I did this by accident on my PC. I ended up getting an ATI EGA Wonder 800+ card which actually displays hi-res mode EGA on the CGA monitor but it uses interlacing, so you don't want to use it for long periods of time!
CGA monitors with a low DPI actually made old EGA games look really good, compared to an actual EGA screen, that often had a higher DPI. The 320x200 resolution actually gave the pixels a rounded edge to them making the game seem more cartoonish vs pixel art.
EGA cards were badly designed to be honest. Even though they had a lot of new features, they were mostly useless and EGA in general was used as a CGA with more RAM that allowed to display 16 colors in CGA modes. 64-color palette was a great idea, but it was limited to 640x350 mode only. It was impossible to change palette in 320x200 or 640x200 modes and 640x350 mode required 256 KB of RAM and special EGA monitor which very few people had back then. IBM was so disappointed in EGA that their next standard MCGA didn't even support it and was just a CGA with 320x200 256 color mode added on top. Eventually VGA was made which finally merged all that CGA/EGA/MCGA mess into one and added useful features on top of that. For example VGA allows to pick custom palette in EGA modes! Yet still VGA cards lacked useful features like blitter that would not only helped in games, but also would make high-res GUI much more viable. These features started to appear in Windows 95 era, where accelerated 2D become a must.
Don't ask me the specifics of this, because I don't know enough about electronics: This is how we ended up with VGA: My dad (electronics guy and TV repairman by night) tried this and somehow the CGA screen we had simply couldn't handle the EGA output. You could SEE the glorious color graphics, but it was timed differently or something, and the picture would roll, or get squeezed/distorted, etc. He said he knew how to make it compatible and tried replacing some components in the screen and adjusting some stuff. At one point though it all went wrong (or the monitor simply wasn't destined to be clocked this way) and the magic smoke escaped: Killing the monitor beyond repair. Dad went "well, I guess I'm buying a new monitor" and sprung for VGA instead. I definitely didn't complain.
Sounds like you got lucky! Yes, most of the EGA modes are 21kHz whereas CGA is 15kHz, so if your graphics card didn't offer this functionality you'd need a multisync monitor to support both, and they were expensive at the time.
We jokingly called the CGA Crappy Graphics Adapter because even my Apple 2 had 6 color in HGR. Updating the CGA text screen could cause “snow” unless done carefully. It really was a mediocre card. There were a handful of games that pushed the card such as a Pac-Man clone IIRC but that was the exception. The _8088 MPH_ demo showcases what is possible which is mind blowing. The VGA was a _real_ nice upgrade compared to the EGA.
That is technoically a TGA/PCjr mode. TGA is pretty much a CGA that can show all colors at all time. The EGA card is sort of running in a TGA fallback mode, that works because hardly any games used the extended palet
That's cool! I've got my aunt's old 5160 with the 5153 monitor. The monitor works, but I can no longer get the PC to boot. It powers, the hard drive spins up, but no beeps or display even though the display works. I think it got humidity to it while it was in storage during a couple of moves where the keyboard has gone missing too :( At any rate, if I can get it up and running again one of these days I'm going to try and obtain an EGA card and try this trick out!
Sounds like it could possibly be RAM failure, it's very common in these. I had the same issue with my 5150 when I first got it. It's a fairly big job as the chips are getting hard to get hold of and they're soldered to the motherboard, but certainly not the end of the road for these old machines.
@@ctrlaltrees I need to find another vintage collector near to me and compare some notes with similar hardware. I haven't even touched a soldering iron in years, and I don't know if I have the time or patience to go at it myself right now LOL.
You're right. The slots retroactively became known as "8-bit ISA" after the 16-bit ISA standard came about. It's hard to cover everything in a short video like this but it's an interesting historical note IMO.
In the original period it wasn't too unusual to have VGA upgraded XTs, especially if turbo 8 or 10 MHz. They were still good for some games of that era including Sierra games..
wait the ega have two frecuencys, the first one is the same CGA 15,7 khz, but the second is 21,8 khz, the 5153 can not sincronice with the second. i have a 5153 with a tseng ega 1, works fine.
hello thanks for upload!...a question: " can i operate a Amiga or a C128 on a VGA monitor ?... i wish you a good time and have a nice times..your KrautROckt!er from germany...(sorry for my bad english, i`m a East-kraut ;)
I made a video about it: ruclips.net/video/8oWyogPZ7Bw/видео.html There's a link in the description of that video to a GitHub repository I created which goes into everything in great detail. It's a DIY solution from 1985 that adds a second crystal and oscillator chip just to clock the CPU. Currently I'm running at 7.37MHz (up from 4.77). It's a huge improvement with no stability issues so far.
