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(5160) for those of you without CGA or EGA monitors...

lordhailsham

Member
Joined
Apr 18, 2018
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Good morning! I see huge variety of converters (ebay, amazon etc) but I was wondering folks without access to an IBM monitor do?

My backup plan is to use the composite video output... thoughts and comments appreciated!

Andy
 
Don't try to use cheap gbs8220, they only work after considerable modification.

I have jolly good time with both MCE2VGA and RGBtoHDMI. I use first with my CRT VGA and second with my LED monitor.
 
There are many VGA cards that will work in a 5160, if you don't need a real CGA.
 
There are many VGA cards that will work in a 5160, if you don't need a real CGA.
Like he said. I have at least Three 8 bit VGA cards for ease on my work bech but I have plenty of monochrome and cga/rgb monitors otherwise. Scan converters... Bah thats just nasty.... 🤮
 
I don't own an 5160, but I do have a 5162 and a few XT clones. They all work fine with either a VGA or Hercules. And even the 5160 will support a third-party CGA card that will often support Hercules also, if you have a mono monitor instead of an IBM CGA. I have one CGA CRT, a Goldstar. My 5162 does not have a composite output. My Tandy 1000 does, and I have a couple of composite monitors that can use it and a couple of old color TV's with an adapter.

I know the converters are not ideal but I am thinking of getting one in case my CGA CRT goes belly up one day. It's better than nothing.

Seaken
 
hey thanks for the replies and great info. I would of course prefer VGA .. .should I stick to any ISA 8-bit clone card, or should I stick to IBM-specific cards?
 
hey thanks for the replies and great info. I would of course prefer VGA .. .should I stick to any ISA 8-bit clone card, or should I stick to IBM-specific cards?
You don't need an IBM VGA, they are pretty rare anyway. Most 8-bit cards and some 16-bit cards will work. Here is a partial list.

Personally I like to use Cirrus Logic cards for testing 5150/5160 systems, they seem to just work.
 
There are VGA cards that also have a 9 pin output, and also work as an EGA, CGA, or even MDA card. That could be handy if you plan to eventually get a TTL monitor.
 
There are VGA cards that also have a 9 pin output, and also work as an EGA, CGA, or even MDA card. That could be handy if you plan to eventually get a TTL monitor.
Thats right. I had a 17" Hi-res b&W monitor with VGA resolution back in the early to mid 90s with a 9 pin connector.
 
thanks for the pointers, guys. On eBay I looked up a bunch of the ISA cards referenced on minuszero and I'll probably need to go in and search again when I am wide awake... the annoying thing is about 20+ yrs ago I foolishly gave away a whole bunch of ISA cards...:cry:
 
Yes unfortunately this stuff is getting expensive on ebay. But remember that list on minuszero is not exhaustive, so you don't necessarily need a card on the list. For example this card should work in your system.
 
... ISA cards referenced on minuszero ...
Yes unfortunately this stuff is getting expensive on ebay. But remember that list on minuszero is not exhaustive, so you don't necessarily need a card on the list. For example this card should work in your system.
I remember way back, being asked to add an additional table to the aforementioned minuszerodegrees web page, a table that listed VGA cards that were found by members here not to work in the IBM 5160.
 
I also recommend the Extorn RGB2HDMI 300a:


Works great with my digital RGB sources, including CGA/EGA, Atari ST and C128. You can get them inexpensively on eBay.

- Alex
This is a great product. Not 100% the sharpest scaling possible, but it's amazing for the price and versatility. Does add one frame of lag unfortunately
 
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