LGR - Installing an 8-bit EGA Card on an IBM 5154
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- Installing and demonstrating an Auva HEGA-II EGA video card from 1988! Combined with an IBM XT and a 5154 monitor, this makes for some prime PC-DOS v3.3 gaming.
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● Music used in order of appearance:
"Ice Crystals"
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Probably the reason it is faster has to do with how CGA's memory is addressed. It requires a lot more CPU time to figure out where to put things on the screen. EGA is more logical and laid out very simple.
+The 8-bit Guy I love your videos!
+The 8-Bit Guy That seems to be the case! I've also read that EGA has some rudimentary blitting, whereas CGA was more or less 100% frame writing to VRAM.
+Lazy Game Reviews I didn't know about the blitting. Oh.. another reason I just now thought of. Early CGA cards had a problem with "snow" on the screen when writes were performed at certain times, so some software would attempt to avoid this by timing the writes better, also slowing it down. They probably did this on any CGA card, not knowing whether it was an old or new one.
Ahhh how lovely. David The 8-Bit Master, and Lazy Game Clint. The two most enjoyable, and informative vintage 80s computer enthusiasts on the Tube in one comment thread. I know you have collaborated with Obsolete Geek before David, and you rocked that Fairchild F overview. It would be awesome to see you guys put your brains together for a video at some point as well, although I know the distance is much larger for you two than it was for your all Texan collab.
+Lazy Game Reviews EGA and up adapters have latches that allow you to control which planes of video memory are being read/written to, so the trick was that you could write multiple pixels at a time, one in each plane, though you usually had to develop your game around it for optimal performance. I used this trick myself in a DOS game I made for a Mini Ludum Dare event a while back: ludumdare.com/compo/minild-52/comment-page-1/?action=preview&uid=36171
LGR yelling at his PC about the unbelievable date made me chuckle.
You've got 50K RAM more than you need, Dude.
That's gnarly!
why do you have so many subs ??
+Killer.exe Oh, hello, Miss Ayanami.
Is gnarly good or bad?
Max Gnarly means to go beyond perfection, beyond extreme and even beyond radical.
+Eve Sparkle ok that makes sense thanks :)
"I think I read somewhere that it was" accurate description of working with old computers.
Haha "You've got 50K RAM more than you need, Dude. That's Gnarly!"
That's the best thing I've ever seen a computer say.
I just want to say thank you for peaking my interest in computer technology. I know it's by chance that I found your channel, but it wasn't by chance that I became interested due to how interesting you made it seem. And it is! I applied and got accepted into a STEM Academy class for Computer Systems Technology for my senior year of high school and I couldn't be more excited and thankful of you and your work! I love watching your videos and I cannot wait to learn more about computers! Thanks a million!!
How did the CST class go?
Oh, the nostalgia. I remember playing Treasure Mountain as a kid! Thanks for showing it on LGR!
"You've got 50k RAM more than you need, Dude.
That's gnarly!"
Ahh that DOS 640K mem space, how we miss you.... sorta. ;)
Man, and people complain that some AMD cards were ten inches long...
My dad had a 386 PC with an EGA monitor when I was a little kid, and I always remember the clicking sounds the monitor would make when switching resolutions. I had never heard any computer monitor do that before, plus in text mode and 640x350 graphics mode the resolution was higher than anything I'd seen. It wasn't until 1992 that we finally upgraded to VGA.
I had a monochrome VGA monitor. One summer I was able to borrow a Colour Super VGA monitor from my dad's college and so I got to try out my 8514 card (I had an IBM PS/2 50Z with an 8514 and had never had the chance to use it!). Turns out Super VGA back then could mean as little as 800x600 so when I hit with 1024x768 it went crazy and burned a line into phosphor. I still feel guilty to this day that the monitor went back to the college with a screen burn like that but nobody ever pulled me up for it!
hearing louie louie, in any form makes me a happy camper.
