Text color switch on AT&T VGA monitor ?

[Tom Neff]

In article <712 at icus.islp.ny.us> lenny at icus.islp.ny.us (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
>How do I get the "text color" switch (white, green, amber) to change
>the color on my AT&T VGA monitor?  

Someone shoot me down if I'm wrong, but I believe that switch only works
when you are feeding EGA video into your monitor -- analog VGA is unaffected
by the text color switch.  (Regardless, you do have to have "text on"
before the color switch has any effect.)

				   I have a VDC 600 SuperVGA graphics
>controller in my AT&T 6386E WGS computer... how do I change the color
>of the text to amber (without using tput for the foreground color change)...

There is a way to do what you want in software: modify the TERMINFO source
for your AT386 terminal type to put the appropriate color numbers into
escape sequences when a program issues, say, an sgr0 request.  If you
type
	
	infocmp -I at386 > at386.info
	vi at386.info

you will see the escape sequences CURSES feeds to the underlying AT&T
EGA/VGA display driver (which is a superset of something like ANSI.SYS,
a software color ANSI emulator linked into the kernel).  Modify this
source so CURSES feeds different sequences to the display driver and
you can run in different colors.  I do this get to green or amber letters
depending on my mood.  I also changed it to run in 43 line mode all the
time.  Here is what I have:

AT386-43|at386-43|386AT-43|386at-43|at/386 tall console,
	am, bw, eo, xon, xt,
	colors#8, cols#80, lines#43, ncv#3, pairs#64,
	acsc=``a1fxgqh0jYk?lZm at nEooppqDrrsstCu4vAwBx3yyzz{{||}}~~,
	bel=^G, blink=\E[5m, bold=\E[1m, clear=\E[2J\E[H,
	cr=\r, cub=\E[%p1%dD, cub1=\E[D, cud=\E[%p1%dB,
	cud1=\E[B, cuf=\E[%p1%dC, cuf1=\E[C,
	cup=\E[%i%p1%02d;%p2%02dH, cuu=\E[%p1%dA, cuu1=\E[A,
	dch=\E[%p1%dP, dch1=\E[P, dl=\E[%p1%dM, dl1=\E[1M,
	ed=\E[J, el=\E[K, flash=^G, home=\E[H, ht=\t,
	ich=\E[%p1%d@, ich1=\E[1@, il=\E[%p1%dL, il1=\E[1L,
	ind=\E[S, indn=\E[%P1%dS, invis=\E[9m,
	iprog=/usr/local/bin/ega43, is2=\E[0;10;32m, kbs=\b,
	kcbt=^], kclr=\E[2J, kcub1=\E[D, kcud1=\E[B,
	kcuf1=\E[C, kcuu1=\E[A, kdch1=\E[P, kend=\E[Y,
	kf1=\EOP, kf10=\EOY, kf11=\EOZ, kf12=\EOA, kf2=\EOQ,
	kf3=\EOR, kf4=\EOS, kf5=\EOT, kf6=\EOU, kf7=\EOV,
	kf8=\EOW, kf9=\EOX, khome=\E[H, kich1=\E[@, knp=\E[U,
	kpp=\E[V, krmir=\E0, op=\E[0;32m, rev=\E[7m, rin=\E[S,
	rmacs=\E[10m, rmso=\E[0;10;32m, rmul=\E[0;32m,
	setb=\E[%?%p1%{0}%=%t40m%e%p1%{1}%=%t44m%e%p1%{2}%=%t42m%e%p1%{3}%=%t46m%e%p1%{4}%=%t41m%e%p1%{5}%=%t45m%e%p1%{6}%=%t43m%e%p1%{7}%=%t47m%;,
	setf=\E[%?%p1%{0}%=%t30m%e%p1%{1}%=%t34m%e%p1%{2}%=%t32m%e%p1%{3}%=%t36m%e%p1%{4}%=%t31m%e%p1%{5}%=%t35m%e%p1%{6}%=%t33m%e%p1%{6}%=%t33m%e%p1%{7}%=%t37m%;,
	sgr=\E[10m\E[0%?%p1%p3%|%t;7%;%?%p2%t;4%;%?%p4%t;5%;%?%p6%t;1%;%?%p9%t;12%;%?%p7%t;9%;m,
	sgr0=\E[0;10;32m, smacs=\E[12m, smso=\E[7m,
	smul=\E[4m,

Notice the 'iprog=' line - that's a tiny program I wrote that does an ioctl
to turn on ENH_C80x43 mode.  I posted it to comp.sources.misc a few months
back.
-- 
Tom Neff				UUCP:     ...!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
    "Truisms aren't everything."	Internet: tneff at bfmny0.UU.NET