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How much did cost a genuine IBM VGA card in 1987/88?

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carlos12

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I've being googling but no luck. The closest I found is the value of early ATI clones, sold by between 400-500$ at the time, but I'm quite curious about how expensive would be in 1987/88 upgrading, for example, a PS/2 Model 30 8086 from MCGA to a state of art VGA card.

Thanks!
 
IBM didn't market it as VGA, but rather "IBM Personal System/2 Display Adapter", sometimes shortened to just "IBM Display Adapter"

$595
 
The fun part is that IBM's ISA VGA board isn't even 100% IBM VGA compatible: https://archive.org/details/PC_Tech_Journal_vol06_n11/page/n59/mode/2up?view=theater (in the sense that it doesn't behave exactly the same as the PS/2's VGA chipset).

That article goes to show that 16-bit clones outperforming IBM's board were available pretty early on. There are more comparisons in the following issue of PCTJ if you're curious.
 
I know in 1990 the machine I worked in in 92/93 doing desktop publishing had a Wyse ET4000AX. I know that card with the 21" greyscale monitor was over $3000. I still have the card, had to replace the ramdacs not long ago, but still works great! Its a weird card with dual output, VGA and dual BNC. Wish I kept the monitor but I recycled it 5 years ago thinking I never want it. :(
 
Timo W. said:
Because it was MCGA at that time, not VGA. MCGA quickly evolved into VGA during 1987 with more screen modes added.
Click to expand...
No, VGA and MCGA were introduced simultaneously with the first PS/2 models in April '87. Model 30 had MCGA; 50, 60 and 80 had VGA.

MCGA didn't evolve into VGA; they were completely different chipsets using different technologies, even if some video modes are the same on the BIOS level. They were developed by two different teams in parallel (see https://ardent-tool.com/video/MCGA.html#Teams - lots of other interesting info there).

The "IBM Personal System/2 Display Adapter" was for adding VGA (not MCGA) compatibility to ISA machines, otherwise there'd hardly be a point installing it in the PS/2 model 30 or 25. See the PC Tech Journal article above.
 
Plasma said:
IBM didn't market it as VGA, but rather "IBM Personal System/2 Display Adapter", sometimes shortened to just "IBM Display Adapter"

$595
Click to expand...
That's about right as I paid $350 for an EGA card at about the same time. VGA was going for around $600 back then and was big with the CAD/CAM folks.
 
I wonder if anyone (other than perhaps PS/2 owners) ever bought the IBM VGA card? And if so why? IIRC it did not take long at all for the clones to appear, as several good EGA chipsets were already in production at the time and VGA is (mostly) just "EGA with a RAMDAC"...
 
kdr said:
I wonder if anyone (other than perhaps PS/2 owners) ever bought the IBM VGA card? And if so why? IIRC it did not take long at all for the clones to appear, as several good EGA chipsets were already in production at the time and VGA is (mostly) just "EGA with a RAMDAC"...
Click to expand...
I had an IBM 5160 XT that came with one
 
The IBM original standard VGA was first introduced as integrated graphics with the release of the IBM PS/2 series in April 1987.
(However, IBM PS/2 Model 30 has MCGA applied to the built-in graphics.)

"IBM Personal System/2 Display Adapter" is an external graphics card that adopts IBM standard VGA, and comes in two types: 16bit MCA slot and 8bit ISA slot.
This can be seen as the performance limit of the built-in graphics is enhanced by the processing power of the external graphics.
In PS/2 8530, performance is upgraded from MCGA->VGA, and processing performance is improved by VRAM or controller chip.
This is also true for models such as the PS/2 8550, 8560, and 8580.
 
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