From: Michal Mertl <xmerm05 AT manes DOT vse DOT cz>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: ALLEGRO - 256 shades of grey?? How?
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 11:29:12 +0200
Organization: Prague University of Economics
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On Fri, 17 Oct 1997, Alexander Bokovoy wrote:
>  Neither GRX nor Allegro is lying. 
>  Because standard VGA DAC specification is limited by 6 bits, 
>  VESA standard defines extended DAC register capacity. Peter use
>  800x600x256 mode which is not VGA mode but SVGA and exists only on
>  SuperVGA compliant videocards. Because old VGA cards are rare and we
>  all use SVGA-compatible cards this strange behavior of Allegro may be
>  explained by different implementation schemes in GRX and Allegro
>  palette manipulation routines (correct me if I wrong).
> 
I think you are not right that cards limited to 6bits wide DAC are rare. I
know most Cirruses, Tridents, S3s (except Virge I think) doesn't support
8bit. And DAC size is 6bits unless you tell it to be 8bit. 
I also think (but I'm not sure, so don't flame me for the second sentence)
that palettes in pictures are intended to be divided by 4 for 8bit display
(and will look ugly with 8bit DAC), only in true color you should use all
8bits.

Michal "MiMe" Mertl
  xmerm05 AT vse DOT cz