How I got Mario in That Editor - And how Norton Got 🐁

Text-only mode in CGA/VGA is only for text. How can That Editor still display Mario on the status bar, and how can Norton/Symantec tools display pixel-perfect mouse cursor in text mode? Watch this video and find out.
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[@acdarc]

"Twelvety-eight thousand" sums up Bisqwit's coding. If it's more efficient and quicker to say or do, then use it.

[@MikeDawson1]

I had to rewind because I thought I was going crazy

[@sunday87]

@@MikeDawson1 Yeah same :-D

[@kingreinhold9905]

1:29 😂

[@bengt-goranpersson5125]

Also - 9:43

[@Potts1966]

I had to rewind too, what a brilliant way to say 128,000.

[@Kawa-oneechan]

I too put considerable effort in revealing the Norton UI font, so it's heartening to see someone else manage it.

[@Bisqwit]

How did you do it? If I may ask.

[@aidenator00]

@@Bisqwit I'm assuming Norton hid their font UI to prevent copy cats? I'd like to hear how both of you accomplished it!

[@Bisqwit]

@@aidenator00 I think "preventing copy cats" was infinitesimally low on their list of priorities. It was just a matter of not providing a glitchy experience to users.

[@Kawa-oneechan]

@@Bisqwit SideKick 2.0 was the key, letting me switch to a character table *while* running Norton Desktop.

[@Bisqwit]

@Kawa Thank you for replying eventually! I did this in dosbox-debug, which lets me edit the graphics memory while the program is running.

[@evildojo666]

I've missed your content bro, you're a constant inspiration!

[@TDOLLA]

man, this really gets my inner child excited. I spent so much time in DOS and Qbasic and wanted so badly to just make my terminal and text editors look cool, I preferred DOS to Windows. This channel is basically what I dreamed about back then, just amazing

[@paolotestoni4250]

Same ❤️

[@vuufke4327]

this guy goes to uni?? it's uni that needs to go to him

[@ericzhill]

If I remember correctly, when you set a password on one of the Norton tools, it modifies its own exe towards the end with a substitution cipher and prompts for a password when started. I clearly remember decoding that cipher to figure out the substitution table. When you didn't have a password set, the actual bytes corresponded to NOPASSWORDISSET!. The maximum length of the password was exactly 15, so you couldn't get that last exclamation mark in there by just typing a password.

[@Baegus]

Now that was fascinating! I sorta knew how text mode works, but I had no idea about the cursor trickery or the fact that Scream Tracker runs in text mode.

[@djpeterson7479]

"note: 1 + 1 = 2" Thanks, Bisqwit. The math was starting to throw me ;) Also, great to see you posting videos again! I love your content!

[@patrickbateman455]

The legend is back.

[@xyzzy3000]

Very nice.

[@antonnym214]

Kiitos tästä erittäin mukavasta mielenosoituksesta ja onnea suomalaisille uudelle vuodelle.

[@Bisqwit]

Mielenosoitus = protest (as in, a rally full with picket signs, megaphones and speeches; literal meaning is evince one’s opinion). Doubtful you meant that.

[@robin_be]

Great piece of history and explanation, thank you. Wishing you success in your studies!

[@AT-zr9tv]

So happy you're back! We've missed you. I hope you are well man.

[@darealshinji]

Good old PERSON from the Super PERSON Brothers

[@SpaceyCortex]

Good seeing and hearing from you again.

[@x86VileR]

EGA/VGA can be set up to have two fonts active simultaneously- in this mode attribute bit 3 doubles as "character select". So Norton didn't really have to sacrifice characters from the main font. My own editor 'Fontraption' exploits this to let you edit every character without disrupting the UI (sources are available). And BTW, technically CGA and MDA both came first, since they were both available at the PC's launch. :) Happy new year!

[@Bisqwit]

Yes, you can do that at the cost of losing high-intensity colors - which I think they didn’t want to do, as they used bright white everywhere in their UI. They didn’t also want to use high-intensity everywhere, because then black text wouldn’t work. Thanks for commenting and happy new year!

[@paulwratt]

.. and remembering most people could not afford the CGA at its launch, that loss of an intensity bit (eventually) would have decimated the mono software market too ;)

[@BrendonGreenNZL]

Since they were using EGA/VGA text mode anyway, they could have used a carefully-selected 8-colour custom palette; or perhaps even deliberately avoided disabling high-intensity; or maybe even a combination of both. With sufficient effort, Norton's UI could have befuddled even the best geeks.

