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EGA Video : Over hyped?

Anonymous Coward said:
Even the EGA card with the CGA monitor was light years ahead of having a CGA card. I didn't own a PC in the 80s, but I definitely would have rather had Hercules than a CGA setup.
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For a while, I ran a machine with an EGA card and a Tandy CM-11 CGA monitor. It supported 320x200 16 color EGA mode, and the rare 640x200 16 color mode that some applications had (hmm, I think PC Paintbrush or whatever it was called supported this). Unfortunately, the aspect ratio made everything look hedious in 640x200.
 
EddieDX4 said:
and the rare 640x200 16 color mode that some applications had (hmm, I think PC Paintbrush or whatever it was called supported this).
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Didn't ATI make something like that? I have an ATI SW/GS with that (or a function-wise similar) mode, so I expect that they'd include it in their EW cards too...
 
A lot of third-party EGA cards had all sorts of interesting modes--most depended on a multisync monitor, however. Everex cards could go to 640x480, 16 color, which was, for a time, VGA territory.

But Plantronics was the originator of the 640x200 4-color mode. Many EGA cards with this capability refer to it as "Plantronics" mode for that reason.
 
mikey99 said:
CGA text mode was very painful on the eyes and almost unreadable.
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Tandy's CGA helped a lot by adding an extra blank scan line between each row of text, so that the bottom of a "g" wouldn't touch the top of a "T" on the line below, for example. This made text mode 225 lines of resolution instead of the standard 200, which was fine on an computer monitor, but sometimes using the composite output on a TV set, the image would go beyond the edge of the screen, so you could type MODE 200 or hold a function key while booting in order to switch to standard 200-line mode.
 
Back in the early 90's I had an Amstrad PC1640 with CGA monitor. System came bundled with GEM desktop and Dr Halo paint package. Both of which supported the Amstrad's 640x200 resolution in 16 colours. I do remember the text being rather blocky in text mode though :)
 
per said:
Didn't ATI make something like that? I have an ATI SW/GS with that (or a function-wise similar) mode, so I expect that they'd include it in their EW cards too...
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The ATI Small Wonder emulates Plantronics graphics, which gives you (I think) 16 colors at 320x200 and 4 colors at 640x200. And it expands upon this by adding ATI's own 16-color 640x200 mode. Unfortunately, these modes are not register-compatible with either EGA or Tandy CGA, so in order to use them, you need software which specifically supports Plantronics or ATI graphics.
 

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At work I started with MDA, then went to hercules. Colour was just sooo expensive!

However, I did eventually get EGA at work. I'm not sure what the monitor was but I thought it was pretty cool. I remained monochrome'hercules at home until the early 1990s, again largely because of the cost.

Tez
 
I'll have to dig it up, but I'm pretty sure that in the 1989 CompuAdd catalog, an EGA monitor and card cost more than a VGA monitor and card.

The dual scan rates and two sets of RGB lines simply made EGA complex and costly to implement. Meanwhile, VGA quickly became cost effective by using the same DAC technology which reached the consumer mass market in CD players in the late '80s.

Even the cost of CGA-spec RGB monitors didn't fall that dramatically as they became obsolete. In the early '90s, Radio Shack was still trying to sell their CM-11 CGA monitor for the same price as their mid-grade VGA monitor (not counting their awful low-budget 0.52 mm dot pitch :eek: eyestrain-inducing VGA monitor!).
 
mikey99 said:
I'm surprised no one has grabbed this , seems like a reasonable BIN for a working EGA !

And being the industrial model its more rugged for the journey by UPS.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-IBM-EGA-Color-Monitor-Model-7534-A01-INDUSTRIAL-/290465129335?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0
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I just picked it up! I was watching it before when it was Auction style at $125 plus shipping... Your tip made me aware of the relisting with BIN.

Thank you!

The only thing is that it's missing the IBM bade on the front/top... Wonder if I could find one somewhere.

But, the seller states it has a fan built into the housing... I'm hoping that translates to much better longevity. :-D
 
EddieDX4 said:
I just picked it up! I was watching it before when it was Auction style at $125 plus shipping... Your tip made me aware of the relisting with BIN.

Thank you!

The only thing is that it's missing the IBM bade on the front/top... Wonder if I could find one somewhere.

But, the seller states it has a fan built into the housing... I'm hoping that translates to much better longevity. :-D
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Thats great ! ..... those industrial monitors look nice and having a fan in there will certainly help keep things cool.
Most 5154's I've worked on have bad capacitors in the power supply , mainly because these monitors run so hot.
 
Actually there are two versions of the Industrial Display.

7534 - EGA
7544 - VGA

I made a couple of scans from my IBM hardware manual.....

7534Industrial-1.jpg7544Industrial.jpg
 
Unknown_K said:
How hard is it to change out those bad capacitors? Also how pricey?
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I think all the caps cost me around $15 or so from partsexpress.com. I used ones rated at 105 degrees C.
I didn't replace the two large 220 uf 250V caps because they didn't appear to be leaking. Also those ones
cost about $4 each. The nice thing about the 5154 EGA is that the power supply is on a separate card, which
attaches to the main board with a large connector. So you can fairly easily remove the power supply unit, then
the cover , and work on the power supply separately.

Once you have the power supply out on your bench, changing the capacitors is easy, just do them one at a time
and make sure the polarity is correct. Sometimes it helps to take a few pictures of the supply with a digital
camera before you start just in case......
 
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ibmapc said:
I checked out the "stason.org" link and saw that it listed the connector as "15-pin analog video port". Shouldn't that be a 9-pin ttl port?

Greg
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Yes, that was a mistake on stason.org's part... Also, I'm not so sure that the connector on the top edge of the card truly is a "VGA feature" connector...

Does anyone know what this connector was used for?
 
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