Mid 80s PC Monitors - CGA, EGA, VGA

[@kaitlyn__L]

Very cool, love that two-colour LED to indicate whether the video is in TTL levels or analogue ones. Such a cute wee case around it too!

[@saifal-badri]

Hope you feel better soon, happy holidays

[@RetroHackShack]

Thanks!

[@anthonybolek8816]

That TAXAN monitor looks like the screen Ferris Buller had on his desk in the beginning of the movie

[@RetroHackShack]

Now I need to check

[@RetroHackShack]

Nope. Not the same. Although Mr. Rooney uses a monochrome Taxan monitor to check Ferris's attendance. imgur.com/a/WyvHkYG

[@LanceHayabusa]

uh mm no

[@MrVasile]

Sorry to hear of your bout with the dreaded covid. Also sad to hear you are between jobs. Keep the faith! From personal experience, I can say that these points in life offer the best opportunity to move in a direction you were previously reluctant to consider. I am moving into my fourth year of teaching middle school after a 30+ year career in corporate America, and couldn't be happier!

[@RetroHackShack]

Thanks! I am considering education actually. How did you make the transition? Did you have to get an ed degree?

[@MrVasile]

@@RetroHackShack I live in Florida, so I can't speak to other places. However, I was able to get a Temporary Certification based on my college transcript (BSEE from The Ohio State University). From the transcript only, I was certified to teach Physics. While I was waiting for the Department of Educatiin's assessment, I went ahead and took the certification tests for Mathematics, Computer Science and Technology/Engineering Education. I had to pay $150 each to take the tests, but it guaranteed that if I was granted the Temp certificate, I would be all set to teach in amy of those areas. The temp certificate lasts 5 years and is not renewable. In order to teach after that period, you must have earned the Professional certificate. Im Florida, that means taking 8 classes (at the community college) and taking two general tests (a four-part General Knowledge and a Professional Educator). Also required is 60 hours of classroom teaching (which I had automatically since I was already teaching) and a formal set of observations of that teaching. Long story short for me, I have completed all the requirements and will be scheduling my final interview with my advisor for her sign-off. I expect to have the Professional Certificate by December 2024! To find out the possibilities where you live, either search up the possibilities online with your state/province department of education, or contact the recruiting person in your local school district (I did both). Good luck!

[@christopherbaar4498]

That Nanao monitor, once you get it tuned, will be insane. if it syncs from 15-35kHz as it says, it will be fully compatible with every machine that produces an analog RGB signal, including the 24kHz modes of the Japanese computers like the X68000 and PC-98. Not a surprise because that name sounds very Japanese. For it's TTL modes, I think you need to have it set to IBM 16 for CGA or Commodore 128 RGBI. 8 would probably only give you RGB without intensity. For full EGA capability it should be set to 64, since EGA has 64 colors total, even though it can only display 16 at a time. The Taxan monitor is also a nice find for a 5153 replacement. Not sure about that Apple II mode on the EIAJ connector. The Apple IIgs is analog RGB at 15kHz, but there is an AppleColor card for the Apple II that outputs RGBI. But since they already have the RGBI connection on the DIN, the EIAJ connector might be analog RGB as well. I've seen that on some Japanese monitors. One point about setting the EGA card ins "CGA" mode. It's not setting it to act as a CGA card, it's setting it to be compatible with a 5153, which can only handle 16 colors. Took me a bit to realize that, since you obviously were getting more than the 4 CGA colors when testing with Bard's Tale III. Still, excellent finds. I wish I had that Nanao monitor for my X68000!

[@californiafox3974]

Great Video Aaron! I amazed by how many screen controls and modes that Nanao Monitor has.

[@classicnosh]

I owned many monitors throught the course of time. My first monitor was CGA and it supported border colors similar to the C64 or Apple IIgs.

