The Graphics Chip Chronicles | Hacker News Reader

The Graphics Chip Chronicles

electronicdesign.com

47 pointsnsajko17 comments

It would be hard to overstate the importance of VGA in the history of personal computing. The original IBM PC's graphics capabilities (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter) were laughable. The PC/AT's 16-color EGA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter) chip was better, but still lagged behind what could be done with a machine like an Amiga. It wasn't until the introduction of VGA that the PC platform had a really industry-leading graphics capability.

VGA made the IBM PC into a credible multimedia machine, which led to the obsolescence of the "home computer" vs. "business computer" distinction as the PC could now sell equally well into both categories. And that led to the world where a "computer" was defined as "an Intel x86 machine running Microsoft Windows."

If one wants to have a glimpse how much "fun" it was,

"PC Intern: System Programming : The Encyclopedia of DOS Programming Know How"

https://www.amazon.com/PC-Intern-Programming-Encyclopedia-De...

With examples in Assembly (MASM and TASM), QuickBasic, Turbo and Quick C, Turbo and Quick Pascal.

One of the "what ifs" I often have when looking back at this period is that if CGA/EGA had fully supported user-defined palettes(the actual support for it is "in some modes, kinda", with the original CGA monitor design being a major factor in why it isn't available), and the PCjr/Tandy sound became standard in the mid-80s, the audiovisual capabilities would have been almost exactly on par with the Atari ST, which was viewed as the direct competitor to the Amiga when it launched. And in that case, would the market have settled on the PC even earlier? The games being made in the late 80's were generally not memory-intensive enough to support assets over 4-bit color; it was the fixed palette and reliance on beeper sound that made PC games look and sound ugly compared to other platforms, with the raw horsepower being a secondary consideration, though the rapid advancement of x86 made it appealing on that front too.

6-ish bits of PCM "emulation" via PWM in games like Pinball Fantasies (admittedly only appearing in the '90s) showed that the PC speaker is not the worst that could happen in terms of sound emitting apparatus :)

(Although a dedicated TI or Yamaha sound chip like in the PCjr/Tandy/Adlib cards would've definitely helped with adoption. But alas, the PC was intended for Serious Business use cases, not for home use or gaming)

EGA had credible support for indexed color. It had 4 bit indexes into 6 bit RRGGBB color. Honestly, it was pretty good.

CGA was craptastic though. It would have been so much better if it would have just supported 2 bit indexed color into its 4 bit palette. Literally night and day better. I legitimately don't understand why they didn't go that route, the circuit would be trivial.

You could pick the happy color palette (red, green, yellow, black) or the boring color palette (cyan, magenta, white, black). games were so dull.

Even 90's web pages were more visually appealing.

Don't forget CGA composite. Featuring both direct color as well as artifact color. CGA was better than RGB-only usage suggested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors#CGA

I personally never saw CGA hooked to composite, just to the IBM color monitor with the shiny tube.

While plain VGA was certainly still a step up, it lacked hardware support for scrolling/sprites AFAIK. Also the PC speaker was abysmal for sound, the Amiga had it beat in that area as well. You needed a SoundBlaster card or similar to get decent sound, and had the set the Address, Port and IRQ in nearly even game to get one working.

I feel like it wasn't really until the late 486/P75/P90 era and the PCI bus, when SVGA with 2D acceleration became the norm and PnP was possible for the SB16 cards that the PC really became more competitive or pulled ahead of machines like the Amiga. And all that fancy graphics and sound hardware was expensive too.

I think everything about the original PC was a quick design by a limited number of people.

I still remember the blinking of the CGA card (instead of snow on the screen because of simultaneous access to video memory by the card + the cpu, they just turned off video to scroll the screen)

On the other hand, I remember the MGA and long-phosphor green display, which was very easy on the eyes. Only a Hercules graphics card playing spacewar was nicer.

By the time IBM got up to speed with the PC and design and the OS... nobody wanted it because IBM lawyers tried to lock everything down (OS/2 and microchannel).

Great topic :) ! Horrible horrible website :(!

The parts where "O" probably means "0" were very bad.

Hijacks back for a newsletter sign up. This is the kind of shit that makes my blood boil.

the "Links to PDF" is a "fill out a form and we'll email it to you"; and apparently all of volume two is forthcoming. I'd probably like to read it but this site has certainly ensured I wont read it there.

Absolutely awful, unreadable web site, and I am unfortunately not exaggerating - an advertisement actually half-covers the small section of content that is actually even visible on my iPad, meaning even if I wanted to slog my way through the 'get as many as views as possible' page-by-page design, I couldn't even read the content.

Shameful. How did this make it up to page 1?

82786 was a strange part. I programmed it for one product. As I remember it was mostly set up for windowing with a handful of primitives and not really worth the trouble. We probably should have used an ASIC.

Also used the 34010 and 34020.

I do remember the fuss when VGA came out. The hardware guys took apart one of each of the PS2s. Nobody cared about microchannel some interest in VGA.

Should have been titled: The (PC) Graphics Chip Chronicles

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