Wanted: EGA card for IBM 5150

Just curious if anyone has a working EGA 8bit ISA card that would work with an IBM 5150.

My 5150 has a couple of "upgrades" currently, with a Tiny Turbo 286 8Mhz card, a 20MB 3.5" MFM drive and a total of 640K RAM. I'm surprised at what it can do, honestly. I am finding that some games require EGA support, and for now an inexpensive EGA card (output to my 5153... which is supposed to work, though it won't look as good as a full EGA screen) is a good alternative to buying another entire system.

Will any EGA card work in this situation? Are there any I should avoid or any I should look for specifically if I look elsewhere?

I'd prefer a card that had multiple connections as well... a composite video output would be nice, just in case my monitor dies for some reason. If a card exists with both EGA and a serial port that'd be awesome but I've not seen any myself.

Trades would work for me too, and I have lots of stuff in this thread, as well as modern PC stuff, so just ask if you have something that'd work for me and need anything as trade.

Thanks!

I have a Paradise EGA 480 for sale if that's of interest.

FWIW, the RCA connectors on EGA cards are *not* for composite video as they are on CGA cards.

Ozzuneoj said:

My 5150 has a couple of "upgrades" currently, with a Tiny Turbo 286 8Mhz card, a 20MB 3.5" MFM drive and a total of 640K RAM. I'm surprised at what it can do, honestly.

Click to expand...

That's because it's now a 286 instead of a 5150 ;-)

I am finding that some games require EGA support, and for now an inexpensive EGA card (output to my 5153... which is supposed to work, though it won't look as good as a full EGA screen) is a good alternative to buying another entire system.

Click to expand...

You want to look for a card that specifically advertised being able to connect to CGA monitors, such as the ATI EGA Wonder, or a "tween" card like the ATI VGA Wonder XL which had a 9-pin and a 15-pin jack on it. Both cards, and other cards with similar functionality, will allow you to display 320x200x16 EGA graphics. (A few of them will even "interlace" the higher-res 640x350x16 mode to get it to display on the 5153, but it is just a gimmick and isn't really usable.)

Be warned, however, that EGA is 2x to 4x the memory of CGA, and games that perform well on CGA might have slowdown on your expanded system, especially if they didn't write good EGA code.

Heh, a 286 is okay with me. I'm not really a purist when it comes to this particular type of computer. When I was a kid I played with an VIC 20, a Tandy 1000 HX, and an Atari 130XE (I think), but didn't have a "large", easily upgradeable computer like this until my brother got a Packard Bell in 1994\1995 (not sure of the specs at the time, but I think it was a 33Mhz 386 and 4MB of RAM... probably).

I'm just having a blast playing with this thing and would like to be able to eke as much out of it as possible without having to resort to using my cobbled Pentium system. Some day I'll likely pick up a good 386 board and properly utilize the HUGE, gorgeous 386-era turbo-button-equipped full tower that my Pentium AT system is currently residing in. At that time I'll be less inclined to upgrade such a slow system as the 5150, but for now it'll have to be a sort-of-286 with as many bells and whistles as I can cram into it on the cheap (the 5150 with the 5153 only cost me $75 and some gas).

As for the EGA cards though, I've read this thread and some others:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?21910-5153-(not-54!)-with-EGA

And it sounds, to me, like this isn't that big of a deal. It sounds like just about any EGA card is capable of being hooked up to a CGA monitor, and very very few EGA-enabled games (that I have any hope of running on this meager system) will require the high-res 640x350x16 mode that my monitor doesn't support. I know it won't look as good as a real EGA screen, but I don't have one of those and one would likely cost as much as I spent on this whole setup.

From my searching, it seems like ATI's EGA cards are quite expensive... like $75-$200. Sadly, that's way out of my price range, and probably not practical for this system anyway.

Is there any reason that getting an original IBM EGA card, a Paradise EGA card, or some other one wouldn't work? All I really need is for games to see EGA capability (at least the modes supported by the monitor) and output something with more colors (and less cyan) to my screen without it causing problems.

I tried playing Neuromancer and once I finally guessed right that a /c switch gives you video mode options (it defaults to EGA which doesn't work on my system), I chose CGA and its really obvious that the game was intended to be played with more colors, as it was very hard to figure out what I was looking at. I don't mind CGA in Alleycat, and games that are made specifically for CGA but if the computer can handle some that can look better, I'd spend a little bit at least to make it happen. Funny thing is, I have one or two 16bit ISA cards that have 9-pin EGA\CGA connections on them, but nothing at all for an 8bit slot.

