8 ms·

Graphic cards at the time only had 16 colors. Not 16-bit color. 16 colors in total.

by M95D 2y ago

herbst 2y ago
Is there any reason they took the most ugly colours? They could have just used 16 nice colours or?
- nkali 2y ago
  There is a reason why they're the most ugly colours. Windows 2 only can display 8 colours: CMY+RGB+Black+White. Cheap colour monitors had only four input pins - RGBI - and could at best display those eight colours, plus a darker version of them.
- guestbest 2y ago
  They used the colors which had the best contrast against each other and if there was a driver issue, colors which looked the more appropriate in greyscale. Driver issues, forgotten today, drove most architectural decisions at Microsoft. The core word they used was ‘working with partners’. People used to bring it up all the time in interviews in the 80s regarding PC’s but not all in one computers like Apple and to a degree amiga. I remember people used to watch football on television on portable tv’s which was only made possible because the jerseys had a light and dark version which visiting teams would get to choose which one they get.
rasz 2y ago
VGA was already on the market for 9 months by the time Windows 2 released.
- nkali 2y ago
  Imagine the backlash: "new Windows version requires a $300 video card and a $400 monitor to run". When Windows 95 finally dropped the support for EGA, many people were upset (including me).
- n144q 2y ago
  9 months? LOL Thunderbolt 5 was released about 1 year ago. You can count the number of all laptops that support Thunderbolt 5 with two hands (probably one hand, but to err on the safe side).
magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
Not true. 16 colors at a time. EGA had a color palette of 64 colors. Depending on the card, precise palette cycling can be used to appear to have all 64 colors available so long as too many different pixels aren't used too close together.
- rep_lodsb 2y ago
  That wasn't really a possibility for anything but static fullscreen images, or extremely optimized demos. Even then it would be difficult, since there is no way to generate an interrupt at a specific raster position (unlike CGA, where the pixel clock was synchronized with the system timer chip).
  - magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
    I didn't say it was for full-motion video or arbitrary images. Interactive calibration is possible.

Graphic cards at the time only had 16 colors. Not 16-bit color. 16 colors in total.

by M95D 2y ago

Graphic cards at the time only had 16 colors. Not 16-bit color. 16 colors in total.

herbst 2y ago

Is there any reason they took the most ugly colours? They could have just used 16 nice colours or?

nkali 2y ago
There is a reason why they're the most ugly colours. Windows 2 only can display 8 colours: CMY+RGB+Black+White. Cheap colour monitors had only four input pins - RGBI - and could at best display those eight colours, plus a darker version of them.
guestbest 2y ago
They used the colors which had the best contrast against each other and if there was a driver issue, colors which looked the more appropriate in greyscale. Driver issues, forgotten today, drove most architectural decisions at Microsoft. The core word they used was ‘working with partners’. People used to bring it up all the time in interviews in the 80s regarding PC’s but not all in one computers like Apple and to a degree amiga. I remember people used to watch football on television on portable tv’s which was only made possible because the jerseys had a light and dark version which visiting teams would get to choose which one they get.

rasz 2y ago

VGA was already on the market for 9 months by the time Windows 2 released.

nkali 2y ago
Imagine the backlash: "new Windows version requires a $300 video card and a $400 monitor to run". When Windows 95 finally dropped the support for EGA, many people were upset (including me).
n144q 2y ago
9 months? LOL Thunderbolt 5 was released about 1 year ago. You can count the number of all laptops that support Thunderbolt 5 with two hands (probably one hand, but to err on the safe side).

magic_smoke_ee 2y ago

Not true. 16 colors at a time. EGA had a color palette of 64 colors. Depending on the card, precise palette cycling can be used to appear to have all 64 colors available so long as too many different pixels aren't used too close together.

rep_lodsb 2y ago
That wasn't really a possibility for anything but static fullscreen images, or extremely optimized demos. Even then it would be difficult, since there is no way to generate an interrupt at a specific raster position (unlike CGA, where the pixel clock was synchronized with the system timer chip).
- magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
  I didn't say it was for full-motion video or arbitrary images. Interactive calibration is possible.