VGA "Black Book" Tests

To aid the development of PCjs VGA support, selected VGA “Black Book” Tests from Michael Abrash’s Graphics Programming Black Book have been added to the project, which you can run in the VGA “Black Book” Test Machine below.

Abrash’s book is available on many sites, but I’m partial to the Markdown version that James Gregory has made available on GitHub, because (a) it’s a brilliant way to render and share the text, and (b) it apparently has Abrash’s blessing, so I feel more comfortable forking it, using it, and resharing it.

The main reasons for my fork are to make the book’s images display properly on GitHub, and to extract and add assorted source code listings as I need them. Since that project’s /src folder contains just the book’s text, I’ve added a /code folder for the source code listings. The name of each source code file matches the name displayed in the text (eg, L23-1.ASM is Listing 23.1 from Chapter 23).

I assume something similar was done on the CD-ROM that accompanied the Black Book, but since I don’t have the original book or its CD-ROM, I’ve extracted the source code directly from the Markdown text and then “tabified” it with 8-column tab stops.

Development of PCjs VGA support began June 2015, and not everything here runs properly inside PCjs yet. For example:

L29-4 doesn’t actually blank the screen (then again, other emulators don’t bother blanking it, either)
L30-1 and L30-2 require split-screen support

VGA “Black Book” Test Machine

The Compaq DeskPro 386 machine below loads the VGA “Black Book” Binaries diskette from the PCjs Disk Library into Drive B. Click the Run button to start the machine.

[PCjs Machine "deskpro386"]

Waiting for machine "deskpro386" to load....

The following disk image contains the source code for selected VGA “Black Book” Tests. It was built using DiskDump and the –normalize option, which automatically converts linefeeds in known text files (including ASM files) into DOS-compatible CR/LF sequences.

Directory of VGA Black Book Sources

 Volume in drive A is VGASRC
 Directory of A:\

L23-1    ASM     14690   4-03-20  11:52a
L24-1    ASM      7243   4-03-20  11:52a
L25-1    ASM      4872   4-03-20  11:52a
L25-2    ASM      1606   4-03-20  11:52a
L25-3    ASM      2347   4-03-20  11:52a
L25-4    ASM      2437   4-03-20  11:52a
L26-1    ASM      6949   4-03-20  11:52a
L26-2    ASM      7170   4-03-20  11:52a
L27-1    ASM      5766   4-03-20  11:52a
L27-2    ASM      6055   4-03-20  11:52a
L27-3    ASM      3928   4-03-20  11:52a
L28-1    ASM      5809   4-03-20  11:52a
L28-2    ASM      4436   4-03-20  11:52a
L28-3    ASM      2285   4-03-20  11:52a
L29-1    ASM      3262   4-03-20  11:52a
L29-2    ASM      2919   4-03-20  11:52a
L29-3    ASM      5940   4-03-20  11:52a
L29-4    ASM      1614   4-03-20  11:52a
L30-1    ASM     10178   4-03-20  11:52a
L30-2    ASM     12499   4-03-20  11:52a
L31-1    ASM      8073   4-03-20  11:52a
L31-2    ASM      6703   4-03-20  11:52a
L32-1    ASM      5493   4-03-20  11:52a
L32-2    C        6000   4-03-20  11:52a
L33-1    ASM      4788   4-03-20  11:52a
L34-1    ASM      9662   4-03-20  11:52a
L35-1    C        6037   4-03-20  11:52a
L35-2    C        2371   4-03-20  11:52a
L35-3    ASM      9258   4-03-20  11:52a
L42-1    C        5353   4-03-20  11:52a
L42-2    C        5294   4-03-20  11:52a
L42-3    C         715   4-03-20  11:52a
L42-4    C        2288   4-03-20  11:52a
L42-5    C        1263   4-03-20  11:52a
L42-6    ASM     10098   4-03-20  11:52a
L47-1    ASM      2793   4-03-20  11:52a
L47-2    ASM      1564   4-03-20  11:52a
L47-3    ASM      1453   4-03-20  11:52a
L47-4    ASM      3192   4-03-20  11:52a
L47-5    ASM      4329   4-03-20  11:52a
L47-6    ASM      3980   4-03-20  11:52a
L47-7    C         680   4-03-20  11:52a
L48-1    C        1886   4-03-20  11:52a
L48-2    ASM      6563   4-03-20  11:52a
L48-3    ASM      6612   4-03-20  11:52a
L48-4    ASM      4515   4-03-20  11:52a
MAKEFILE          1011   4-03-20  11:52a
REGS     H         662   4-03-20  11:52a
       48 file(s)     234641 bytes
                       64512 bytes free

The following disk image contains executables built from selected VGA “Black Book” Tests.

Directory of VGA Black Book Binaries

 Volume in drive A is VGABIN
 Directory of A:\

L23-1    EXE      2176   7-05-15   1:12p
L24-1    EXE      1482   6-27-15  11:56a
L25-1    EXE      1253   6-26-15   2:06p
L25-2    EXE      1097   6-26-15   2:06p
L25-3    EXE      1131   6-27-15  11:56a
L25-4    EXE      1131   7-07-15  12:45p
L26-1    EXE      1322   6-27-15  11:56a
L26-2    EXE      1334   6-27-15  11:56a
L27-1    EXE      1327   6-27-15   6:26p
L27-2    EXE      1541   6-27-15   6:26p
L27-3    EXE     13604   6-27-15   6:26p
L28-1    EXE      2279   6-29-15  10:29a
L28-2    EXE      1173   6-29-15  10:29a
L28-3    EXE      1109   6-29-15  10:29a
L29-1    EXE      1400   7-05-15   7:59a
L29-2    EXE      1290   7-05-15   7:59a
L29-3    EXE      1687   7-05-15   7:59a
L29-4    EXE      1242   7-05-15   7:59a
L30-1    EXE      1391   7-05-15   7:59a
L30-2    EXE      1351   7-05-15   7:59a
L31-1    EXE      1385   7-06-15   2:11p
L31-2    EXE      1245   7-05-15   7:59a
L33-1    EXE      1430   7-05-15  11:26a
L34-1    EXE       664   7-05-15   1:12p
L35-1    EXE      9185   7-07-15  12:49p
L35-3    EXE      8801   7-06-15   3:32p
L47-4    EXE      3643   7-06-15   3:33p
L47-5    EXE      3707   7-07-15  12:42p
L47-6    EXE      3683   7-07-15  12:42p
L48-2    EXE      3923   7-07-15   1:34p
       30 file(s)      77986 bytes
                       73728 bytes free