Can't Use Border Parameter of COLOR Statement on EGA, VGA Card (25581)




This article was previously published under Q25581

SUMMARY

The border argument, which is the third parameter of the COLOR statement (in SCREEN 0 only), is NOT supported on EGA, VGA, or MCGA cards.

If you have an EGA card installed on your system, using the border parameter of the COLOR statement causes unpredictable results in Microsoft QuickBasic versions 2.0, 2.01, 3.0, 4.0, 4.0b, and 4.5.

The border argument of the COLOR statement is supported in SCREEN 0 only on CGA cards.

To work around this limitation and obtain a border on EGA and VGA cards, you can call a BIOS interrupt as explained in a separate article found with the following query:

border and EGA and interrupt and QuickBasic

MORE INFORMATION

The following correction should be made on page 222 of the "Microsoft QuickBasic Compiler" documentation for versions 2.0, 2.01, and 3.0:

The EGA card does not support the COLOR statement border parameter.

The documentation for the COLOR statement in QuickBasic versions 4.0, 4.0b, and 4.5 correctly states that the following cards do NOT support the border argument of the COLOR statement:

  • EGA (IBM enhanced graphics adapter)
  • VGA (IBM video graphics adapter)
  • MCGA (IBM multicolor graphics array adapter)
(The same applies to Basic compiler versions 6.0 and 6.0b for MS-DOS.) The border parameter of the COLOR statement is allowed only in SCREEN 0 on the CGA card, as shown:

  • COLOR foreground,background,border
The border color is used to draw the screen border.
Modification Type: Minor Last Reviewed: 1/8/2003
Keywords: KB25581
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