[Open-graphics] books on graphics cards

[Peter Lund]

On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 22:32 +0200, Attila Kinali wrote:

> There is also a 3rd Ed of this book, which no library around
> here has and all used books start from 120USD. Either the
> world has gone mad or this book must be really something.

It really is a good book.  It is very detailed and comprehensive -- for
very old video cards.

I kinda suggested it tongue in cheek because it says nothing about
modern graphics cards.  Maybe the third edition talks a little bit about
a simple blitter in one or two cards that were super hitech back then
but that's about it.

On the other hand, it is a VERY good resource when you need to
understand the EGA and VGA card (for compatibility reasons).  A propos
that, a lot of the recent talk on this mailing list about text mode has
been slightly wrong ;)

> Anyone an idea where i can get that book cheaper ?
> Or any other recomendations ?

Look for Michael Abrash' old columns in Dr. Dobb's Journal.  I they are
collected into a book called Black Book of Graphics Programming.  You
can even download it!  Here's one place to get it:

http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/gpbb/
http://www.byte.com/abrash/
(yes, it is legit)

You could also try to find some of the old demo programming tutorials.
A South African guy called "Denthor" from the group "Asphyxia" did some
really good ones.  The original source code was in Turbo Pascal and
assembler (and the text was in code page 437).  Most (all?) has now been
translated into C.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=denthor%20asphyxia

-Peter