Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

  ◄Details►      ◄Colors►      ◄Modes►      ◄Adapters►
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Attributes and Colors
 
For various screen modes and display hardware configurations, different
attribute and color settings exist. (See the ◄PALETTE statement details►
for a discussion of attribute and color number.) The majority of these
attribute and color configurations are summarized in the tables below.
 
Default Attributes and Colors for SCREEN Modes 1 and 9(a)
 
  Attributes  Color                      Monochrome
              Display                    Display
              Number(b)  Color           Number(c)  Color
 
  0            0         Black           0          Off
  1           11         Light cyan      2          High intensity
  2           13         Light magenta   2          High intensity
  3           15         High-intensity  0          Off
                         white
  ___________________________________________________________________
  (a)  EGA with video memory <= 64K.
  (b)  EGA color numbers. VGA and MCGA use color numbers that
       produce visually equivalent colors.
  (c)  Only for mode 0 monochrome.
 
 
Default Attributes and Colors for SCREEN Modes 2 and 11
 
  Attributes    Color                      Monochrome
                Display                    Display
                Number(a)  Color           Number(b)   Color
 
  0              0         Black           0           Off
  1             15         High-intensity  0           Off
                           white
  ___________________________________________________________________
  (a)  EGA color numbers. VGA and MCGA use color numbers that produce
       visually equivalent colors.
  (b)  Only for mode 0 monochrome.
 
 
Default Attributes and Colors for SCREEN Modes 0, 7, 8, 9(a), 12, and 13
 
  Attributes    Color                      Monochrome
                Display                    Display
                Number(b)  Color           Number(c)    Color
 
   0             0         Black           0            Off
   1             1         Blue                         Underlined(d)
   2             2         Green           1            On(d)
   3             3         Cyan            1            On(d)
   4             4         Red             1            On(d)
   5             5         Magenta         1            On(d)
   6             6         Brown           1            On(d)
   7             7         White           1            On(d)
   8             8         Gray            0            Off
   9             9         Light Blue                   High intensity
                                                        Underlined
  10            10         Light green     2            High intensity
  11            11         Light cyan      2            High intensity
  12            12         Light red       2            High intensity
  13            13         Light magenta   2            High intensity
  14            14         Yellow          2            High intensity
  15            15         High-intensity  0            Off
                           white
  ____________________________________________________________________
  (a)   For VGA. Also for EGA with video memory > 64K.
  (b)   EGA color numbers. VGA and MCGA use color numbers that produce
        visually equivalent colors.
  (c)   Only for mode 0 monochrome.
  (d)   Off when used for background.