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So what good is EGA anyway?

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Unknown_K

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The PGA thread got me thinking about using an EGA video card in my XT clone (should have 2 different ones) and my NEC 3ds monitor currently on my Amiga 1200. Never had or used EGA (maybe in college I did and forgot about it) and I forgot about the nec 3ds being CGA/EGA/VGA so I can try it out (should have an adapter cable to go to 9 pin here somewhere).

What software (outside of Win <=3.0) can make use of EGA modes (including games)? Is it worth the trouble of bothering?
 
LOL! That's right. There were "proof of age-type" questions now you come to mention it.

Tez
 
We do have search engines! Come to think of it, the average 12 year old could probably answer those questions more easily than the average over 40 now.
 
nige the hippy said:
We do have search engines! Come to think of it, the average 12 year old could probably answer those questions more easily than the average over 40 now.
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I know, but I don't allways have wifi availble at home, so running between the computer room in the attic and my room for each question may be a little exhausting :rolleyes: .
 
Short answer:EGA is worth it over CGA, and was supported by a lot of software.

Short answer:EGA is worth it over CGA, and was supported by a lot of software.

Well, given how frustrated I was about not having EGA capability on my Dad's XT, exactly because so many of the games back in the day supported it and looked so much better with it, I can tell you that it definitely matters over CGA. Those limited 4-color palettes were so depressing, and made the 16-color EGA modes look very bright and lush in comparison.

But since you are going to hook the machine up to a NEC MultiSync monitor anyway, a VGA card would of course be even better, while remaining downwards compatible with EGA.

But to simply answer your question if there was a lot of software (including games) out there that made use of EGA modes: absolutely. The 640x350 high resolution mode wasn't used in many games, but it was supported in quite a few drawing programs and other graphical applications. And there were a few games that did support 650x350 at 16 colors, such as a very nice Mahjongg game. And as for 320x200 16 color mode: that was supported in many games, not just the Sierra games.

There were also some games that were EGA-only, and would not work on CGA, such as Captain Comic and Commander Keen.
 
digger said:
Well, given how frustrated I was about not having EGA capability on my Dad's XT, exactly because so many of the games back in the day supported it and looked so much better with it, I can tell you that it definitely matters over CGA. Those limited 4-color palettes were so depressing, and made the 16-color EGA modes look very bright and lush in comparison.

But since you are going to hook the machine up to a NEC MultiSync monitor anyway, a VGA card would of course be even better, while remaining downwards compatible with EGA.

But to simply answer your question if there was a lot of software (including games) out there that made use of EGA modes: absolutely. The 640x350 high resolution mode wasn't used in many games, but it was supported in quite a few drawing programs and other graphical applications. And there were a few games that did support 650x350 at 16 colors, such as a very nice Mahjongg game. And as for 320x200 16 color mode: that was supported in many games, not just the Sierra games.

There were also some games that were EGA-only, and would not work on CGA, such as Captain Comic and Commander Keen.
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You are correct there, but games usually run slower on an XT in EGA-mode than CGA-mode. The reason is because it has to move more data to update the screen.

Hwever, if you can live with the not-too-significant slowdown, EGA/VGA is definely worth it.
 
I've been using a paradise VGA CARD on my XT. 4088 and 4089 models can work in 8-bit and 16-bit slots. The nice thing is you can enable CGA, ega, vga, and hercules modes but still use a modern VGA moinitor. 90% of the time I use the CGA mode if the game supports it because of the slowdown in EGA mode. Examples would be starfleet 2 and starflight 1&2.
 
nige the hippy said:
We do have search engines! Come to think of it, the average 12 year old could probably answer those questions more easily than the average over 40 now.
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Especially if they find the key combination that will let you bypass the questions...

Seriously, I would recommend using a VGA card over an EGA card unless you had some software that worked on EGA but did not on VGA. Due to performance concerns, the best advantage of an EGA card over a CGA card is the elimination of snow in 80-column text mode.
 
The EGA was the best thing since the Herc Plus card. I've still got both of my Everex 8-bit EGA cards, which had extended modes and fonts (couild even do VGA mode 12H, 640x480). The same cards will also work with standard MDA-type and CGA-type monitors, albeit not with the extended modes.

I didn't drop them until VGA came along.
 