A lot of those 16 bit cards will work in an 8 bit slot.

KC9UDX said:

A lot of those 16 bit cards will work in an 8 bit slot.

Click to expand...

Oy, why didn't I think of that? I've done it with PCI-Express cards...

Time to start digging through my stash again!

Is there a particular slot on the 5150 board that has better clearance for 16bit cards? Just looking at a picture, the last slot appears to have less in the way.

Ozzuneoj said:

Sadly, that's way out of my price range, and probably not practical for this system anyway.

Click to expand...

Well, if you are upgrading your system so much, you might as well find a VGA card and slap that in; it will run CGA/EGA/VGA games (ie. everything) and you can use any 4:3 VGA monitor you want And it's easier/cheaper to find a 16-bit VGA card that works in an 8-bit slot; I'm sure some people on this forum might have some available.

Digging through my box of "too old to use" graphics cards that I've held on to for some reason, I actually found FOUR 16bit ISA graphics cards. One has EGA and VGA, the others are all VGA. A Sceptre Trident TVGA8900B card (with switches on the back and the additional connector on the top edge; with some empty memory sockets), a smaller and more modern looking Trident TVGA8900D, an OAK oti037c with EGA and VGA ports (though its missing the back plate, and I cant find any documentation to know how to set the jumpers\switches... I hope its not dead), and an AST VGA Plus that needs cleaned up but looks pretty nice.

Since I have the 5153, I'll probably be sticking to EGA for the 5150, but I do have a nice old HP P1230 (Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB) 22" CRT on my main system... and it'd be nice to see some old games played on it using vintage hardware.

The OTI037C is known to work in a 5150, so you should have at least one working card. It may take a jumper/switch setting for 8 bit use though.

I have an OTI037C based card with dip switches and both the 15 pin analog and 9 pin digital monitor connections on the way, to use with my $50 5150 I just picked up off eBay. I figured it was cheaper to use a VGA monitor with it than to buy a 5151 and hope it survived shipping...

Unless someone in the Reno area has a 5151 for sale.

I did pick up a cheap 9" monochrome VGA monitor a couple months ago, I might use it on my 5150, since it has a power cable that will plug right in to the power supply of the 5150.

My 16-bit OAK VGA card worked just fine in my XT.

I just tried my OAK card (after stealing a back plate off of a card with dual DVI... they actually line up pretty well!), and after much tinkering, it does work.

Thankfully, this thread discusses just about the same thing I was trying to do, and it saved me some hassle. My card is pretty much identical to the one linked to in that thread (I LOVE that site) and mine also seems to have the opposite settings for JP2 (8bit vs 16bit operation) compared to what the site says.

So, the card works with the output set to CGA, but it doesn't seem to work when choosing EGA modes in games. In some games the colors will change briefly and the game will load (music plays) but the screen never displays the game. In Neuromancer I can run "neuro /c" to get the video mode menu, but when I choose EGA and then start the game, it stays on the video mode screen with the blinking cursor but the game is actually playing in the background. Its like the card is just refusing to do anything with the EGA graphics from the games.

I changed over to VGA mode and hooked it up to my 26" Asus 16:10 LCD and works fine there. Most games seem to work in VGA mode (some still refuse to load... but that could be anything), and it looks surprisingly decent on my LCD... but its just not the same. I like using the little CRT.

I'm a little bummed that EGA mode doesn't seem to work on this card when configured for a CGA screen (its not the monitor since it still displays the previous screen without any distortion), but I'll deal with it. I did clean up my 5150 thoroughly today though, and it looks pretty great now. It has some dings in it, but looks like it never spent a single day out in a garage. Now the problem is, what on earth am I going to do with it?

Ozzuneoj said:

I'm a little bummed that EGA mode doesn't seem to work on this card when configured for a CGA screen (its not the monitor since it still displays the previous screen without any distortion), but I'll deal with it.

Click to expand...

Presumably, by "EGA mode", you specifically mean modes 0Dh and OEh per the table at [here].

CheckIt Diagnostics has a video test function where it steps through the video modes relevant to the card/monitor configuration. It would be interesting to see if modes 0Dh and OEh display properly via CheckIt.

modem7 said:

Presumably, by "EGA mode", you specifically mean modes 0Dh and OEh per the table at [here].

CheckIt Diagnostics has a video test function where it steps through the video modes relevant to the card/monitor configuration. It would be interesting to see if modes 0Dh and OEh display properly via CheckIt.

