falemagn wrote:
While it's true that the BIOS extension is DOS-specific, the that's not the only way to access VESA functionalities.
How else would you do it except with the INT10? Sure you could call it directly, but I am not aware of any other API.
Moreover, once the screen is set up, you only have to access the framebuffer, and hat works regardless of whether you used the int interface or not.
Framebuffer access doesn't have anything to do with VESA, and is equally possible on, say, the Amiga, by locking the bitmap. However, when you have a color-mapped framebuffer then you might need to change the palette, and that is entirely un-portable, as is the rest of the VESA bios.
If you don't want to use SDL or similar, I propose going for a very slim abstraction layer, something that sets the display mode, sets a color palette entry, swaps front- and backbuffer. That's about it, unless you want to bring in user interaction (mouse/keyboard), in which case you'd better off using SDL again, since that isn't covered by VBE either :-D
