Loading BMP Files into QBASIC

[Peter Swinkels]

EDIT: See the post following this one for a Quick Basic program that can load bitmaps.

The Quick Basic programs attached to this message can be used to load bitmaps. I think it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how the programs work and how the bitmap format works by studying the code.

Here is some information about the bitmap file format:

Bitmap header:


Location:	Description:
1		2 byte file format indicator: "BM"
19		width in pixels
23		height in pixels
29		bits per pixel
		(1 = monochrome, 4 = 16 colors, 8 = 256 colors, 24 = 24 bit color)
55		If the image uses 24 bit colors the actual image data will start at the location.
		For all other color depths a palette is stored here. The palette is directly followed by the image data.
		The palette contains a 4 byte (of which only the first 3 bytes are used) entry for each color index.
                Each entry contains the RGB values for a specific color index.