[gwbas1c]

> The frequencies and connectors used by CGA and MDA are no longer supported by modern monitors hence it is difficult for older PCs of the 1980s era to have modern displays connected to them without external adapters.

Some CGA ran over composite, and there's plenty of modern small TVs with a composite input. It's perfectly fine to use a TV as a computer monitor. (I do!)

> This analog-to-digital conversion will also lead to an inevitable loss in video quality.

Oh, now we're splitting hairs! This is super-low resolution, super-low colorspace. CGA was (at most) 16 discrete colors. In many situations it was 4 colors with 2 pallets to chose from. The CGA port was also digital, so I don't understand where the "loss in video quality" argument comes from.

IMO: I don't "get" this. You're no longer running "vintage" hardware; yet a lot of vintage hardware has limited lifespan and may become unrepairable if/when there's degradation inside the chips themselves.

If someone is going to go through all this trouble, it makes a lot more sense to emulate the whole computer.

[treve]

Count me in as someone who likes vintage hardware but modern displays. In my case it's old game consoles.

The drop in video quality with composite is real. This has less to do with the resolution, but more with the fact that hardware that upscales this to an HD or 4K panel needs to make an educated guess where pixels start and end, and gets it wrong.

It looks quite ugly practically and switching to something with crisp pixels is usually very worth it.

For old game consoles it's often enough to switch to RGB or Component and you don't have to go full digital. Composite (and RF) are quite bad.

This is not an audiophile type of distinction, it's very visible and obvious to almost anyone.

[gwbas1c]

> The drop in video quality with composite is real.

Remember, this is CGA. Some games specifically take advantage of composite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors

Likewise, remember that the monitor connector is digital. If you build an HDMI (or DVI, DisplayPort, whatever) converter, you're starting with a digital signal, not an analog one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Specifi...

[gwbas1c]

> Count me in as someone who likes vintage hardware but modern displays

I should also add that, if you change the graphics card in an old PC, you're inserting a huge variable when it comes to playing a game on "vintage hardware."

Some games resorted to various tricks, whatever, that might not be emulated correctly on the new graphics card.

Again, that's why I find the idea of a "modern" CGA silly: When you use it, you no longer have vintage hardware, and the CGA connector is digital so there's no need to worry about a loss in quality.

[dfxm12]

FWIW, the lifetime of a CRT display is generally less than the lifetime of the rest of the PC. I don't think it's much trouble to install a card on a PC that didn't happen to have composite out, or to want something better than composite on a modern LCD display. You don't have to get it. It's not for you. That's OK.