The Homebrew Hercules Graphics Card

[@davefiddes]

Interesting to see a new Hercules card. I've fond memories of my family's first PC XT clone which had one. Hercules has really quite a high resolution compared to CGA. Action games like MS Flight Simulator or Accolade Grand Prix were a bit grim with a long persistence green phosphor monitor though. Not a problem with RGB2HDMI of course! You can use a Hercules/MDA card with Windows NT/2000 for debugging device drivers which was better than having to have 2 PCs and comparatively slow serial connection.

[@zbradbell]

After looking around a bit, I don't think this design has been released yet. I think it would be really great to see it available, as I don't think there has ever been a complete schematic made of a hercules card, and it seems quite hard to find one that doesn't use any custom ICs, which I suppose is why nobody else has done the reverse engineering yet (I'd do it myself if I could get a hold of one)

[@root42]

The author is still planning to do this. However he had some personal troubles. And yes, an open source HGC would be wonderful.

[@naib_stilgar]

My first PC was an 8086 with a Hercules card. I have incredibly memories of this card's capabilities, and it performs amazingly well in games from the late 80s. Playing Prince of Persia for example was a blast. I really look forward to this project and hope to build the card myself as well. Does the card have any hard to source components? Most stuff seem to be logic chips, a microprocessor and an eprom. I guess the memory could be difficult to obtain, likely have to take a gamble on chips from Aliexpress for that. I'd appreciate if you could provide a link to the card's project page in the video description. Great job as always, love watching your videos!

[@root42]

The card is not yet open source, but the very least the Gerber files will be available at some point said Arek. So let’s give him some time to get all things together. The CRTC, the SRAM and the DRAM are hardest to source. DRAM is standard 4164 though and should be available somewhere. I recommend getting from a trusty supplier as the Chinese resellers often relabel the chips and sometimes mix up different manufacturers or access speeds. That might lead to problems. SRAM should be available from eBay or such as used or NOS. CRTC I found on eBay too. 6845s are still rather commonly found.

[@yuhongbao5571]

@@root42 You will notice it does not even fit in a 16 bit slot.

[@channelkerr]

Hey can you tell me the name of the NC clone at 17:00? I tried google but no dice 🙁 Also was surprised at how usable win3.1 is on such an ancient rig!

[@root42]

It’s DOS Controller by Søren Kragh! ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/msdos/fileutil/dc-sk.zip Great little tool! Only disadvantage: No network drives and CD ROMs supported!

[@rootbeer666]

Could this be modified to produce VGA-compatible timings? (as VGA emulates the 350-line mode, (same totals as the 400 line mode but with inverted sync to tell the monitor to stretch)

[@root42]

I would say No. The refresh rates are totally off vor VGA. Plus the levels are TTL so you would need a level shifter to get to VGA‘s 0.7V (or what was it…?)

[@alexloktionoff6833]

@@root42 just solder 19MHz XTAL instead of 16 one, and you'll get EGA compatible timings that a lot of VGA monitors understand. Two 1k resistors from VIDEO and INTENCITY signals to G signal in VGA and you have it running in 21st century!

[@szaman6204]

i love ms dos

[@dangerofh4ckst4b14]

A year ago you have promised to release the design, why haven't done that? No excuses, release it as it is. There is a huge community that can advance on it. I am doing it from scratch, but it is a huge work. If you really have something, and are willing to release it, just do it.

[@root42]

I am not the author. I merely received one PCB that I assembled. I contacted the original author earlier this year and he had fallen ill quite severely and didn’t have any capacity to proceed with this project. So please take a chill pill and be patient. If the original author recovers this might see the light of day. If not, maybe someone else will step up and do a reverse engineering. The HGC isn’t super rare and not rocket science. Let’s be glad for what we have and hope that we all stay healthy and safe.

[@dangerofh4ckst4b14]

@root42 thanks for answering, I am on it already.

[@VK2FVAX]

Nice! ..can you show how many FPS in Crysis though please? I want this for my NuXT. Kthxbai

[@root42]

Well, maximum of 50Hz obviously. As that is the HGC refresh rate. Not all XT class machines will achieve this performance in Crysis though. Not even in DOOM.

[@VK2FVAX]

@@root42 Sorry. I couldn't help having a dig. :) Wonderful card. Quite interested in this. I do wish that doom was 16bit and didn't require dos4gw and a 386 for pmode.

[@drzeissler]

does the CGA run crysis? ähm area5150 ?

[@root42]

Yes, but I don't have an appropriate mainboard. On my 286 mainboard it runs quite well, but will hang in one of the later parts. Area5150 is much more compatible than 8088mph, but still requires an original PC or XT mainboard to run perfectly.