mark@cbosgd.UUCP (04/12/84)
I'm looking for a graphics board to put on an XT. What I really want is a single board that will serve as either an IBM monochrome board or an IBM color board, at the flip of a switch and change of a monitor. (It would be nice to have graphics on a monochrome monitor, too, but this is not essential.) I intend to run several different operating systems on the XT (Venix/86 primarily, but also QNX and MS-DOS) for which I won't have sources, so I can't install somebody's MS-DOS patch to make a board work. (I gather this rules out the STB board.) I initially intend to use it in monochrome mode with an Amdek 310A monitor (which looks like a IBM monochrome monitor to the machine.) I would also like it to not flicker on the color monitor when the screen scrolls (the IBM color board does with some software.) There are a number of boards out there: STB Graphics Plus; PC Comp Bigraphics; Paradise; Plantronics Colorplus; Quadram Quadcolor; Amdek MAI; Multigraph; USI; Tecmar. My information on them is limited to what's printed in PC magazine (e.g. the product name and price). I would appreciate hearing (by mail, I'll summarize) from users of these boards. How do you like it? Is it plug compatible or did you have to patch MS-DOS (apparently a change to AUTOEXEC.BAT is needed to initialize a mode to something other than garbage in the STB and the TecMar?) Also, where is Keytronics located? The order-taker-types for the two ads mentioning them can barely tie their own shoelaces, much less tell me where to call for literature. "Thanks in advance" Mark Horton mark@cbosgd.UUCP (cbosgd!mark) mark@Berkeley.ARPA