▲ | userbinator 2 days ago | |
What's notable about the text modes is that they are fully done in hardware, so scrolling and writing lots of text is extremely fast and consumes very little CPU. Unfortunately on the hardware side, the allegedly-VGA-compatible part of newer GPUs is increasingly not as compatible as it should be. The "extended text modes" of earlier VGA cards supporting 132 columns or more have become nearly nonexistent, although even the original IBM VGA hardware API should be able to handle a 100 x 75 text mode, if not more, albeit with a reduced refresh rate. I remember almost 2 decades ago trying to get an Intel 900-series integrated GPU to display more than 80 columns in text mode, to challenge the datasheet claim that it was "not supported" (the original IBM VGA had an unofficial 90x60 mode at 720x480), and was unsuccessful; the hardware seemed to be deliberately restricting the settings, and triggered a hard lockup whenever I tried. |