:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: umiami.1992Apr15.223840.13334
Organization: Univ of Miami IR
Lines: 16