[@Bisqwit]

Maybe. But they didn’t have three centuries worth of geekdom to obsess over the implementation details; they had a product that had to be put to market.

[@PJBoyYT]

Lots of love Bisqwit, you're a great p e r s o n

[@kech-agmaio8620]

Bisqwits the only KZbin with over 100k subs that I know to read and either like or respond to almost every single comment! So awesome

[@LangleyNA]

"Person" sounds like censorship. Like that USSR leader that was painted out of a photograph. "Person." Er'body loves you, Bisqwit. Happy festivites, best wishes in 2022! Life is strange!

[@li86197]

it's actually quite impressive what some old software did accomplish with such limited resources. the efficiency was not an additional good, but a need. nice video as always, keep up the good work and good luck in your studies!

[@arttumarttinen5408]

There are always a pleasure to watch! It's intriguing to see how these old systems worked, even if such workarounds aren't needed anymore there's value in learning about them.

[@RFGSwiss]

as a child, i never realized, what hack was needed to accomplish this mousecursor. thanks for the explanation and all the best for your studies.

[@Bisqwit]

Most DOS programs that used a mouse had a block cursor that just swapped the foreground and background colors of whatever cell the mouse cursor would be on. It would move by cell granularity, not by pixel granularity.

[@RFGSwiss]

@@Bisqwit yeah, like norton commander et al. this one was simple and much more common.

[@MissNorington]

One of the most difficult, yet, most widespread VGA text mode hack is the splash screen for Windows 95. To be able to utilize multiple tricks at the same time, Interrupt timer (interrupt 8 for priority over even Windows 95 VxD drivers!), text mode scrolling emulation, faking bios services saying it is text mode when it is graphics mode, ModeX 320x400 upper page to not erase text mode memory, and the biggest hack: To not allow text to show up in VGA graphics mode (the info about that one is unknown to most). All those things, and still, it worked on every 90s PC!

[@Bisqwit]

I didn’t know it has that many hacks. I knew that it used the 320x400 tweaked Mode-X, but do you have a source on those other aspects? I am interested.

[@MissNorington]

@@Bisqwit The main reason the logo is using 320x400 is because 400 scan lines is the same as VGA text mode (720x400) and that allows many monitors to not blank the screen while switching back to text mode for code page setup (or when pressing Esc at any time). The setup of 320x400 is optimized for code size (using mode 13h|80h to not clear video memory to remember the text at B800h). The visible graphics page is set to A000h:8000h so that most of the text (obviously page 0 and a few more) are not overwritten, and that the logo can be restored again when win.com is executed (using a check sum to see if video memory was altered). During this setup, a few of the VGA/EGA registers are altered to not allow any drawing (I don't know, this stuff is not even in Michael Abrash's book), which is probably why the text is not being drawn/scrolled. All animation is done with palette animation during interrupt 8h and is even waiting for the bus (being very compatible with most compatible hardware). Seriously, I have too much info on everything related to this, and source code as well. If you are interested, I'll find a way to talk to you. Another thing is the blue screen in Windows 9X which is text mode, but under a few buggy conditions can have a fully working graphics mouse cursor! It is the only time I have seen the blinking text mode cursor and a graphics mouse cursor at the same time, overlapping (in VGA mode 3h, and it is and should be completely impossible).

[@SianaGearz]

I don't understand, but now I need to know!

[@Bisqwit]

For the record, I am still waiting for this more information.

[@MissNorington]

@@Bisqwit I was able to provide a lot of the information said in doslogo's 16 million color boot screen video, where we tried to get the same functionality but using VESA VBE instead of VGA (which required some crazy hacking of video memory). Hopefully you can search and find it easily. After all, VESA is very limited, and not the same on every hardware, compared to VGA's programmable registers, so text mode is really dealt with differently on different hardware outside the VGA

[@cyberkexx]

CGA too has that register bit that allows to choose between 16 background colors and blinking. Actually, it is set to be 16 colors by default, and it is MS-DOS that toggles it to blinking.

[@maxmuster7003]

mov ax,1003 ; vga? mov bx,1 ; = 1 blink if bit 7 attribut byte is set with 8 background colors or = 0 for intensity for 16 background colors int 10

[@blastpipezj6937]

I'm fascinated by all the clever tricks developers used back in ye olden days. They had such limited resources but could still do so much cool stuff.

[@fabioazevedo2048]

10:52 - "But naturally, I anticipated them anticipating my trick..." - Amazing! I would love to go to the same lectures as you at university only to see some more tricks anticipated! I wish you all the best learning (or teaching) experiences there!

