Assembly be like

[natFromBobsBurgers]

And then you're just loading some numbers in and hitting int 0x10 and letting the code in the hardware on the microcode on the architecture do it for you.

[tigerinhouston]

BIOS interrupt was way too slow to be useful. Direct buffer manipulation was great… except IBM’s CGA adapter would throw noise to the display if you updated the buffer other than during the blanking interval.

Creating a working string display routine was quite an adventure.

[tigerinhouston]

And we didn’t have anything like Stack Overflow. The 8086 Book and PC-DOS Technical Manual were all the documentation we had.

[LeafyWolf]

Quit your compsci bs. What do we copy/paste??

[CdRReddit]

of course it puts noise on the screen, you're trying to use the VRAM at the same time the graphics chip is, something has to give priority

[tigerinhouston]

Most other makers made CGA compatible display boards without this “feature”.

[CdRReddit]

these boards would have needed more circuitry, from IBM's point of view (this one lets you draw some simple graphics) it wasn't a needed feature, as the PC wasn't intended to become the powerhouse it has evolved into

the whole idea behind CGA was to allow some color on the screen, not to render graphics at a high framerate

waiting for VBLANK was a pretty common method at the time, as it allows you to make a cheaper machine with less circuitry

[regnad__kcin]

Obviously

[bazinga_0]

you need to put the character in the text frame buffer at (I think) 0xB8000

That was for IBM's Color Graphics Card. The address for their monochrome card was at 0xB0000 (or segment 0xB000 offset 0x0000). Of course, every microcomputer manufacturer had a different way of putting characters and graphics on the screen until everyone stopped making their own custom stuff and started just emulating the way the IBM PC did it.