I think GP is referring to EGA which also used address 0xA0000 but you had to program it in it a planer mode of 16 colors out of a palette of 64. VGA provided backward compatibility with this but introduced the 256 color modes with mode 13h being the linear addressable 320x200 res mode, however this mode sacrificed 3/4 of the video memory. This mode was also referred to as "chained" mode as it chained all 4 bitplanes together for convenient linear addressing. There was also unchained mode, sometimes referred to as mode-x which allowed you to access all 256kb of video memory, resize the virtual screen, page flipping, etc. at the cost of compute overhead. Lots of tradeoffs to be made in those days. Some amazing looking 16 colors VGA games were produced in the early 90s, one that comes to mind is Gods by Bitmap Brothers.
No, I'm talking about VGA. Super VGA is where it got more complicated, with its many variations, higher resolutions, and higher bit depths.
I think GP is referring to EGA which also used address 0xA0000 but you had to program it in it a planer mode of 16 colors out of a palette of 64. VGA provided backward compatibility with this but introduced the 256 color modes with mode 13h being the linear addressable 320x200 res mode, however this mode sacrificed 3/4 of the video memory. This mode was also referred to as "chained" mode as it chained all 4 bitplanes together for convenient linear addressing. There was also unchained mode, sometimes referred to as mode-x which allowed you to access all 256kb of video memory, resize the virtual screen, page flipping, etc. at the cost of compute overhead. Lots of tradeoffs to be made in those days. Some amazing looking 16 colors VGA games were produced in the early 90s, one that comes to mind is Gods by Bitmap Brothers.
Yes, and if you want to go program for some other platform? The limitations and complications are completely different.