[@Bisqwit]

It was a reference to the Curse of Fatal Death. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qqHCd6prpKmAl9E EDIT: updated link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eqCQqHeGpKhpfa8m10s

[@gonzalochervet8127]

I just read your comment when he was saying that while scrolling the comments down lol

[@unforgettable31]

When Bisqwit releasing a video is bigger hype than New Year’s eve. 😀

[@ahmetcanaksu6821]

I been always fan of terminal gui's. I loved the magic behind the cursor

[@aakoss]

The audio splicing is hilarious for the nefariousness company beginning with N

[@paolotestoni4250]

Oh my, thank you so much. I was wondering how the hell that was possibile (I mean the smooth mouse moving in text mode) since mid 90's. I had a suspect how the trick was done but I was not sure I was right until now. 12 years old me is very happy now. Thank you muchly!!! ❤️

[@chimebirdplayer3327]

You know things about PCs and DOS that I wish I had learned when I was a student at NYIT. I had no idea you could change the font that's used in text mode; it gives me the idea for some projects that I wish I had time to try myself. Oh, and thanks for introducing me to Kdenlive.

[@Bisqwit]

Thank you for writing. Yeah, there is so much I also wish that I knew back in the day. A chance to sort of redeem or relive my past is one of the reasons I am doing these videos, too.

[@herbiehusker1889]

I've wondered this for years

[@PASTRAMIKick]

It's not Mario guys, it's Grand Dad

[@sneakyshadoo22]

This is too old to be Grand Dad; this is Great Dad! AKA: Fortran kzbin.info/www/bejne/m3qldoJpidd0ec0

[@Mautar55]

Ooooh boy! How good is to see you again.

[@AcceleratingUniverse]

I hope you can pass "Introduction to Programming", bisqwit :)

[@Bisqwit]

The courses listed on that screen are only those that I have completed already.

[@AcceleratingUniverse]

@@Bisqwit ah, job well done

[@undefined_cat]

@@Bisqwit did you pass Mathematic for Physics? Why so low grade?

[@Bisqwit]

There are three Mathematics for Physicists courses. I completed the first one (got 2/5), abandoned the second and didn’t go for the third one. The course is essentially a crash course of a subset of university mathematics for those who major in physics. I major in mathematics. Basically that set of courses speedruns through mathematics topics at _way_ _way_ faster pace than I am prepared to put effort into, given that I am also doing a heap of other courses simultaneously. I am majoring in mathematics, so I will learn the stuff eventually, at my own pace.

[@samieb4712]

I am so happy there's another Bisqwit video

[@PlayAccordion]

Never knew they would need to do so much work to even show the mouse cursor over text. Awesome video! Thank You!

[@maxmuster7003]

CGA 0-3 character blocks VGA 0-7 character blocks We can use 2 character set at once. Example: We can set some user character with int 1100 to block 0 (default character set) and we can set some other character to block 1 to the same ASCII number. And then we can make the character of block 1 visible with int 10 ax=1103 bl=84 + with using color attribut bit 3 of the text screen with the character. If bit 3 is set the character of block 1 is visible and if bit 3 is not set block 0 is visible, but with the limit of 8 foreground colors.

[@juliushowlett7247]

The content of your videos is so amazing - I'm floored by your ingenuity in getting the mouse to work. Good luck with your studies.

[@Bisqwit]

Thanks, although you maybe misunderstood something because Norton tools are made by Symantec, not by me. The mouse cursor thing was specific to Norton tools.

[@juliushowlett4916]

@@Bisqwit Ah, I re-watched in non-2x-time and now I see it's a Norton thing. Yeash, I need to slow it down! Always a joy to go through the comments on these vids too... your channel attracts a sophisticated audience!

[@GLAKJack]

Glad to see you posting again!

[@xSIXAX]

I saw your comment on the heated blanked cat Video and instantly saw that you uploaded a Video. This is quite funny

[@GiveAcademy]

I can 100% relate to university and life eating up all the time! i will finally be finished in may of 2022.. I love your content and will be a member forever! :) I always look forward to new content and I am always rewatching older videos to see what else I can learn! :) Thank you!

[@Bisqwit]

Thank you for your heartfelt comment (and your support)! Now, I could adjust my schedule and avail more free time to myself, but reasons explained in other comments are why I am speedrunning through it.

[@GiveAcademy]

@@Bisqwit For sure... there are always potential sacrifices.. however.. priorities are important for the long game. :)

[@StuartTaylorEsquire]

First time KZbin's algorithm suggested something I actually want to watch and I was not disappointed. A great way to start 2022, thank you. Subscribed.

