The video can probably wait-I think there are enough of us here who have original hardware too, unless you've got some wack CGA card you're using, but I think a lot of us have true blue CGA cards and will be running the benchmark on true blue machines.
I'd think that you could just provide the card's make and model # and the output benchmark results in a text file, the rest of us could do the same with our machines and then start finding the best VGA card out there. I know for certain that I'll be running this test on every video card I have.
Well, like everything I do, I don't do it lightly. I've begun work on this and have the follow features frameworked already:
Adapter memory speed benchmarks:
- Interleaved opcode/adapter memory read benchmark
- Interleaved opcode/adapter memory write benchmark
- Adapter Memory-only read benchmark
- Adapter Memory-only write benchmark
Color Select and Mode Control Register tests:
- Border/Overscan color
- Medium-res graphics background color
- High-res graphics foreground color
- Palette display (all six medium-res palettes)
Textmode manipulation:
- 40-column test
- Textmode highcolor background (ie. disable blink)
- Textmode cursor manipulation
- CGA "snow" anomoly
- Font display (simulated via 40-col mode)
Monitor Calibration:
- Brightness calibration
- Contrast calibration
- Moire pattern (high-res horiz/vert/50%)
- Display of 16 colors
MC6845 CRTC programming:
- Horizontal retrace demo
- Vertical retrace detection
- custom text mode (90x30)
- 160x100 text tweakmode
- custom graphics mode (256x200, 160x200, 320x100)
The speed benchmarking is done, as is the CGA Snow detection. I was hoping to add some more tests before releasing it, but since the benchmarking stuff is done, I'm willing to send out a work-in-progress version. Any interest?