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What is this video port?

Ah, so it is SVGA (I try to avoid using it interchangeable with VGA, but am guilty of it...just seemed that if it actually were, it'd be able to act as such. An SVGA adapter that will only function as VGA for whatever reason may as well be a VGA adapter only). I believe mine does have the expansion sockets, for what little they're worth.
 
A "Super VGA" adapter with 256K of video RAM should at least be able to do 800x600 graphics in 16 colors and 132-column text mode, even if it can't do 640x480 in 256 colors. Some even came with VESA support in ROM, even though that's not particularly useful with so little video RAM.

I also remember some of these really low-end "SVGA" cards claiming to do 1024x768 graphics -- albeit with only 4 colors!
 
Chuck(G) said:
Most of them did so in interlaced mode, which would give you a headache if you viewed such a display for any length of time.
Click to expand...

I found it more tolerable to look at than 800x600 at 56 Hz refresh rate. Especially with an all-white Windows background, that's like staring into a strobe light. Back in the day I came across a number of computers running in that awful mode, because for quite a few video cards it was Windows 95's "Adapter Default" refresh rate at 800x600, even if the card and monitor could both support a higher refresh rate.
 
Good grief, no--depending on the adapter and monitor, it was much worse in 1024x768. I've got a Cirrus GD5436 here. Scan frequencies at 1024x768 with an IBM 8515 (or NEC 3D) are 35.5KHz horizontal and 43.5 vertical. The display looks like it could use some valium.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Good grief, no--depending on the adapter and monitor, it was much worse in 1024x768. I've got a Cirrus GD5436 here. Scan frequencies at 1024x768 with an IBM 8515 (or NEC 3D) are 35.5KHz horizontal and 43.5 vertical. The display looks like it could use some valium.
Click to expand...

...which is equivalent to an 87 Hz refresh rate -- just that only half the lines are "painted" at a time. Maybe depending on the presistence of your CRT's phosphor you may get different visual effects, but to my eyes, interlaced SVGA video makes horizontal lines on the screen appear to "jump up and down", rather than flicker.

Of course neither is tolerable for long-term viewing on a CRT, but for me it's really quite amazing to use Windows 3.1 at 1024x768 on my old Gateway 486 PC using a modern LCD monitor, which internally de-interlaces the video and minimizes the visual artifacts.
 
Reminds me of what was done in movie theater projectors (one of my many youthful jobs was showing movies at a drive-in. Kids, don't ask--it was an artifact of the 50s and 60s, where people tried to do everything in their cars).

At any rate, the frame rate was 24 fps, but each frame is flashed twice, lessening the flicker. Not to mention that the whole frame is flashed, not a dot of light scanning from top to bottom.

But interlaced video still looks "nervous" and somewhat "blurry" to me--and that goes for NTSC CRT TV also.
 
The base video in the D2613A will only go to 640x480. There's a VRAM update kit, which adds 512KB to allow the system to go to 800x600 and 1024x768. You got the 2613--good going! It had the largest HDD of any of the D26xxA series, 170MB.

This was the same model of computer as what HP put on my desk when I first started there (alongside an HP9000/425t--no complaints there!) I scrounged some VRAM and a better monitor, then horsetraded my way up to a 486DX/25T (D3022B) with a DX processor in it, whereupon the last person in our group with a 386/25 got my D2613A. It was a good system, but the DX processor in my D3022B was _such_ a huge improvement--I was running a 386/33 with a 387 at home, far faster than the 486SX/20!
 
I would suggest just finding a cable that doesn't have pin 9. They're fairly common. I just checked my EIZO monitor cable which came with a TX-D7S and it had the pin missing. I'm sure there's tons of these cables being turned in with CRTs are recyclers every day. :)
 
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