More specifcally...how do you read the pallette from a Deluxe Paint
Enhanced PCX file?  I have tired and all the color come though screwed up
and I can't figure out why?  Has anyone else come across this problem.

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"Leaving? So soon?  HOW RUDE." - Megabyte

type
  TPalette = array[0..255,0..2] of byte;

var
  PCX : file;
  pal : TPalette;

begin
  assign (PCX,'myimage.pcx');
  reset (PCX,1);
  seek (PCX,filesize(PCX)-768);
  blockread (PCX,pal,sizeof(pal));
  close (PCX);
  {feed 'pal' to your procedure that sets the VGA palette}
end;

sc...@whiplash.res.cmu.edu (Scott F. Earnest) wrote:

perhaps the problem could be that maybe E-PCX uses a palette based on
256 shades of any given color, while the VGA only uses 64 shades...
you can use a 256-shade based setpalette by doing this:

procedure SetPalette256 (var pal); assembler;

asm
  mov bx, ds

  lds di, pal

  mov dx, 03C8h
  xor ax, ax
  out dx, al

  mov cx, 384
@Loop:
  mov ax, [di]
  shr ax, 2
  out dx, al
  shr ax, 8
  out dx, al

  add di, 2
  dec cx
  jnz @Loop

  mov ds, bx
end;

heh, sorry about the highly-optimized setpalette there... i've got
this {*word*193} habit of optimizing as i go :)  anyway, i'd imagine that
your normal setpalette is simply something as incredibly droll as:

for i := 0 to 255 do
  setrgb (i, pal[i,0], pal[i,1], pal[i, 2]);

just change that to:

for i := 0 to 255 do
  setrgb (i, pal[i,0] div 4, pal[i,1] div 4, pal[i, 2] div 4);

if you want to convert my piece of artwork above to a regular 64-level
palette, just kill the 'shr ax, 2' and save 384 clock-cycles :)

hmmm, another thought occurs to me about your colors... i think that
the PCX format stores the colors in the order bgr instead of rgb...
and it may even bitwise-pack everything together too... (this is why i
don't use PCX :)

And I think the byte immediately preceding the palette should be a 12 to
indicate that a palette really is stored there ...

... but I wouldn't bet on that ;-)