Q35147: Capturing Paintbrush and FRIEZE Screens with QuickBASIC BSAVE
Article: Q35147
Product(s): See article
Version(s): 4.00 4.00b 4.50
Operating System(s): MS-DOS
Keyword(s): ENDUSER | B_BasicCom | mspl13_basic
Last Modified: 22-OCT-1990
With the Microsoft Mouse Paintbrush package you can create graphic
images that can be displayed on the screen with the FRIEZE
terminate-and-stay resident program. This article explains how to save
a copy of a Paintbrush graphic image in a form that can be used in
Microsoft BASIC.
You can invoke FRIEZE with hardware interrupt 5 from a Microsoft BASIC
program. With FRIEZE versions 7.25 and earlier, you can load a
Paintbrush image into video memory. The BSAVE statement in BASIC lets
you write a video memory image into a disk file, which can be used by
the BASIC BLOAD command. BLOAD lets you load images from a
BSAVE-format disk file back into video memory.
This information only applies to FRIEZE versions 7.25 and earlier.
This article does not apply to FRIEZE versions 8.05 or later, which do
not have a load option.
This information applies to QuickBASIC versions 4.00, 4.00b, and 4.50
for MS-DOS, to Microsoft BASIC Compiler versions 6.00 and 6.00b for
MS-DOS, and to Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System (PDS)
version 7.00 for MS-DOS.
An easier technique to create BLOAD format graphics files (from file
formats used by a variety of graphics programs) is to use the
PICEM.EXE freeware program. PICEM.EXE is described in a separate
article, which can be found by querying for the following words:
PICEM and freeware
The following steps demonstrate this process:
1. Load the FRIEZE program into memory. (FRIEZE is a TSR, a
terminate-and-stay-resident program, provided with the Microsoft
Mouse PaintBrush program.)
2. Run BASIC Program 1 (below), which invokes hardware interrupt
number 5. This interrupt activates FRIEZE, which appears as a
horizontal menu in the upper-left corner of the screen. Execution
of BASIC Program 1 is now suspended by the interrupt.
3. Using the Load option in the FRIEZE menu, load the desired
PaintBrush image.
4. Immediately after the image loads, the BASIC Program 1
automatically resumes running and executes the BSAVE statement. The
BSAVE statement saves the current screen to a disk file. Program 1
then stops.
5. You may run Program 2 at any later time to display the image that
is stored in the IMAGE.PIC disk file.
Code Examples
-------------
Program 1
---------
REM The QB.BI definition file is found on the QuickBASIC release disk:
REM For BASIC Compiler 7.00 and QBX.EXE you must include 'QBX.BI'
REM $INCLUDE: 'qb.bi'
DIM regs AS RegType
SCREEN 3 ' Use SCREEN 3 for Hercules display adapter.
CALL INTERRUPT(&H5, regs, regs) ' Invokes hardware interrupt 5.
DEF SEG = &HB000 ' Monochrome video memory starts at address &HB000
' If you have a CGA display, change the previous SCREEN and DEF SEG
' statements to the following:
' SCREEN 1
' DEF SEG = &HB800 ' Starting Video memory address for CGA is &HB800
BSAVE "image.pic", 0, 32767
DEF SEG ' Returns segment pointer to default data segment.
Program 2
---------
SCREEN 3 ' Use SCREEN 3 for Hercules display adapter.
DEF SEG = &HB000
' If you have a CGA, change the previous two statements to the
' following:
' SCREEN 1
' DEF SEG = &HB800
BLOAD "image.pic", 0
DEF SEG
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