Click to expand...

Ah, I didn't know Checkit did that. I did run Checkit to see what it said about the video mode, and on the screen where it gives an overview of the system it actually says "CGA" for the display type and it reports only 16K of video memory. I don't know how accurate that is.

As for the mode, I really don't know what modes the games are using. It seems that the documentation and system requirements for games from the 80s is nearly non-existent. Since the monitor isn't going out of range, I'm inclined to think that its not the card trying to push the monitor to do something it cant. I read in a few places that the 640x350 EGA mode was uncommon, so I figured that I wouldn't run into it anyway. Is there a way to tell what games use what display modes?

Also, here is the card:
https://goo.gl/photos/ruBrWJiW5UdLCejk6
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/A-B/BEHAVIOR-TECH-COMPUTER-CORPORATION-VGA-1515C.html

I will run the tests in Checkit in a bit. Thanks for the help!

Checkit 2.1 and Checkit 3.0 don't seem to recognize any EGA hardware and are only seeing 16K of RAM. As such, they don't test any modes beyond 06h (awesome table btw).

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, if this is normal or if the card is having problems. It displays CGA graphics just fine in this configuration, and it outputs VGA fine as well (when I switch SW1 to vga 16in color).

I have SW1 set to OFF ON ON OFF (CGA monitor), JP1 is set to disable IRQ2 (not really sure what effect this has) and JP2 is apparently set to 8bit mode, not 16bit (even though the documentation shows it backward).

The card passes all tests in Checkit with no errors of any kind.

Do you get EGA modes on the VGA out in VGA mode?

KC9UDX said:

Do you get EGA modes on the VGA out in VGA mode?

Click to expand...

Yes, it looks like I do. In checkit it successfully tests all the way up to 12h. No problems at all... which is surprising considering the "new" (8 year old) LCD monitor its hooked up to. I had problems running this thing on a Matrox PCI card from the late 90s and yet it displays EGA modes fed to it by a 26 year old graphics card in a 30 year old PC.

I wonder if this particular card skips the "make EGA modes work on CGA screens" and simply switches off all EGA\VGA capabilities when the switches are set to CGA. That's what it seems like to me... which is a bummer, but oh well, it was basically a free card.

In my IBM AT, I have an IBM EGA card.
I reconfigured it (via switches at end of card) for a CGA monitor.
I then replaced the EGA monitor attached to the IBM AT with a CGA one (IBM 5153), just to be sure.
I then powered up the AT.
I then ran CheckIt 2.1
The [SysInfo][Configuration] screen showed the video adapter being "EGA", and it recognising the 256 KB of video RAM that I have fitted to that card.
I then ran the graphic video tests ([Tests][Video][Graphics]). As expected, the screens shown were for modes: 04h/05h/06h/0Dh/0Eh

So, everything as I expected.

Ozzuneoj said:

I wonder if this particular card skips the "make EGA modes work on CGA screens" and simply switches off all EGA\VGA capabilities when the switches are set to CGA. That's what it seems like to me... which is a bummer, but oh well, it was basically a free card.

Click to expand...

It certainly appears that way.

Bah... too bad!

I was really hoping this would be the card I needed to make the 5150+5153 combo as useful as possible. I really don't want to use my LCD (or my other CRT for that matter) with this vintage system. Kind of feels like dropping a vintage motor into a newer car... under the hood it may be a classic but driving it just feels too modern.

I don't know if it makes sense to drop $30-$40 on a card for such a goal (since I'm poor), but it sounds like I'd pretty much have to if I want to get a bit more out of games on this thing.

So, I guess the thread is still relevant. If anyone has a card that they know will do this, I'm looking. I'd prefer trades if there's anything you need!

Ozzuneoj said:

I read in a few places that the 640x350 EGA mode was uncommon, so I figured that I wouldn't run into it anyway.

Click to expand...

It makes sense to me that mode 10h was uncommon in the early days of EGA, but not in the later years. If I am a games developer doing my best to outdo my competition in the EGA arena, I will want to use mode 10h, putting in the game's requirements section, something like, "EGA with 128K minimum video RAM" (or 256K if that is the requirement). Maybe someone with actual experience (I have never been a games player) will comment further on this.

I'm confused. You're setting the switches to CGA in order to get EGA modes, but there are switch settings for EGA in that chart. But I only got a quick glance at it, so I'm assuming you know something I don't.