So much nostalgia in these colors and sounds, my friend used to have IBM PC AT, at the time we have some crazy obsession with everything basketball, we used to play Lakers Vs. Celtics on the PC and i was really good at it, then play basketball outside and every Thursday watch an NBA game on local channel, i remember the CGA colors then moving to EGA was mind blowing experience! from 4 to 16 colors! life was simple back then ... Thank you sir for this video.
There is something ASMR about the way he narrates these videos... :-)
Very soothing......
+Phrenomythic I wonder if there's an ASMR video that consist of 10 hours of an old IBM XT just sat there, switched on, with a user just silently working on it.
The click of the Type M, the whirr of the fan, the rattle and hum of the MFM hard drive...
+GeoNeilUK If there isn't, there should be one! If there is, sign me on! Nothing like the delicious sounds and experience of old hardware. I am quite sure LGR Clint would agree!
LGR surely must have a secret second career as a voiceover artist. If not, the industry is all the poorer for it.
GeoNeilUK one of the reasons I watch these videos are the sounds that bring back memories
I played the Macintosh version of Treasure Mountain (and the space one) in early grade school! Neat! I graduated from high school in 2010 by the way, so clearly our school district was holding on to older machines.
Thank you for finally letting me know the name of Treasure Mountain I played that back in school and could not for the life of me remember what the name of it was.
I love how this ~30 year old stuff still works. Nowadays cards often give in after 2-3 years as if they were manufactured that way so you buy the new model... Good video, loved the message about having more memory than needed. Gnarly! xD
Subscribed. All these old IBM machines are some solid nerd porn.
Man, that looks flawless! Gotta love what you can achieve with one simple upgrade.
Pls help wil this bottleneck GTX 1080? Thx.
+Crunk Playa69 You've got 6291506K RAM more than you need, Dude.
Thx u.
+moosemaimer Gnarly!
+Lazy Game Reviews Dude I've played this game FOREVER in a nes clone I had, down here in South America. To finally see it in its true form is outstanding, thanks again LGR you fucking rule.
Rem ko i kno cant wait to try it
I love your DOS-game and retro-PC reviews! Hope your new place have room for even more classic setups.
I had the 12mhz version of this back around 87. ega, 20mb hard drive. I still had it in the early 90's and that's when I installed my first sound card. Brought home the adlib, realized it didn't do voices (no dac if remember right) exchanged it the next day for a sound blaster. I was playing Ultima 6 on that same pc a year or so earlier. Spent at least 6 months in that. Some of the best time I ever put into a video game. Man I was living dreams in a way that I just can't seem to anymore. Whenever i ask myself if the games really were better, or if I was just more "into it" cuz I was younger, I settle for "it must be something in between".
6:46 "I'm feeling kinda lazy." *Looks at channel name* Makes sense to me.
6:55 Oooo, those old PC sounds with the assorted beeps and bloops and static. The memories.
Those monitors are beautiful.
Man, those whirring, spinning and clicking sounds of the older machines takes me right back to being sat on my old mans lap watching him play Elite until the early hours of the morning at weekends when I was about 5 years old.
Great stuff!
The way that Calgames uses the "secret" / glitchmode black-red-cyan-white CGA palette itself is somewhat worthy of mention itself, isn't -------- OH MY GOD WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT GUY'S KNEES?!
Comparison with "MORE Color" mode would be interesting, I can't remember if that's the one that uses composite artefact colours or a form of palette switching to use more than the typical 4 colours at once by flipping between the warm, cool and glitchmode palettes and the dark and bright versions of each... Maybe even both?
It's probably faster because EGA shared some of the logic improvements as later used and expanded on with VGA, in that you can do more than just throwing new data at parts of the screen memory and instead send commands to the board to move things by itself (much faster if you've got a block of pixels to shift, or if you have things that can be kept offscreen and used as sprites by bringing them back into view). CGA is a real bottleneck to any system it's used in. I think I even had it feeling rather sluggish on a PCI and 2mb SVGA 486 when tried for a laugh as an option on Railroad Tycoon...
