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IBM 5150 VGA Card Compatibility

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Brooklyn_Tony198

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Oct 2, 2019
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I am looking for a VGA card solution for my 1983 IBM 5150. It currently has 640K of RAM, a 10MB HDD (that I need to replace, it sounds like its gonna die), and the 3rd BIOS revision. I was wondering mainly if anyone knows if any Trident cards work in the 5150, as they are very prolific and easy to find on Ebay. My other option is the XT-SVGA card from MonoTech, but if I can I don't want to spend $80 on it. If anyone knows the compatibility of these cards, please do tell!
 
Quite a few 16 bit VGA cards work in 8 bit slots. Some do so automatically others need jumpers to tell the card to run in that mode, and yes Trident made their fair share. That said, there is no central database of what cards can and cannot do this, most of us have simply plugged the VGA card in and turned on the machine, if it works great, if not then we move to the next card.

What you can do is see if you can find the jumper settings for the Trident cards listed on Ebay, failing that, if the thing is cheap enough then just buy it and try it.
 
lutiana said:
Quite a few 16 bit VGA cards work in 8 bit slots. Some do so automatically others need jumpers to tell the card to run in that mode, and yes Trident made their fair share. That said, there is no central database of what cards can and cannot do this, most of us have simply plugged the VGA card in and turned on the machine, if it works great, if not then we move to the next card.
Click to expand...
Actually, there is a thread devoted to this exact topic:

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?26432-8bit-Friendly-ISA-VGA-cards
 
Be careful. I had a hell of a time trying to get VGA on a 5160. Two tridents with no success, finally got a Video 7 V-ram VGA to work. Research research research.
 
It's been well documented here and a few other places. A quite internet search would have provided good results.
 
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