I have a simple program in x86 assembly language. It should print a string directly to the video memory without OS.
[bits 16]
[org 0x7c00]
mov ax, 0x3
int 0x10
sdl
mov ax, 0xb800
mov es,ax
mov si, msg
xor di, di
repnz movsw
jmp $
msg db 'Hello'
times 510 - ($ - $$) db 0
dw 0xaa55
But it doesn't work. Can you help me?
There are some issues:
There is no such instruction as sdl
.
To copy data, you should use rep movsw
, not repnz movsw
.
You need to set cx
before rep movsw
.
You need to define the colors of each character too, in every other byte of video memory, either in the data to be copied with rep movsw
, or inside copy loop. The code below illustrates both options:
Edit: added code.
[bits 16]
[org 0x7c00]
mov ax,3
int 10h
push word 0xb800
pop es
push cs ; just in case, for bootloader code,
pop ds ; needed for movsb
xor di,di
mov si,msg
mov cx,msg_length_in_bytes
one_color_copy_to_vram_loop:
movsb
mov al,0x0f
stosb
loop one_color_copy_to_vram_loop
mov si,multicolor_msg
mov cx,multicolor_msg_length
rep movsw
jmp $
msg db 'Hello'
msg_length_in_bytes equ $-msg
multicolor_msg db ' ',0
db 'H',1
db 'e',2
db 'l',3
db 'l',4
db 'o',5
db ' ',0
db 'w',6
db 'i',7
db 't',8
db 'h',9
db ' ',0
db 'c',10
db 'o',11
db 'l',12
db 'o',13
db 'r',14
db '!',15
multicolor_msg_length equ ($-multicolor_msg)/2
With the repnz
prefix you must first set the cx
register to the character count, and as nrz points out you shouldn't use that one as it stops when zero is encountered.