Choosing the best video standard for your old PC (MDA/CGA/EGA/VGA)

[1ST1]

Yes it has been done before. It does work, but with CGA you'll be missing yellow without extra circuitry, and you need a VGA display that'll sync down to 15Khz, most don't..

I told you, use a NEC Multisync... Even the more modern ones, NEC Multisync TFT 19x0sxi/nxp (x=8 or 9) and similar ones are fine for 15 kHz video. Many of them are documented to be fine in ATARI ST and Commodore Amiga community for their PAL/NTSC color modes. So video frequency isn't the problem. Only convert digital to analoge RGB...

 

[Trixter]

If you don't know what to choose, choose EGA. It can display 16 out of 64 colors at once, and you get a resolution of 640x350.

That is terrible advice, since EGA monitors are the rarest in our hobby. CGA and MDA monitors are somewhat more common, but VGA means you can still hook it up to modern monitors (sometimes needing a VGA to HDMI converter, but those are cheap). So if the user is so green that they "don't know what to choose", start with VGA.

 

[maxtherabbit]

That is terrible advice, since EGA monitors are the rarest in our hobby. CGA and MDA monitors are somewhat more common, but VGA means you can still hook it up to modern monitors (sometimes needing a VGA to HDMI converter, but those are cheap). So if the user is so green that they "don't know what to choose", start with VGA.

or is it lowkey genius advice, since it forces you to get the most obscure thing and achieve instant retro clout?

 

[Plasma]

I think PGA and TIGA outrank EGA in obscurity

 

[Trixter]

or is it lowkey genius advice, since it forces you to get the most obscure thing and achieve instant retro clout?

There's no such thing as retro clout, unless you spend months repairing something broken, without documentation, that has historical significance. (Some of the NASA lunar restorations going on come to mind.) Besides, one man's treasure (Packard Bell) is another man's trash (Packard Bell).

I think PGA and TIGA outrank EGA in obscurity

True. I think TARGA boards fall into that as well (there were many of them in the field, but damned if I can find one now that is going to show me these 256x200 16-bit pix on an NTSC monitor...)

 

[Ruud]

I prefer VGA on mine--I don't need to keep extra monitors around.

As an extra argument: all my computers have been connected to a 16-input KVM switch. For the XT machines I use this XT2AT keyboard converter. So I only need one keyboard and one monitor. But I do have an MDA and CGA monitor plus a XT keyboard around for just in case.

 

[maxtherabbit]

There's no such thing as retro clout

what? Guess I'll just throw all this junk in the trash then if I can't clout up

 

[VileR]

(I'm sure there must be *some* software out there that runs on EGA but not VGA, but I don't know that I've ever actually encountered any.)

There's FantasyLand... but probably not much more than that. Maybe there's something out there that relied on EGA's very-little-used vsync interrupt, which most VGA chipsets had disabled by default, or didn't even implement.
The only real incompatibility was that the same modes had different vertical refresh rates on EGA and VGA, but it wasn't a problem in practice since there was very little that relied on it.

On the software side, one of the EGA's big shortcomings was that so many of its registers were write-only. Which proved to be a thorn in the side of early multi-tasking/windowing environments, since saving and restoring a task's video state became a gigantic headache (and running it in a window a near-impossibility). From that standpoint EGA was a bit "brain-dead" in the way that the 286 was argued to be.

One other annoyance was that the full set of 64 colors was only available in the 640x350 mode, because IBM's monitor design meant that all 200-line modes were assumed to output a CGA-type signal (RGBI only). A few of the clone chipsets could work around that, but only on multisync monitors apparently.