Under FreeBasic, that trick doesn't work, not even in pure DOS: in fact, the text mode under VGA allows to have either 8 background colors and the blinking text, or 16 background colors but no blinking: QuickBasic operated by default in the first mode, FreeBasic in the second. In fact, under QuickBasic in text mode it was impossible to have bright background colors, colors 8-15 for background were just replaced with colors 0-7, while in FreeBasic it's possible to use all the 16 colors for background. In QuickBasic it was possible to change that behavior with a CALL INTERRUPT, and the same can be achieved in FreeBasic using a dpmi int:
Code: Select all
#include "dos/dpmi.bi"
Dim regs As __dpmi_regs
regs.x.ax = &H1003
regs.x.bx = 1 '1 to enable blinking, 0 to disable it
__dpmi_int(&H10, @regs)
COLOR 7, 8
PRINT "hello"