These are the characteristics of the adapters in text mode:

Adapter Usable memory Mono/Colour
 MDA 4K M
 Hercules 4K M
 CGA 16K C
 EGA 32K M or C
 VGA 32K M or C

MDA and Hercules are the same to the console driver, because the graphics mode of the Hercules is of no use to MINIX 3. EGA and VGA are also mostly seen as the same in text mode. An EGA adapter is either a monochrome or a colour device depending on the screen attached to it. A VGA adapter can run in either monochrome or colour (grayscale) mode depending on how the Boot Monitor has initialized it.

The driver uses the video origin to avoid copying the screen contents when scrolling up or down. Instead the origin is simply moved one line. This is named "hardware scrolling", as opposed to copying memory: "software scrolling".

The video origin is also used to implement several virtual consoles inside the video memory of the adapter. Each virtual console gets a segment of video memory. The driver chooses which console to display by moving the video origin. Note that an MDA or Hercules adapter can only support one console. CGA can support up to four 80x25 consoles, and EGA and VGA can have eight. It is best to configure one less console to leave some video memory free so that hardware scrolling has some space to work in.

Character codes are used as indices into a display font that is stored in the adapter. The default font is the IBM character set, which is an ASCII character set in the low 128 codes, and a number of mathematical, greek, silly graphics, and accented characters in the upper 128 codes. This font is fixed in the MDA, Hercules and CGA adapters, but can be replaced by a user selected font for the EGA and VGA adapters.

A number of control characters and escape sequences are implemented by the driver. The result is upward compatible with the ANSI standard terminal. The termcap (5) type is minix . Normal characters written to the console are displayed at the cursor position and the cursor is advanced one column to the right. If an entire line is filled then the cursor wraps to the first column of the next line when the next character must be displayed. The screen is scrolled up if needed to start a new line. Some characters have special effects when sent to the console. Some even have arguments in the form of comma separated decimal numbers. These numbers default to the lowest possible value when omitted. The top-left character is at position (1, 1). The following control characters and escape sequences are implemented by the console:

Sequence Name Function ^@ Null Ignored (padding character) ^G Bell Produce a short tone from the speaker ^H Backspace Move the cursor back one column, wrapping from the left edge up one line to the right edge ^I Horizontal Tab Move to the next tab stop, with each tab stop at columns 1, 9, 25, etc. Wrap to the next line if necessary. ^J Line Feed Move one line down, scrolling the screen up if necessary ^K Vertical Tab Same as LF ^L Form Feed Same as LF ^M Carriage Return Move to column 1 ^[ Escape Start of an escape sequence ^[M Reverse Index Move one line up, scrolling the screen down if necessary ^[[nA Cursor Up Move the cursor up n lines ^[[nB Cursor Down Move the cursor down n lines ^[[nC Cursor Forward Move the cursor right n columns ^[[nD Cursor Backward Move the cursor left n columns ^[[m;nH Cursor Position Move the cursor to line m, column n ^[[sJ Erase in Display Clear characters as follows:

s = 0: From cursor to end of screen

s = 1: From start of screen to cursor

s = 2: Entire screen ^[[sK Erase in Line Clear characters as follows:

s = 0: From cursor to end of line

s = 1: From start of line to cursor

s = 2: Entire line ^[[nL Insert Lines Insert n blank lines ^[[nM Delete Lines Delete n lines ^[[n@ Insert Characters Insert n blank characters ^[[nP Delete Characters Delete n characters ^[[nm Character Attribute Set character attribute as follows:

n = 0: Normal (default) attribute

n = 1: Bold (high intensity fg colour)

n = 4: Underline (mono) / Cyan (colour)

n = 5: Blinking

n = 7: Reverse Video

n = 30: Black foreground colour

n = 31: Red

n = 32: Green

n = 33: Brown

n = 34: Blue

n = 35: Magenta

n = 36: Cyan

n = 37: Light Gray

n = 39: Default fg colour (lt gray)

n = 40-47: Same for background colour

n = 49: Default bg colour (black)

Note: The "bold" versions of black, brown and lt gray become dark gray, yellow and white.

The console device implements the following ioctl to copy a font into font memory on EGA and VGA adapters:

Font memory consists of 256 character definitions of 32 lines per character and 8 pixels per line. The first line is the topmost line of the character. The leftmost pixel is lit if the most significant bit of a line is set, etc. How many lines are used depends on the current video mode. The 80x25 video mode used by MINIX 3 has an 8x16 character cell, 80x28 has 8x14 characters, and 132x43 or 132x50 has 8x8 characters. The boot variable console is used by both the Boot Monitor and the console driver to set the video mode, software scrolling on/off, and VGA screen blank timeout. See boot (8).

Name Key Function CTRL-ALT-DEL Send an abort signal to process 1 (init). Init then halts the system CTRL-ALT-KP-. Likewise for keypad period F1 Process table dump F2 Show memory map F3 Toggle software/hardware scrolling F5 Show network statistics CTRL-F7 Send a quit signal to all processes connected to the console CTRL-F8 Send an interrupt signal CTRL-F9 Send a kill signal. If CTRL-F8 or CTRL-F7 don't get 'em, then this surely will. These keys are for disaster recovery. You would normally use DEL and CTRL-\e to send interrupt and quit signals. .ig VC
ALT-F1 Select virtual console 0 (/dev/console) ALT-F2 Select virtual console 1 (/dev/ttyc1) ALT-F(n+1) Select virtual console n (/dev/ttycn) ALT-Left Select previous virtual console ALT-Right Select next virtual console ..

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The keyboard map is set with the KIOCSMAP ioctl whose precise details are currently hidden in the loadkeys utility.