I think one of my EGA cards is an Everex (have the manual for it I think will dig it up).

Pretty sure I have a Paradise 8 bit VGA card but why bother putting that into an XT class system.

Is the 320x240 16 color EGA mode the same as the Tandy 16 color CGA then? I have a Tandy 1000 and 1000 HX that I snagged for CGA gaming.
 
Unknown_K said:
Is the 320x240 16 color EGA mode the same as the Tandy 16 color CGA then? I have a Tandy 1000 and 1000 HX that I snagged for CGA gaming.
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No, There is no display adapter that emulates the PCjr/Tandy1000 modes (I don't know of any at least). IIRC, the PCjr/Tandy1000 uses system-RAM as video-RAM, and might use some I/O ports that are occupied on the PC/XT/AT.
 
Unknown_K said:
What software (outside of Win <=3.0) can make use of EGA modes (including games)? Is it worth the trouble of bothering?
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Most commercial games from 1986-1991 support it (except for some budget titles that were CGA only). The 320x200x16 was invariably used because games also had to support CGA and Tandy graphics. The 640x350 mode was mostly used by applications and shareware/freeware games (SimCity was one of the few commercial ones to use it). There was also the 640x200x16 mode, used by relatively few games (eg. Thexder and Falcon AT) and applications. And finally, you had the 640x350 mono mode, which was not used by any games.

I don't see the point in having a real EGA card, because unlike CGA, EGA software rarely has any compatibility problems with VGA. CGA also has the composite output and light-pen connector, two features that don't exist on VGA (don't know if any EGA cards actually had a LP connector, although they're supposed to). EGA on the other hand doesn't really do anything that VGA can't. EGA monitors are also hard to find.

per said:
Only one problem is that you have to be about 40 years old to sucessfully answer the questions required to start the game...
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Just press ALT-X (CTRL-ALT-X in the VGA version) to skip the questions.

per said:
No, There is no display adapter that emulates the PCjr/Tandy1000 modes (I don't know of any at least). IIRC, the PCjr/Tandy1000 uses system-RAM as video-RAM, and might use some I/O ports that are occupied on the PC/XT/AT.
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The Tandy modes are basically enhanced CGA. They have video memory that's interlaced just like CGA and Hercules (all of which are 6845-based), whereas EGA graphics are planar and work very differently.
 
I figured EGA 320x240x16 color and Tandy extended 16 color CGA worked differently, but can you see any difference between both modes in a game that supported both?
 
per said:
Problably not.
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Just theorizing here, but there may be differences: PCjr outputs 4 bits of color (RGBI) and EGA outputs 6 (RGBR'G'B'), so the 16 colors you can see on an EGA you can pick freely from a 64-color palette. There's also hardware panning/scrolling on EGA.
I don't remember if those features were actually used by CGA/PCjr/EGA games, though...
 
The text on an EGA screen is much superior to CGA text.
I have EGA installed on all of my vintage PC's , just find
the CGA too hard on my eyes :)

And some games that support EGA, like SIMCITY look really
nice on EGA, almost as good as VGA.
 
Marrr said:
Just theorizing here, but there may be differences: PCjr outputs 4 bits of color (RGBI) and EGA outputs 6 (RGBR'G'B'), so the 16 colors you can see on an EGA you can pick freely from a 64-color palette. There's also hardware panning/scrolling on EGA.
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You can only use the extra colors in 350-line mode. The 200-line modes are limited to the base 16 colors because they have to be able to work on a CGA monitor. There's no visual difference with the Tandy modes. I never heard of EGA having hardware scrolling either.

mikey99 said:
And some games that support EGA, like SIMCITY look really nice on EGA, almost as good as VGA.
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That's because SimCity uses the 640x350 mode, which was hardly ever seen in commercial games. It also can use the VGA 640x480 mono mode, in which the graphics (unsurprisingly) look almost identical to the Mac version of SC.
 
Fallo said:
I never heard of EGA having hardware scrolling either.
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I think Xenon 2 Megablast uses this feature. If not, why does it require a card with 256KB of video RAM to run in EGA mode?
BTW: could somebody with both PCjr and EGA please try running that game on both? If there are any visible differences between those two in 320x200x16, I expect them to show up here.
 
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