I really tried today but I cannot get this to work. I have an IBM XT 268 with an original IBM EGA card and an IBM CGA 5153 monitor. CGA modes do work, EGA modes do not! What exactly will I have to do with the two jumpers and the 4 dipswitches on the IBM EGA card? (The battery buffered Bios, is set to "EGA" via "gsetup", everything else does not seem to work). I'd like to have 16 colors in "prince of persia" instead of 4! Any ideas?
Hi! Sorry to hear you're having problems getting it working. I used the 5153 switch settings from here: minuszerodegrees.net/ibm_ega/ibm_ega_switch_settings.htm It's been a while since I played it so I can't remember, but does Prince of Persia prompt for the monitor type at startup or does it autodetect? If it asks, you need to select "EGA" of course.
@@ctrlaltrees Thanks for your answer. I know the website of minuszerodegrees, but still no luck. Still does not work. You can type "prince ega" to force ega in prince of persia, but no luck. Maybe my IBM EGA card is broken. I will try another EGA card from a friend......
You get the colors of EGA but can't use the 21.85 kHz Horizontal Sync for 350-lines? So, ega monitors were the first multi sync monitors? as they also supported 15.7kHz. But very rare to get hold of now?
@@ctrlaltrees I played it on my XT (clone, 640kb of ram, CGA card), using CGA, and it came in 9 floppy disks!. some of the screens were slow, but it was playable. I don't know if it was 8 or 10mhz because the mhz display thing was broken, it showed "19" all the time, but I know that cpu wasn't 19mhz. probably 10mhz. (just to have an idea, I could play fine games like golden axe, prince of persia, maniac mansion, space quest 3 or monkey island 1. that one was slow in some places but totally playable in others).
when I had CGA my first monitor was green monochrome, but I made the big mistake of getting a color monitor. it was horrible!!. CGA looks a lot better in green monochrome!!.
As I understand it, maintaining compatibility with CGA monitors was the reason the majority of EGA games never used anything other than the default 16 color palette, which famously didn't have a suitable flesh color (for Caucasian characters). Every time I see a game where the characters are depicted as having red skin, I instantly know it's an EGA game. This is a shame as EGA does have a color that would be much better for skin, but developers rarely used it.
Hey, you took hours of your time to make a video that people can watch for free and you got a dislike !!! Congratulations, you're now a real youtuber with a random hater and all !!! ^-^
Actually Prince of Persia is a bad game to showcase EGA vs CGA: I mean it's one of those very few games which looks awesome even on such a piece of crap as CGA 😁
Yeah, they weren't a great choice were they? None of the palettes are very nice. I assume they chose highly contrasting colours with business software like spreadsheets in mind rather than gaming.
@@ctrlaltrees yes, but why game developers did not customize those pallets ? they are atrocious, and you can choose from 16 colors ? Is this some kind of hardware limitation for those pallets ?
The palettes were hardcoded due to the limitations of the hardware. There was no way to override them, unfortunately. There were some tricks to get more colours by using the composite output and some computers like the Tandy, PCjr and Amstrads extended the standard CGA colours, but games had to be specifically written for those machines to take advantage of it. Early PC gaming was a bit of a mess, to be honest.
When I had CGA as a kid, I was also always on the lookout for an EGA upgrade! (Then, though, I skipped it and went right to VGA.)
I did this by accident on my PC. I ended up getting an ATI EGA Wonder 800+ card which actually displays hi-res mode EGA on the CGA monitor but it uses interlacing, so you don't want to use it for long periods of time!
Very interesting. And you have so many beautiful IBM goodies still in the box!
Just got my hands on a 5153 this is some great news! Wonderful video thank you!
CGA monitors with a low DPI actually made old EGA games look really good, compared to an actual EGA screen, that often had a higher DPI. The 320x200 resolution actually gave the pixels a rounded edge to them making the game seem more cartoonish vs pixel art.
