Reading the RGB values of the console color palette

Question

Meat

In C or C++ is there any way to read the color palette RGB values directly? Especially interesting is the extended color space used by xterm (and others) to d

Answer 1

[Edit 1] sorry this not leads to solution but for others i added DAC palette IO access

look the old legacy EGA/VGA references ...

• you can access palette via I/O
• i think it was ports 0x03C8, 0x03C9 hex.
• of course in modern OS you have no access to it
• so try it in DOS-BOX or what ever and save the original palette values, they should be the same.

for direct access try this:

BYTE r,g,b,c=5; // R,G,B values are 6 bit only !!!
out 0x3C8,c;    // set color index to work with <0,255>
in  r,0x3C9;    // read color pallete for color c
in  g,0x3C9;    // not sure if it should be r,g,b 
in  b,0x3C9;    // or b,g,r ... i did not use it for too many years
out 0x3C8,c;    // set color index to work with <0,255>
out 0x3C9,r;    // write color pallete for color c
out 0x3C9,g;
out 0x3C9,b;

C/C++ do not have in,out operations so use this:

BYTE i,o;       // this must be local !!!
WORD port;      // this must be local !!!
asm {
    mov dx,port // in i,port
    in al,dx
    mov o,al

    mov dx,port // out port,o
    mov al,o
    out dx,al
    }