A BIOS Color Attribute is an
8 bit value where the low 4 bits represent the character color and the high 4 bits represent the
background color
Web colors are colors used in displaying web pages on the World Wide Web, and the methods for describing and specifying those colors. Colors may be specified as an RGB triplet or in hexadecimal format (a ''hex triplet'') or according to their c ...
. The name comes from the fact that these colors are used in
BIOS interrupts, specifically
INT 10h
INT 10h, INT 10H or INT 16 is shorthand for BIOS interrupt call 10hex, the 17th interrupt vector in an x86-based computer system. The BIOS typically sets up a real mode interrupt handler at this vector that provides video services. Such servic ...
, the video interrupt. When writing text to the screen, a BIOS color attribute is used to designate the color to write the text in. For example, to print a white character with a black background, a color attribute of 0F
hex
Hex or HEX may refer to:
Magic
* Hex, a curse or supposed real and potentially supernaturally realized malicious wish
* Hex sign, a barn decoration originating in Pennsylvania Dutch regions of the United States
* Hex work, a Pennsylvania Dutch ...
would be used. The high four bits are set to 0000
bin, representing the background color, black. The low 4 bits, 1111
bin, represent the foreground color, white. The highest bit of the color attribute, which is also the highest bit of the background color can take over two functions. It can either have no influence on the background color making text blink when set, effectively limiting the available background colors to only eight, or if intensive background colors are enabled the full 16 colors become available but blinking is no longer available. This behavior can be changed, i.e., using BIOS interrupt 10
hex, function 1003
hex. By default, when using the BIOS interrupt, the highest bit controls the brightness of colors, and not blinking, but this behavior may differ in other implementations of BIOS colors . This 16 colour palette is often used in console programs (e.g. cmd in Windows) and sometimes for chat in games (e.g. Minecraft
).
List of BIOS color attributes
By default, there are 16 colors for text and only 8 colors for background.
There is a way to get all the 16 colors for background, which requires turning off the "blinking attribute".
See also
*
ANSI escape code
ANSI escape sequences are a standard for in-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on video text terminals and terminal emulators. Certain sequences of bytes, most starting with an ASCII escape ch ...
*
Color Graphics Adapter
The Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), originally also called the ''Color/Graphics Adapter'' or ''IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter'', introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card for the IBM PC and established a de facto computer disp ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bios Color Attributes
BIOS
Color codes