EGA cards were badly designed to be honest. Even though they had a lot of new features, they were mostly useless and EGA in general was used as a CGA with more RAM that allowed to display 16 colors in CGA modes.
64-color palette was a great idea, but it was limited to 640x350 mode only. It was impossible to change palette in 320x200 or 640x200 modes and 640x350 mode required 256 KB of RAM and special EGA monitor which very few people had back then.
IBM was so disappointed in EGA that their next standard MCGA didn't even support it and was just a CGA with 320x200 256 color mode added on top.
Eventually VGA was made which finally merged all that CGA/EGA/MCGA mess into one and added useful features on top of that.
For example VGA allows to pick custom palette in EGA modes!
Yet still VGA cards lacked useful features like blitter that would not only helped in games, but also would make high-res GUI much more viable. These features started to appear in Windows 95 era, where accelerated 2D become a must.
Don't ask me the specifics of this, because I don't know enough about electronics: This is how we ended up with VGA: My dad (electronics guy and TV repairman by night) tried this and somehow the CGA screen we had simply couldn't handle the EGA output. You could SEE the glorious color graphics, but it was timed differently or something, and the picture would roll, or get squeezed/distorted, etc. He said he knew how to make it compatible and tried replacing some components in the screen and adjusting some stuff. At one point though it all went wrong (or the monitor simply wasn't destined to be clocked this way) and the magic smoke escaped: Killing the monitor beyond repair. Dad went "well, I guess I'm buying a new monitor" and sprung for VGA instead. I definitely didn't complain.
Sounds like you got lucky! Yes, most of the EGA modes are 21kHz whereas CGA is 15kHz, so if your graphics card didn't offer this functionality you'd need a multisync monitor to support both, and they were expensive at the time.
We jokingly called the CGA Crappy Graphics Adapter because even my Apple 2 had 6 color in HGR. Updating the CGA text screen could cause “snow” unless done carefully. It really was a mediocre card. There were a handful of games that pushed the card such as a Pac-Man clone IIRC but that was the exception.
The _8088 MPH_ demo showcases what is possible which is mind blowing.
The VGA was a _real_ nice upgrade compared to the EGA.
That is technoically a TGA/PCjr mode. TGA is pretty much a CGA that can show all colors at all time. The EGA card is sort of running in a TGA fallback mode, that works because hardly any games used the extended palet
Great stuff.
Thanks Bill!
Very interesting.
That's cool! I've got my aunt's old 5160 with the 5153 monitor. The monitor works, but I can no longer get the PC to boot. It powers, the hard drive spins up, but no beeps or display even though the display works. I think it got humidity to it while it was in storage during a couple of moves where the keyboard has gone missing too :( At any rate, if I can get it up and running again one of these days I'm going to try and obtain an EGA card and try this trick out!
Sounds like it could possibly be RAM failure, it's very common in these. I had the same issue with my 5150 when I first got it. It's a fairly big job as the chips are getting hard to get hold of and they're soldered to the motherboard, but certainly not the end of the road for these old machines.
@@ctrlaltrees I need to find another vintage collector near to me and compare some notes with similar hardware. I haven't even touched a soldering iron in years, and I don't know if I have the time or patience to go at it myself right now LOL.
To be picky, ISA is the 16 bit slots in the PC AT. The 8 bit slots in the PC and XT don't have a name, as far as I know
You're right. The slots retroactively became known as "8-bit ISA" after the 16-bit ISA standard came about. It's hard to cover everything in a short video like this but it's an interesting historical note IMO.
In the original period it wasn't too unusual to have VGA upgraded XTs, especially if turbo 8 or 10 MHz. They were still good for some games of that era including Sierra games..
wait the ega have two frecuencys, the first one is the same CGA 15,7 khz, but the second is 21,8 khz, the 5153 can not sincronice with the second. i have a 5153 with a tseng ega 1, works fine.
hello thanks for upload!...a question: " can i operate a Amiga or a C128 on a VGA monitor ?... i wish you a good time and have a nice times..your KrautROckt!er from germany...(sorry for my bad english, i`m a East-kraut ;)
Tell me more about that overclocking solution you’re using.
i'd like to know more about this too
I made a video about it: ruclips.net/video/8oWyogPZ7Bw/видео.html
There's a link in the description of that video to a GitHub repository I created which goes into everything in great detail.
