Ibm ega +/- composite video modification questions

[Hugo Holden]

Iowen, That sounds like a very nice card ! What are you planning to do with it ?

 

[ropersonline]

To me it seems that the PC was originally meant to be both a home and business computer at the same time.

That is correct.

It was intended that home users would buy just the PC and keyboard, the former with a CGA card, but with no floppy drives or monitor, at a $1500+ price point, to be connected to the cassette recorders and TV sets that users already owned for data storage and display, respectively. This would not have allowed users to run DOS, but that's what the ROM BASIC was for.

It was intended that business users would purchase the PC and keyboard with one or two drives, DOS or maybe another OS, a 5151 monitor, an MDA card, etc. at a $3000+ price point.

See the penultimate paragraph here.

There are pictures of this in the Guide To Operations -- "Configuration Examples" -- 1-4 / 1-5.

Of course practically no one bought the $1500+ configuration, but the $3000+ configuration sold much better than IBM expected. IBM never cracked the home micro consumer market. It was business, SOHO or better.

Actually, I don't know of any non-business / hobbyist / consumer product IBM has ever had a real success with. Maybe someone else does.

 

[ropersonline]

Yes, to expand on that... These are all the 'textmode' colours from CGA, so the fixed RGBI set.
On an EGA monitor in 350-line mode, you can use 16 colours out of a total of 64, because each colour has its own intensity line.
Sadly, IBM chose not to enable the extra colours in 200-line modes at all, not even on an EGA monitor.

This surprises me. I could have sworn that e.g. Commander Keen used more than the same fixed 16 colour palette throughout. Well, apparently not. They made damn good use of those 16 colours through.

 

[Stone]

See the penultimate paragraph here.

My closest friend and college buddy still has that $4500 system (referenced above) he bought in around 1981 or so. He made a point of showing me the original receipt around 15 years ago.

 

[vwestlife]

IBM never cracked the home micro consumer market. It was business, SOHO or better.

The PS/1 and Aptiva line was reasonably popular in the 1990s, but IBM's attempt at selling computers via direct mail (Ambra) was a total disaster. It also hurt IBM that Microsoft delayed giving IBM an OEM license for Windows 95, so they couldn't get Windows 95-equipped computers on the market as quickly as their competitors did. IBM finally exited the consumer market in 2001, just in time for the Dotcom Bubble.