[@CurtisBoyle]

On the Taxan - the Apple III RGB analog connector should work with a Coco 3 as well (you may have to make a little circuit for the H and VSync; The Coco 3 uses separate, positive H and V Sync signals. Page 62 of the 2nd edition of "Tandy's Little Wonder" book by Frank Swygert (available on the Color Computer Archive) explains exactly what needs to be done. Using that article, any RGB Analog monitor that supports 15.75 KHz H and 60 Hz V should be able to work with the Coco 3. I have both a Magnavox 85CM15 and a NEC Multisync II that work on mine (the NEC is especially nice as it has a phenomenal dot pitch (.28) and automatically figures out all the syncs, etc. itself... just need the right cable). So that might be a good use for one of the monitors. This will also allow you to play the Diecom Light Gun games (using a Sega Master system light gun, plus the interface design is now publically available so you can make your own adapter). We were showing these off at both CocoFest and BoatFest the last 2 months; modern LCD displays of course don't work with light guns.

[@RetroHackShack]

Cool

[@dgmt1]

it should be pointed out that dedicated CGA monitors can actually display 16 colours s the 4 colour pallettes of standard CGA were a limitation of the 16k VRAM on the cards rather than a limitation of the monitors themselves. EGA, tandy graphics and super CGA/Plantronics (which has 32k of VRAM) were all capable of running 16 colour games and software on a CGA monitor. However this did mean they were limited to the 16 CGA colours and a maximum resolution of 320x200. High resolution EGA graphics (16 colours chosen from a pallette of 64 @ 640x350) required either a dedicated EGA or a multisync monitor, both of which could easily be twice the price of a CGA monitor. As a result most EGA users just bought CGA monitors and few games supported the high resolution mode. That's also why its so hard to find EGA monitors nowadays despite it being the main graphics mode for DOS games between 1986 and 1989.

[@loganjorgensen]

16:46 Not often listed is the fault in EGA's legacy, the fact that EGA programs usually defaulted to the CGA 16-color system palette for the sake of lingering CGA monitor use rather than actually using EGA's 64-color system palette to select 16 colors from. Not many people had multi-synch monitors until VGA monitors took hold Eg. CGA/EGA specific monitors, even possible to damage some CGA monitors with EGA video signals so they defaulted to CGA colors/signal instead just to be safe. So watch out.😉 Ironman Offroad and Rambo 3 are a couple of the rare games to show off the expanded but highly dormant EGA system palette colors Ie. actually looking like Amiga, Atari ST, DOS-VGA 16-color graphics. Also worth noting that EGA cards were prohibitively expensive virtually through its entire lifespan, where VGA wasn't just a massive graphical upgrade but was also proportionally cheaper and much smaller eventually during its reign. That Nanao monitor is sweet, the B&W & Amber options are so much nicer than CGA's 4-color options.😁

[@RetroHackShack]

Thanks for the info. I will check out those games.

[@Krushernl]

I love Amber color terminals. Very expensive to get one these days, had a Wyse terminal hooked up to my Amiga's

[@rager1969]

That looks better than CGA on the Bard's Tales opening screen.

[@doctorcomicbook]

Those don't look like CGA graphics to me.... that definitely looks like EGA graphics. CGA graphics looks like the game that kid was playing in the movie Big (theb one with the wizard that was definitely a riff off of KQ3)... this looks like the graphics in Lesisure Suit Larry 3... that's too many colors to be CGA (which, as I recall, was composed of two sets of 3 colors).

[@nathanahubbard1975]

If it looks like crap, it's CGA. There were two terrible palettes to choose from in the common 320x200 mode, and both looked bad.

[@litjellyfish]

@@nathanahubbard1975no it’s EGA 100% it’s easy to see. How many colors do CGA have? And how many do Bards Tale show? 😂😂 I think we can call the case closed. Honestly ot baffles me how one can’t see it’s EGA with its iconic palette

[@litjellyfish]

@@nathanahubbard1975sorry I maybe misread you. You wrote that if it’s loos crap it’s CGA not that this looked like CGA right?