[@Bisqwit]

Thank you, and a have a nice new year!

[@neon-rust]

Awesome walkthrough! Even though I mostly knew how it was done since early home computers also use the same "trick" for graphics, e.g. C64 etc. Good lock with your studies!

[@Bisqwit]

Thank you for watching and commenting even if the information was nothing new to you!

[@neon-rust]

@@Bisqwit Always! One has to support one's favourite creators ;) (especially now when the video frequency has decreased)

[@CutieFakeKirby]

I like how he said "person" to avoid copyright claims xD, also this video is pretty informative, might use it sometime! And I think they made Norton systeminfo look like this to make it similar to windows 3.11

[@VytenisNarusis]

Great video! Never knew about the trick, it's really interesting to see the ingenuity of programmers at play like this. Best of luck with your studies!

[@aliets]

I cannot believe he actually did it. I've been waiting for this specific video for so long... THANK YOU BISQWIT

[@EximiusDux]

It's nice to see a new video by Bisqwit. The videos have such a unique style to them.

[@mousefad3673]

Happy New Year Bisquit. Your videos are brilliant!

[@starc0w]

Another thought occurred to me. Your CS teachers can consider themselves very lucky. What have you taught them all? 😁That is certainly a special and funny situation. Your teachers have certainly never had a student with such a high level of competence!🙃

[@Bisqwit]

Most of the courses have massive participant lists, so the teachers don’t particularly have opportunities to notice individual students. In some cases, the curriculum is also rather demotivating and pushes talents down to a common level. However, after only the first period, I got an offer to be a (paid) supervisor on the course _Introduction to Databases._ I accepted the offer effective the next period. I think, chances are the same could have also happened on the two programming courses, if I had taken them normally instead of substituting both with general exams.

[@LogicEu]

Mr Bisqwit, thank you for an amazingly inspiring video.

[@jockey101]

Thank you bisqwit

[@Greyarea23]

Twelvety: the number of precious things in the shop

[@hell7sing]

Missed your content! This is pretty cool information! I’m always impressed with the detail that you go through and your presentation of information is very clear! Awesome job!

[@victorgabr]

I have Missed you, bro! love your videos... It points to what I dreamed to achieve while learning "Turbo Pascal" on MSDOS, such nostalgia.

[@jussila3]

Ei minkään maan käryä näistä mutta videoita on mukava seurata! Kiitos!

[@Bisqwit]

Kiitos itsellesi.

[@dingolovethrob]

Absolutely superb work as ALWAYS sir. Have a fantastic 2022. Make sure you maintain a good mix of work and play at your university, - can't work all the time, your mind needs rest too. You're an inspiration.

[@JuusoAlasuutari]

Happy to hear you're studying! Of course that sort of thing takes priority over youtube. Toivottavasti kaikki sujuu hyvin, pidä kivaa siellä.

[@miqueles5783]

I wish you every success at the university

[@alexwolski3344]

A new video!!! I love tricks like these. Keep it up!

[@ScuffedBassist]

New Bisqwit video? Why tf wasn't I notified?! That bell button is getting slapped immediately.

[@bar10dr]

You are awesome. Hope you have a great 2022.

[@igeoorge3g]

what a pleasure listen to this video

[@Elias07070]

Good video as always Bisqwit!!!

[@FoxBlocksHere]

What an interesting video! I loved how professional the presentation was, too! It sucks that you have to censor Mario's name, though. If only Nintendo weren't so bad. Also, thanks so much for contributing something to the Kdenlive project (in this case, I'm referring to your CRT filter)! I use Kdenlive myself, and sometimes it can be tough to use due to being a small open-source project, years behind in development compared to the commercial editors out there. It helps to know there are still people out there helping it improve!

[@Bisqwit]

Thanks, but the CRT filter was not made as a part of the kdenlive project. I postprocessed the video offline, and added the modified video as a clip to kdenlive. (Though technically, I could also do it in the way you suggest, if I spent time researching how to do that. Since it works on single frames at a time, there’s no reason why it couldn’t do that.)

[@FoxBlocksHere]

@@Bisqwit Oh, sorry for misunderstanding.

[@DevDungeon]

Amazing information and well explained!

[@starc0w]

That was awesome! ☺Thx Bisqwit and a happy new year!💫

[@grproteus]

What an awesome video, thank you for taking the time to make it!

