[fpc-pascal] Accessing ROM BIOS Font in Linux.

[Anthonyh63 at comcast.net]

A task I used to do regularly when programming in Turbo Pascal
was to read the BIOS Rom Font.    I first picked this up to make
"Splash" Screens for Text Mode programs that wrote out big
several lines high using the character it was made of

FFFFF  PPPPP         CCC
F            P        P      C
FFF       PPPP        C
F            P                C
F            P                  CCC

Something like that.    Using the ROM Bios font
allowed me to make a call like BigWord('FPC');
without having the font be part of the program.
I haven't been able to locate my old source but can probably
find them.   If I remember correctly they are located at
16 bit real mode address F000:FA6E.     I also used
them as a failsafe while in Graphics mode if BGI font
file was not loaded.   I wrote text output routines using
putpixel and the ROM fonts.    I also used them when
divising my own 2d graphics primitives in Pascals
built in assembler (I never completely finished this).  

I'm looking into doing some SDL programming and want
a fallback text output method if font files aren't available. 

The question.   Is this font accessible from linux; do I have
to be root ?    How do I make the 16 bit segment/offset address
into a 32 bit pointer to access these fonts ?  

Thank You,

Anthony. 
 
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