4 ms·

The EGA color situation isn't as bad as the author described. CGA had a 16 color palette. In text mode, every character could be rendered with the background a

The EGA color situation isn't as bad as the author described. CGA had a 16 color palette. In text mode, every character could be rendered with the background and foreground of any of the 16 colors. In graphics mode, you had to select one of two horrible combinations of 3 colors, and could pick any color to be the fourth color. It was awful for games, being mostly oriented around having brightly colored text on a black background. TGA's graphics mode had 4 bit color, which gave it the complete 16 colors of CGA. It was less terrible, but still pretty garish as you can see from the screenshots in the article. It inherited the overly bright colors designed for differentiating text on a black background. I believe that both CGA and TGA used the a digital connection to the monitor, and they were compatible with each other. There were on/off RGB lines and a half bright line that made stuff half as bright, with additional logic for another independent grey instead of duplicating another black. EGA had 4 bit indexed color into a 6 bit palette. I honestly think its 6 bit palette is passable for the darker, moodier environment of Another World, unlike the CGA palette. But relatively few games used it. Most games (including, apparently, Another World) used the CGA palette, because then you would still be compatible with CGA monitors. IMHO the developers would have done their users a favor by making a third EGA only palette. I don't recall how EGA's cable worked, whether it was analog like VGA or used a six bit digital scheme not unlike CGA.

henrikschroder 7y ago
Oh shit, did EGA have a different cable? My first PC had VGA, and since the DE-15 cable ruled for a decade until DVI, I had just assumed that CGA and EGA cards and monitors used the same cable... It's always so crazy how creative and bespoke all the early PC tech was, because the hardware limitations were crippling, in every single dimension. And that in turn makes it so fascinating to read these articles, because the limits of the hardware was so well-known, that you could do things like counting actual cycles and basing your timing off of that or similar.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  I think they all had different adaptors and cables back then. Until the NEC multisync, different monitors too! The article isn't wide enough to need to mention the whole world of semi-compatible and non-compatible clones, such as the Tandy mentioned (that I think was a semi), others were from HP, Apricot (who were quite successful for a while, and at least one of their machines had a switchable semi mode, and a "better" Apricot non-compatible mode. Different stuff ran in each), Tulip and probably dozens of others I forget. Some ran DOS, had a x86 and all the other toys, but wouldn't run certain software, others deviated in hardware rather more to try and do something "better". The whole PC market was a bloody confusing, incoherent mess for a while. A quagmire for a not fully clued up buyer.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    There were even machines with MS-DOS which were not PC compatible. Only DOS programs using pure BIOS calls (no direct manipulation of video memory) would work.
    - echeese 7y ago
      And those BIOS calls were so much slower
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    It also meant that if you waited long enough, replacing a computer part triggered a cascade of hardware updates, that in the end you would be better off just buying a new computer.
    - soylentcola 7y ago
      True, but it's how I learned a lot about PC assembly and setup as a teenager. Prior to then, I had a Commodore 128 which, while pretty cool, was mostly a box that did what it did. I had an old PC (I bought it used from some guy advertising in the local paper) and when that fancy new Windows 95 came out, I wanted to upgrade the old 486 processor. There wasn't any Microcenter at the time and I didn't know about any of the catalog sales companies like TigerDirect yet. What I did know was that summer there was a "Computer Show and Sale!!" at a local event space so I took what meager cash I had on hand to see what I could buy. Knowing nothing about CPU sockets or brands, I was happy to find a shiny Cyrix 6x86 CPU that was clearly like a Pentium, but better (because Pentium was 586 so 686 is more 86's obviously). 133Mhz was double what my 486 ran at! Plus this thing was so much cheaper than the other stuff they had for sale. Got that and a compatible motherboard and headed home to work on my new amazing PC (holy crap Doom and Dark Forces were gonna look so good!) So, you can imagine my disappointment when I got home and found that I could no longer slot my video card or internal modem into the new motherboard. I was so disappointed. It would be another month or so before I managed to save up more money to buy a compatible video card from some other guy selling parts. I forget what I did about the modem. I'm also surprised I didn't need new RAM as well but the old stuff worked for the time being. Before it was all said and done, I'd at least learned what to research (and that it even needed to be researched) before upgrading anything again. It's gotten so much easier to research online, part out a desktop PC, and drive 20 minutes to Microcenter where I can be back at home assembling everything that afternoon. I don't have to do it very often anymore as they remain useful for a lot longer (although it helps that I have more than a couple hundred bucks to spend now). But it's still useful to know how it all fits together when some friend or family member wants a basic workstation or something to edit family photos/videos on. I can't justify upgrading my current i7 3770k system yet because the damn thing still just works as well as I could ask after 7 years, but sometimes I secretly wish it would crap out in some minor way so I could have an excuse to build a new one.
- kragen 7y ago
  EGA was digital, like CGA, and mostly compatible.
gecko 7y ago
CGA colors were designed for display on composite; the issue is most people were using digital cables, which had the garish colors. https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc has a great overview of what was possible.
danmg 7y ago
The CGA pallet was 4 colours and there were four of them. You had to switch pallets manually. There were essentially two pallets with a 'brighter' version available. If done correctly and with composite output, it looked passable. 99% of the time though people just used the default pallet with magenta and cyan on TTL display.
henrikschroder 7y ago
> In graphics mode, you had to select one of two horrible combinations of 3 colors, and could pick any color to be the fourth color. Any colour? Wow! :-D :-D :-D It's quite telling that with the recent popularity of pixel art games, none of them really restrict themselves in colour space like the games of old had to do. Having a limited amount of pixels to convey something is a fun challenge, having a limited amount of colours, or a limited palette, is just not fun. It's miserable, and having to do dithered graphics is fucking miserable.

