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IIRC, it had higher resolution than CGA, so it was much nicer to look at for longer stretches of time.

by renewedrebecca 3y ago

jandrese 3y ago
Also, it could display foreign characters in text mode unlike CGA cards. It was the serious business card of its day.
- tpmx 3y ago
  Nitpicking: The CGA 8x8 font had a number of "foreign" (non-ascii) characters that could be displayed in 640x200 or 320x200 text modes. All (?) European though. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/viler-int10h/CGA-font-compare/images/compare.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/viler-int10h/CGA-font-comp... From IBM's technical manual: * 16 special characters for game support * 15 characters for word-processing editing support * 96 characters for the standard ASCII graphics set * 48 characters for foreign-language support * 48 characters for business block-graphics support (for the drawing of charts, boxes, and tables using single and double lines) * 16 selected Greek characters * 15 selected scientific-notation characters (https://minuszerodegrees.net/oa/OA%20-%20IBM%20Color%20Graphics%20Monitor%20Adapter%20(CGA).pdf https://minuszerodegrees.net/oa/OA%20-%20IBM%20Color%20Graph...) ...although https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437#Internationalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437#Internationaliza... reaches the conclusion that it only e.g. English, Germany and Swedish are fully supported due the lack of upper-case accented latin characters. Huh, TIL.
  - fatneckbeard 3y ago
    CGA font were never re-programmable, Hercules (after a certain version) were.
tomcam 3y ago
720x348. It was a dream for programming and writing.
- bombcar 3y ago
  If I recall correctly I has original SimCity on Hercules which was nice if only black and white (amber and gray).
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  And no flicker at all, due to how the monitor worked.
Jeema101 3y ago
In addition, a lot of the lower-end CGA monitors at the time didn't have real great native resolution (i.e. the 'dot pitch'). They would generally be fine for playing games in low res mode, but not that great for doing business work in high res mode. The better CGA monitors had finer dot pitch, but those were usually more expensive.

IIRC, it had higher resolution than CGA, so it was much nicer to look at for longer stretches of time.

jandrese 3y ago

Also, it could display foreign characters in text mode unlike CGA cards. It was the serious business card of its day.

tpmx 3y ago
Nitpicking: The CGA 8x8 font had a number of "foreign" (non-ascii) characters that could be displayed in 640x200 or 320x200 text modes. All (?) European though. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/viler-int10h/CGA-font-compare/images/compare.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/viler-int10h/CGA-font-comp... From IBM's technical manual: * 16 special characters for game support * 15 characters for word-processing editing support * 96 characters for the standard ASCII graphics set * 48 characters for foreign-language support * 48 characters for business block-graphics support (for the drawing of charts, boxes, and tables using single and double lines) * 16 selected Greek characters * 15 selected scientific-notation characters (https://minuszerodegrees.net/oa/OA%20-%20IBM%20Color%20Graphics%20Monitor%20Adapter%20(CGA).pdf https://minuszerodegrees.net/oa/OA%20-%20IBM%20Color%20Graph...) ...although https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437#Internationalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437#Internationaliza... reaches the conclusion that it only e.g. English, Germany and Swedish are fully supported due the lack of upper-case accented latin characters. Huh, TIL.
- fatneckbeard 3y ago
  CGA font were never re-programmable, Hercules (after a certain version) were.

tomcam 3y ago

720x348. It was a dream for programming and writing.

bombcar 3y ago
If I recall correctly I has original SimCity on Hercules which was nice if only black and white (amber and gray).
actionfromafar 3y ago
And no flicker at all, due to how the monitor worked.

Jeema101 3y ago

In addition, a lot of the lower-end CGA monitors at the time didn't have real great native resolution (i.e. the 'dot pitch'). They would generally be fine for playing games in low res mode, but not that great for doing business work in high res mode. The better CGA monitors had finer dot pitch, but those were usually more expensive.