[net.micro.pc] MonoGraphicsVideoAdapters

ee161abt@sdcc13.UUCP ({|stu}) (11/08/84)

OK, I don't know; you tell me.  What's the best monochrome graphics
adapter card out there?  I've used the Hercules and the Paradise cards.
Herc's a tried and true board that you have to write your own software
for.  The Paradise card supports composite, RGB and monochrome text and
graphics.  With a monochrome monitor (I use an Amdek 310-A) you get a
nice character set (not quite as nice as standard: you get 7X9 in an
8X16 matrix), 16 shades of gray for surrogate color, and everything
just works peachy keen except:

To use the paradise board with a mono monitor the warm boot
(CTRL-ALT-DEL) vector is re-vectored to prevent the BIOS from
finding that there's really not a monochrome board (the Paradise is
"first, last and always" graphics board).  Well, this revectoring
scheme just doesn't work so hot with software that does its own
keyboard handling (games, non-PCDOS operating systems, etc), soooo,
what I'd like to know is what, if anything, works and works REALLY
WELL as a monographics card.  BTW, Paradise lists for $499 and sells
for under $300.