[@se7ense7ense7ense7ense7en]

really interesting the lengths you went to just to have -mario-*person* in your editor

[@Bisqwit]

In the words of GLaDOS, we do what we must, because we can.

[@ilmarinen79]

Great to see another video from you, always so unique and fascinating. Have a happy new year and good luck with the university speed run challenge!

[@kartik4792]

Mind-blowing!! Idea of animated fonts is really cool. Would try to implement them for my editor.

[@DenisSoiMi]

Nice to hear you again. Happy new year!

[@stevep9177]

12:52 I assume you are just doing the coursework and not attending all those classes? You probably can do those "intro" and "basics" courses in your sleep.

[@Bisqwit]

The courses marked with the pen&paper symbol 📝 I completed directly with a general exam without attending any classes.

[@HypnosisDr]

Wow! Just strolling through KZbin and found your Video.

[@njsynthesis]

I don't think I'll ever get used to "twelvety-eight".

[@tecsmith_info]

Happy new year @Bisqwit - it's great to see you posting again, and best of luck in your studies!

[@tonym5857]

Hello B. is good to see you here. Great video again thank you. Happy holydays and I can t imagine your schedule with amount of courses with exams, homework, investigation. I d like someday you share more in details your courses. Regards.

[@donCreat0r]

6:34 in fact you may have 512 symbols at the same time if you limit to 8 background colors and your graphics adapter will use that freed bit to choose between one of two loaded fonts. Supported by any VGA, AFAIK.

[@Bisqwit]

Indeed. However, Symantec wanted to have both black (not high-intensity) and bright blue (yes, high-intensity) as well as bright white on the screen at the same time, so this option was out of the window. It is also out of window for my editor which does syntax highlighting and likewise uses a number of colors, both bright and not-bright.

[@donCreat0r]

@@Bisqwit oh. you're right. it's 8 text (foreground) color limitation, not background. it was soooo long time ago I've played with the text mode in DOS :)

[@saccharineboi]

This is brilliant. Thank you!

[@rollingrock3480]

I just graduated with my Bachelor's at age 32! Better late than never!

[@install_gentoo]

Nice video, I know what I'm going to recreate tonight. :]

[@koviniskaciukas]

Very good stuff. Such a short video but I bet it took enormous amount of time to produce.

[@AlbiaSoft]

Thank you for this interesting video! We really appreciate your time and dedication to share your knowledge. Thank you Joel! 👍👍👍

[@Bleenderhead]

wait, what is it doing if you move the cursor over one of the cells in that is displaying the font table in config.sys, which happens to be one of the ones being used to animate the mouse cursor by superimposing it on the tile below it?

[@Bisqwit]

You get a similar effect as when pointing a video camera at its monitor. Except, because it’s binary bitmap and not analog, you don’t get swirly rainbows, but the principle is the same.

[@NightpireVideos]

I always learn something new when watching your videos, they are inspiring.

[@AetCount]

Every video you make is a gift to us. Please, take the time you need for your studies. We'll be here when you have free time to post something :)

[@smellyvomit]

My favorite character of all time, m-PERSON-o.

[@Gunbudder]

this reminds me of going through a ton of legacy code and enforcing compliance with windows-1252 on user input for filenames. 1252 would get called out specifically in requirements all the time, which always irritated me. maybe in 1000 years the standard will finally be UTF-8.

[@bur1t0]

Linux, all browsers, VS Code, and the new Microsoft Terminal (the one that's only in the ms store) all support UTF-8 as the default. In libraries I write, I just enforce UTF-8 as the only option, and use the OS conversion functions when I have to send/recv strings to the OS.

[@peymanx]

That was AWESOME ....

[@peymanx]

I mean "THAT" editor :)))

[@ramit7]

I have been wondering bout the mario for so long XD.. thanks ^_^

[@manemobiili]

Happy new year! Hyvää uutta vuotta!

[@therewasblood]

always excited to see your content!

[@wertyxq3468]

Just right for new year's eve.

[@thefastjojo]

missed you, your content is the best!

[@tienshushih4399]

Awesome content and explanation!

[@m4rt_]

awesome content, keep on making amazing videos, i believe in you

[@NeoAF10]

Yay! Bisqwit is back!!!

[@vegardertilbake1]

Good luck with your academic endeavors!

[@jh0nny_350z]

Art!

[@paulwratt]

I have to say that the intenet in general and the world if fact are better off when Bizqwit is around. Not putting 2021 down or anything, but it kinda sucked without you adding to it dude - nice to know the Uni stuff wont be too much longer

[@Acceptable76]

you're back!!! yay!