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How do I display more than 256 colors in DOS real mode?

I would like to know how to display more than 256 colors in DOS I already know about the color palette which can hold 256 colors and can be changed, but as soon as you change them the colors on the screen change. So how would I display more than 256 colors on the screen? It seems to me that this would be possible, since in my OS (windows) it looks as if it can display more than 256 colors. Any resources that can show me how to do this would be helpful, thanks.

ThatGuy2244
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34 posts since Jan 2011
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You can't display more than 256 different colors at the same time with VGA.

I found a site which says that you can display 262144 (2^18; 6 bits each for red, green and blue) colors with VGA (that means you will have to modify the palette to display other colors). Here's the link (it's in C, though, but you should be able to make sense out of it): http://www.theparticle.com/pgraph.html

Read in "The Palette..." section.

Hope this helps.

venomxxl
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72 posts since Jan 2009
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You can't? It seems like you can because displaying high quality movies and images themselves looks as if they use more than 256 colors at once, is there something else that can be used to display more colors on the screen? But if you can't then thanks for the link.

ThatGuy2244
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This question has already been solved

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