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by mschaef
3794 days ago
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Yeah... IBM CGA text wasn't that good even in the best of circumstances. The 640x200 resolution and 8x8 character cells were really inadequate. Part of the reason for this is that IBM split the market into CGA for graphics and MDA for better text (9x14 character cell). Because the MDA adapter didn't display graphics, IBM made it possible to run both a CGA and a MDA in the same machine. Software like Lotus 1-2-3 could put the spreadsheet on the MDA and the graphics on the CGA. Dual monitors in the mid-80's. Prior to the development of the EGA and VGA, there were a few interesting competitive responses to IBM's CGA/MDA split. The first was the Hercules card. This would let customers that had bought IBM's MDA (and it's matching monitor) get access to graphics. It wasn't compatible with CGA graphics, but it was higher resolution and wound up being fairly widely supported where it mattered. Compaq also had a solution to the problem... they shipped adapter/monitor pairs that could display MDA-quality text in the text modes and would scale down to 640x200 to display graphics. What ultimately wound up happening is pretty much what you'd expect. As graphics resolutions got better with EGA and VGA, the quality of text on color displays got to the point where the MDA didn't represent an improvement. That said, there was always the ability to run an MDA (or clone) in parallel with a EGA, VGA, etc... that configuration was useful to programmers because it let you put debug information on one display while the main display ran the software you were developing. |
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I had that on my II+. Motherboard would drive the modified 16" TV (40 column, graphics) and a Videx Videoterm-like card would drive the monochrome monitor with beautiful (for the time) text.
I remember that in the late 80's I started seeing MDA/CGA hybrids that would drive MDA monitors with CGA-compatible text modes with MDA-like fonts and PWM grays. By then I was getting used and their ugliness no longer offended me.