In theory, they should have written to MS-DOS API, and then if BIOS video is slo... | Hacker News

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skissane on Dec 18, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: CP/NC – a CP/M-compatible operating system

In theory, they should have written to MS-DOS API, and then if BIOS video is slow, Microsoft (or OEMs) could have changed the MS-DOS console device driver to use direct hardware access. The problem was, everyone just went straight to the hardware so there was little impetus on anyone to write a faster console device driver for MS-DOS.

abecedarius on Dec 18, 2019 [–]

Iirc the bios interface was inherently slow: output was a character at a time, one bios call each. It’s been a long time, though.

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