Detecting Colour and Monochrome Monitors
From OSDev Wiki
Detecting whether a user has a colour or monochrome video card is a trivial task. The BIOS data segment has a value in it for this information. Below is a function (in ISO C) to retrieve this:
The Function
/* Video card mono/colour detection. Return values: false=colour true=monochrome */ _Bool detectVideoType(void) { char c=(*(volatile USHORT*)0x410)&0x30; //c can be 0x00 or 0x20 for colour, 0x30 for mono. return (c==0x30); }