Detecting Colour and Monochrome Monitors

Detecting if you have a colour or monochrome video card is trivial. You can use the values stored in the BIOS data segment to determine this.

Here is some C source example of how I do it.

/* video card mono/colour detection by Dark Fiber
 * returns 0=mono, 1=colour
 */
int detect_video_type(void)
{
    int rc;
    char c=(*(USHORT*)0x410&0x30;

    /* C can be 0x00 or 0x20 for colour, 0x30 for mono
    if(c==0x30){
        rc=0;	// mono
    }
    else
    {
        rc=1;	// colour
    }
    return rc;
}