org 100h

main:

;set up the extra segment at the beginning of the program
;to point to the video memory segment in DOS text mode
mov ax, 0xB800
mov es, ax ; Or mov ds, ax


;80 columes times 25 rows is 2000 chars
;but since each character is two bytes
;4000 is the number of bytes to erase
;whatever character we write in this loop will fill the whole screen!

mov bx,0
screen_clear:
mov [es:bx],word 0x0403
add bx,2
cmp bx,4000
jnz screen_clear

mov ax,title  ;the string we intend to write to video RAM
mov ch,0x0F   ;the character attribute
mov dx,0x0218
call putstring_vram

mov ax,v_str  ;the string we intend to write to video RAM
mov ch,0x70   ;the character attribute
mov dx,0x0401
call putstring_vram

;set the starting attribute for characters and location
mov ch,0x01   ;the character attribute
mov dx,0x0501 ;x,y position of where text should start on screen

loop_vram:
cmp ch,0x10
jz loop_vram_end
mov ax,v_str  ;the string we intend to write to video RAM
call putstring_vram
add dx,0x100
inc ch
jmp loop_vram
loop_vram_end:

mov ax,4C00h
int 21h

title db 'Chastity Video RAM Demonstration!',0
v_str db 'Hello World! This string will be written to video RAM using Assembly language!',0

;Unlike previous functions I wrote that use DOS interrupts to write text to the screen
;this one makes use of several registers which are not meant to be preserved
;registers ax,cx,and dx must be set before calling this function

;ax = address of string to write
;bx = copied from ax and used to index the string
;cx = used for character attribute(ch) and value(cl)
;dx = column(x pos) and row(y pos) of where string should be printed

;For this routine, I chose to copy the dx register to memory locations for clarity
;Yes, it wastes some bytes but at least I can read it as I am familiar with x,y coordinates
;Most importantly, the dx register is never modified in this function
;This is important because the main program may need to modify it in a loop
;For writing data in consecutive rows (e.g. integer sequences)

x db 0
y db 0

putstring_vram:

mov bx,ax             ;copy ax to bx for use as index register

;get x and y positions from each byte of dx register
mov [x],dl
mov [y],dh

mov ax,80  ;set ax to 80 because there are 80 chars per row in text mode
mul byte [y]    ;multiply with the y value
mov byte [y],0  ;zero the y byte so we can add a 16 bit x value to ax
add ax, word [x]

shl ax,1 ;shift left once to account for two bytes per character

mov di,ax ;we will use di as our starting output location

putstring_vram_strlen_start:    ;this loop finds the length of the string as part of the putstring function

cmp [bx],byte 0                 ;compare this byte with 0
jz putstring_vram_strlen_end    ;if comparison was zero, jump to loop end because we have found the length/end of string
mov cl,[bx]                     ;mov this character to cl
mov [es:di],cx                  ;mov character and attribute set in ch(before calling this function) to extra_segment+di
add di,2                        ;each character contains two bytes (ASCII+Attribute). We must add two here.
inc bx                          ;increment bx to point to next character
jmp putstring_vram_strlen_start ;jump to the start of the loop and keep trying until we find a zero

putstring_vram_strlen_end:

ret