henrikschroder 7y ago

Oh shit, did EGA have a different cable? My first PC had VGA, and since the DE-15 cable ruled for a decade until DVI, I had just assumed that CGA and EGA cards and monitors used the same cable... It's always so crazy how creative and bespoke all the early PC tech was, because the hardware limitations were crippling, in every single dimension. And that in turn makes it so fascinating to read these articles, because the limits of the hardware was so well-known, that you could do things like counting actual cycles and basing your timing off of that or similar.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
I think they all had different adaptors and cables back then. Until the NEC multisync, different monitors too! The article isn't wide enough to need to mention the whole world of semi-compatible and non-compatible clones, such as the Tandy mentioned (that I think was a semi), others were from HP, Apricot (who were quite successful for a while, and at least one of their machines had a switchable semi mode, and a "better" Apricot non-compatible mode. Different stuff ran in each), Tulip and probably dozens of others I forget. Some ran DOS, had a x86 and all the other toys, but wouldn't run certain software, others deviated in hardware rather more to try and do something "better". The whole PC market was a bloody confusing, incoherent mess for a while. A quagmire for a not fully clued up buyer.
- jacobush 7y ago
  There were even machines with MS-DOS which were not PC compatible. Only DOS programs using pure BIOS calls (no direct manipulation of video memory) would work.
  - echeese 7y ago
    And those BIOS calls were so much slower
- pjmlp 7y ago
  It also meant that if you waited long enough, replacing a computer part triggered a cascade of hardware updates, that in the end you would be better off just buying a new computer.
  - soylentcola 7y ago
    True, but it's how I learned a lot about PC assembly and setup as a teenager. Prior to then, I had a Commodore 128 which, while pretty cool, was mostly a box that did what it did. I had an old PC (I bought it used from some guy advertising in the local paper) and when that fancy new Windows 95 came out, I wanted to upgrade the old 486 processor. There wasn't any Microcenter at the time and I didn't know about any of the catalog sales companies like TigerDirect yet. What I did know was that summer there was a "Computer Show and Sale!!" at a local event space so I took what meager cash I had on hand to see what I could buy. Knowing nothing about CPU sockets or brands, I was happy to find a shiny Cyrix 6x86 CPU that was clearly like a Pentium, but better (because Pentium was 586 so 686 is more 86's obviously). 133Mhz was double what my 486 ran at! Plus this thing was so much cheaper than the other stuff they had for sale. Got that and a compatible motherboard and headed home to work on my new amazing PC (holy crap Doom and Dark Forces were gonna look so good!) So, you can imagine my disappointment when I got home and found that I could no longer slot my video card or internal modem into the new motherboard. I was so disappointed. It would be another month or so before I managed to save up more money to buy a compatible video card from some other guy selling parts. I forget what I did about the modem. I'm also surprised I didn't need new RAM as well but the old stuff worked for the time being. Before it was all said and done, I'd at least learned what to research (and that it even needed to be researched) before upgrading anything again. It's gotten so much easier to research online, part out a desktop PC, and drive 20 minutes to Microcenter where I can be back at home assembling everything that afternoon. I don't have to do it very often anymore as they remain useful for a lot longer (although it helps that I have more than a couple hundred bucks to spend now). But it's still useful to know how it all fits together when some friend or family member wants a basic workstation or something to edit family photos/videos on. I can't justify upgrading my current i7 3770k system yet because the damn thing still just works as well as I could ask after 7 years, but sometimes I secretly wish it would crap out in some minor way so I could have an excuse to build a new one.
kragen 7y ago
EGA was digital, like CGA, and mostly compatible.

gecko 7y ago

CGA colors were designed for display on composite; the issue is most people were using digital cables, which had the garish colors. https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc has a great overview of what was possible.

danmg 7y ago

The CGA pallet was 4 colours and there were four of them. You had to switch pallets manually. There were essentially two pallets with a 'brighter' version available. If done correctly and with composite output, it looked passable. 99% of the time though people just used the default pallet with magenta and cyan on TTL display.

henrikschroder 7y ago

> In graphics mode, you had to select one of two horrible combinations of 3 colors, and could pick any color to be the fourth color. Any colour? Wow! :-D :-D :-D It's quite telling that with the recent popularity of pixel art games, none of them really restrict themselves in colour space like the games of old had to do. Having a limited amount of pixels to convey something is a fun challenge, having a limited amount of colours, or a limited palette, is just not fun. It's miserable, and having to do dithered graphics is fucking miserable.