It's a DIY solution from 1985 that adds a second crystal and oscillator chip just to clock the CPU. Currently I'm running at 7.37MHz (up from 4.77). It's a huge improvement with no stability issues so far.
CGA = Completely Gruesome Appearance
I really tried today but I cannot get this to work. I have an IBM XT 268 with an original IBM EGA card and an IBM CGA 5153 monitor. CGA modes do work, EGA modes do not! What exactly will I have to do with the two jumpers and the 4 dipswitches on the IBM EGA card? (The battery buffered Bios, is set to "EGA" via "gsetup", everything else does not seem to work). I'd like to have 16 colors in "prince of persia" instead of 4! Any ideas?
Hi! Sorry to hear you're having problems getting it working. I used the 5153 switch settings from here: minuszerodegrees.net/ibm_ega/ibm_ega_switch_settings.htm
It's been a while since I played it so I can't remember, but does Prince of Persia prompt for the monitor type at startup or does it autodetect? If it asks, you need to select "EGA" of course.
@@ctrlaltrees Thanks for your answer. I know the website of minuszerodegrees, but still no luck. Still does not work. You can type "prince ega" to force ega in prince of persia, but no luck. Maybe my IBM EGA card is broken. I will try another EGA card from a friend......
You get the colors of EGA but can't use the 21.85 kHz Horizontal Sync for 350-lines? So, ega monitors were the first multi sync monitors? as they also supported 15.7kHz.
But very rare to get hold of now?
I used to think CGA looked like such shit back in the day, now I'm nostalgic for it!
Haha, same!
Dark Ages... ^___^ ... Dark Ages...
I'm guessing KQ4 is out of the question?
It looks like KQ4 requires a minimum of 80286 CPU @ 8MHz, so I think it would really struggle.
@@ctrlaltrees I played it on my XT (clone, 640kb of ram, CGA card), using CGA, and it came in 9 floppy disks!. some of the screens were slow, but it was playable.
I don't know if it was 8 or 10mhz because the mhz display thing was broken, it showed "19" all the time, but I know that cpu wasn't 19mhz. probably 10mhz.
(just to have an idea, I could play fine games like golden axe, prince of persia, maniac mansion, space quest 3 or monkey island 1. that one was slow in some places but totally playable in others).
when I had CGA my first monitor was green monochrome, but I made the big mistake of getting a color monitor. it was horrible!!. CGA looks a lot better in green monochrome!!.
Ha! Can't say I disagree... 😅
simcga
@@marchelomarchol5367 I remember simcga was used on Hercules cards to run CGA games
As I understand it, maintaining compatibility with CGA monitors was the reason the majority of EGA games never used anything other than the default 16 color palette, which famously didn't have a suitable flesh color (for Caucasian characters). Every time I see a game where the characters are depicted as having red skin, I instantly know it's an EGA game. This is a shame as EGA does have a color that would be much better for skin, but developers rarely used it.
Hey, you took hours of your time to make a video that people can watch for free and you got a dislike !!! Congratulations, you're now a real youtuber with a random hater and all !!! ^-^
Haha, probably one of the bots I keep reporting, it doesn't bother me 🤣
Actually Prince of Persia is a bad game to showcase EGA vs CGA: I mean it's one of those very few games which looks awesome even on such a piece of crap as CGA 😁
I aways wondering why CGA use those ugly combination of colors
Yeah, they weren't a great choice were they? None of the palettes are very nice. I assume they chose highly contrasting colours with business software like spreadsheets in mind rather than gaming.
@@ctrlaltrees yes, but why game developers did not customize those pallets ? they are atrocious, and you can choose from 16 colors ? Is this some kind of hardware limitation for those pallets ?
The palettes were hardcoded due to the limitations of the hardware. There was no way to override them, unfortunately. There were some tricks to get more colours by using the composite output and some computers like the Tandy, PCjr and Amstrads extended the standard CGA colours, but games had to be specifically written for those machines to take advantage of it. Early PC gaming was a bit of a mess, to be honest.
@@ctrlaltrees this is so stubid to hard code those ugly pallets :(
There is a trick to get 6 colors from CGA. Only a couple games used it, such California Games. I only noticed very recently.