rickc@agora.UUCP (Rick Coates) (04/27/88)
Fellow Usenet PC users: I am interested in garnering more information about display cards. Even the flyers from companies (much less the ads) do not give even the basics. I suspect this is intended to further confuse an already confused area. To help roll back to curtain of ignorance, let us who have used different cards pool our knowledge. I have found magazines to be of limited help, since most of the reviews are significantly behind or in error (for example, the Byte review in March 88 on enhanced EGA/VGA states that the maximum resolution for an ATI VIP card is 640x480x16 - but ATI's flyer says 800x560x16). What I am looking for is 640x480x256 (I know that at least one firm is making chips that do this - EE Times reported that Trident is making them). Other people will be looking for other things - be careful about maximum resolution. The high end of 'multi-sync' monitors is not uniform, and you might get edged out if you have the wrong monitor. To kick it all off, I have some explanations, EGA and VGA maximum resolutions (there are other, lower resolution modes available), and the modes for the Paradise AutoSwitch 480 (the card I have). ALSO, if you are going to program these beasts (had I created a piece of hardware as obscure and poor at supporting line drawing as the EGA/VGA when I was an engineer for a Large Graphics Corporation, the software group would have lynched me), there are at least two books out (I bought both). The first one is far superior to the second - had I seen it first I would never had bought the second. Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 Video Systems Richard Wilton Microsoft Press $24.95 EGA/VGA A programmers's Reference Bradley Kliewer McGraw Hill $24.95 Thanks in advance, Rick Coates tektronix!sequent!islabs!ateq!rick OR tektronix!reed!percival!agora!rickc ------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAPHICS MODES: FIRST COLUMN: BIOS Mode SECOND COLUMN: resolution (x y no. of colors) x: number of displayed pixels across the screen y: number of displayed pixels down the screen no: number of simultaneous colors available on the screen THIRD COLUMN: maximum number of palette colors the number of possible colors (not all displayable at once) 64 = 2^6 - six bits of color, two per "gun" (red,blue,green) 4 levels of monochrome 262,144 = 2^18 - 18 bits; 6 bits per gun 64 levels of monochrome FIFTH COLUMN: Text or graphics mode TEXT MODES: FIRST COLUMN: BIOS Mode SECOND COLUMN: resolution in characters (columns rows) THIRD COLUMN: character cell size FOURTH COLUMN: pixel resolution FIFTH COLUMN: Text or graphics mode EGA: +-----+-----------------+------------+-------------------+----------+ | 10 | 640 x 350 x 16 | 64 | | GRAPHICS | +-----+-----------------+------------+-------------------+----------+ VGA: +-----+-----------------+------------+-------------------+----------+ | 12 | 640 x 480 x 16 | 262,144 | | GRAPHICS | | 13 | 640 x 200 x 256 | 262,144 | | GRAPHICS | +-----+-----------------+------------+-------------------+----------+ PARADISE AUTO SWITCH 480: +-----+-----------------+------------+-------------------+----------+ | 50 | 640 x 480 x 16 | 64 | | GRAPHICS | | 51 | 80 x 30 | 8 x 16 | 640 x 480 | TEXT | | 54 | 132 x 43 | 8 x 8 | 1056 x 344 | TEXT | | 55 | 132 x 25 | 8 x 14 | 1056 x 350 | TEXT | +-----+-----------------+------------+-------------------+----------+ -------------end--------------
geoff@moss.ATT.COM (04/29/88)
In article <905@agora.UUCP> rickc@agora.UUCP (Rick Coates) writes: > > >Fellow Usenet PC users: > >What I am looking for is 640x480x256 (I know that at least one firm is making >chips that do this - EE Times reported that Trident is making them). >Other people will be looking for other things - be careful about maximum >resolution. The high end of 'multi-sync' monitors is not uniform, and >you might get edged out if you have the wrong monitor. Allstar Microsystems Corp makes a board which they claim has 800x600x256. I spoke with them yesterday and they said that while they were out of stock at the moment, they expected to be shipping them when they got back from Comdex (2 weeks). They want $345 for the card. (See May 88 Computer Shopper page 267). I also asked what they thought of the Thomson Ultrascan (since it is so damned cheap -- $385 from Lyco). The guy said he had seen one and thought it looked pretty good, although the black wasn't as good as some he had seen. Any comments? geoff sherwood ihnp4!moss!geoff