[@dgmt1]

@@nathanahubbard1975 there were four main palletes that games tended to use but technically I believe there are as many of 78 possible combinations. CGA also had a 16 colour text mode and using composite out on NTSC televisions it was possible to get the full 16 colours but few games took advantage of this.

[@dgmt1]

bards tale in both tests is definitely running in EGA. It's possible he didn't realise that EGA can run in 16 colours @ 320x200 on a normal CGA or RGB monitor. In fact most EGA users in the 80s actually used CGA monitors due to how expensive dedicated EGA and multisync monitors were. That's why most EGA games only support the low res 320x200 mode rather than the high res 640x350 that has access to the full 64 colour pallete (which still only displays 16 on screen at once).

[@kaplanfx]

Which Bay Area electronics swap meet were you referring to?

[@MonochromeWench]

IBM16 means cga 16 color RGBI TTL where dark yellow is brown. AT&T16 will be 16 color RGBI TTL where dark yellow is dark yellow. 8 Color mode will be intended for systems with RGB TTL with no intensity signal. 64 color is for EGA with 2 lines per color. Seems like the monitor does some autodetection. CGA should look wrong in 8 color mode and ega wrong in IBM16.

[@johnpayne6009]

What would be a good price to sell a tandy cc 3 from 1989.with box,12 games ,joysticks,literature ect...

[@doctorcomicbook]

$20...but I'll give you $25...

[@litjellyfish]

I don’t get what you meab that VGA is analog and the other is digital. Why would VGA be analog when it’s a digital card. And what is that about color blending? it’s no blending functions in VGA is just a base screen buffer where each byte is a pixel you set from a color index of 256 which in turn is set from a hi color palette.

[@dgmt1]

VGA switched to analogue because it allowed for higher resolutions with deeper colours. Digital cables of that time had very limited bandwidth which was fine for both CGA and EGA due to them being limited to 16 colours on the screen at 4bits per pixel. VGA required considerably more bandwidth hence why analogue video cables became the standard up until DVI & then HDMI came along.

[@litjellyfish]

@@james66666 ah ok. Thanks. Makes sense.

[@litjellyfish]

@@james66666 for sure an thanks! 💚💚💚 I got my first real monitor around 88 or so for the Amiga. And have been ding pixel art as a hobby since 85 and professionally since 91 so I know a lot about different graphics mode and GPU Hardware but when it comes to output signals and monitor hardware I am as lost as a frosted donut in a Eskimo igloo is. At best.

[@litjellyfish]

@@james66666 I guess then also that the colors was based on modulation of the base colors for CGA for intensity to simplify the need to “decide” all 16 colors. And the colors themself was RGB based? Vs say C64 where each color was decided by the hardware designers and not really tied to RGB so just a 4 bit index to 16 colors that was pre set by the card. And same I assume with EGA. Just RGBA with modulation of intensity. I guess for VGA you started with a 8 bit value that pointed to an index of 15 bit (or whatever color depth of the palette) values set up as RGB that in turned produced a (for 15 bit) 32 step range value that was translated to an analogue pulse that was sent for RBG to each pin pair? If so was the analogue approach a way to ensure forward / backward compatibility for great range / palette bit depth. Vs say going for a digital fixed 555 RGB bit solution? Or what was the reason / advantage of having analogue over digital ?

[@dgmt1]

​@@james66666 Just to add to your explanation, I believe CGA uses 4 bits for its 16 colour text mode while the standard 4 colour 320x200 mode only transmits 2 bits. Similarly the standard 16 colour 320x200 EGA mode should only need 4 bits while the rarely used high-res 640x350 mode is the one you described using 6 bits. At least that's how I remember it being taught many years ago.

[@donaldl43]

You need to go to setup in Checkit and toggle color. The newer version works fine.

[@RetroHackShack]

Yeah. I tried that off camera.