Colored Text in SCREEN 1 in QB Versions 2.x and 3.00, Not 4.00 (26768)

SUMMARY

For QuickBasic Versions 2.00, 2.01, and 3.00, it was reported that a particular POKE statement forces colored text from the PRINT statement when using SCREEN 1. This method does NOT work in QuickBasic Versions 4.00, 4.00b, 4.50 [or in Microsoft Basic Compiler Versions 6.00, 6.00b, or in Microsoft Basic Professional Development System (PDS) Version 7.00] due to significant internal changes in how video graphics are created.

The COLOR statement, not the POKE statement, should be used to change the color of text.

You need to use SCREEN 0, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, or 13 if you want more than one color of text displayed at once on the screen. On these screens, you can invoke the desired COLOR statement followed by a PRINT statement to get a desired text color. (QuickBasic Version 4.00 or later is required to support SCREEN 11, 12, or 13.) Note: The COLOR statement cannot be invoked in monochrome SCREEN 2 or 11.

Note: In SCREEN 1, the COLOR statement cannot change the foreground (text) color -- it can only change the background color and the palette. As a result, for a given background color, you may only have one color of text on the screen at once in SCREEN 1 in QuickBasic 4.00, 4.00b, 4.50, in Basic Compiler 6.00, 6.00b, and in Basic PDS 7.00. To work around this limitation by using a BIOS interrupt, search for a separate article with the following words:

   'Numbering scheme for colors:
   '    0 - black                 2 - light magenta
   '    1 - light blue            3 - white
   SCREEN 1
   DEF SEG
   POKE &H53, 2                ' numbers 0-3 give colored text
   PRINT "HELLO in light magenta"
   POKE &H53, 1
   PRINT "HELLO in simultaneous light blue"