The PC Speaker.. the whirring floppy drive... things randomly not working.. omg the nostalgia. Taking me right back to 1990
Pirates! by Sid Meier was the best EGA game i played on our old 286 AT
6:17 This made me cackle. Poor computer... Y2K comes late for you.
Everytime I watch your videos with old PC hardware, I just want to drop everything to finally dig out my old IBM PC XT from my childhood and see what it all has. I don't even know if it still turns on but I want to fix it up. And when I see you use your XT I just get fuzzy knowing I have one as well. You give me hope that I can get it working.
My first PC was my dad's old IBM XT machine with 20MB harddrive (never managed to fill it up!) and a CGA board. Enjoyed this video so much it felt more like a 5 minute video and was sad it ended so "fast". Bonus points for letting us enjoy the mechanical sounds of the drive. And that lovely power down noise of the machine. Gosh... so many nostalgia tingles!
damn bro, you have no idea how nostalgic i get when you do videos on old PCs. The very first computer i ever used was my cousins 5154 back around '86 or so. My cousin taught my how to use the command prompt to launch games and shit. then around '89 we got our first PC - a 286 with 2Mb of RAM and a 40Mb HDD (which at the time was FAST). It cost my parents like $8000 and I LOVED IT. The first time my mom went to work and left me alone with it I took it apart immediately. So imagine being my mom coming home after work one day and finding your 6 year old had taken apart your brand new $8,000 computer. She could have killed me but I put it back together and it worked fine.... I was a curious little kid and wanted to know how it worked..
ah the good ol days of computing.
Clint, I love how clean and new-looking you manage to keep those 30-year old electronics. What do you use to clean them? Retrobright? Methods of cleaning and maintaining old electronics could be a good topic for an episode. :)
I've rarely used Retrobright. With these, I just used a bit of water and a paper towel, haha. I've been lucky to find hardware that hasn't yellowed; in fact, most IBM hardware doesn't yellow very much.
This is really a go to video for demonstrating EGA versus CGA. Also you’re absolutely hilarious in this one.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you!"
I cracked up. You're so funny.
That song for treasure mountain was inspirational to me as a kid -- the constantly changing fast-paced notes influenced my choice in songs I played in recital piano competitions. Man, good times thanks for playing that game :-D
Modern hardware just doesn't excite me, yet I can watch someone put an EGA card in an old machine and it holds my interest. I would have killed to have EGA back in the day, having been stuck with CGA for years just because the price of a better monitor was out of the question. I even used CGA on a junk 386 I rigged together that came from an old BBS. I ended up eventually getting a VGA card in a box of junk parts from someone, and used a multisync monitor I found on the curb, connecting all the wires individually by hand to make it work. The first time that screen lit up opened a whole new world for me.
These days, hundreds of mhz can barely be noticeable, but back then, even a single mhz could make all the difference.
Oh my god... the super solvers series.... I loved those games especially midnight rescue
I went from a Commodore Colt with built-in composite CGA to a Paradise Autoswitch EGA. (Possibly the same card that you are using, but I don't quite remember. It was capable of 350-line EGA modes, though, which required a VGA-style multisync monitor.)
It's hard to explain to kids today what it was like to drop in a new video card in your 80s computer and then suddenly have 4 TIMES AS MANY colors as you did before. Today it's like, drop in a new Nvidia, whee, I got 20% more FPS. Whoopie.
I miss the good ole days!
I'm so amazed at your knowledge of all these computers. the history of computers is so fascinating. I always enjoy these videos even though I barely understand anything about it. its just nice.
I love CRT monitors. Lovely trio you got there!
And the 5154 looks really crisp. Mmmmm look at those scanlines. Yeah baby
And the colors look vivid and rich. Thanks for showing how it handles EGA!
Would this computer LITERALLY not believe you if you put in a date past 2000?
+Leivthious Y2K would explode the motherboard.
Is camera YES!
The computer wouldn't understand why for example '01' or 02' would come after '99', as years were stored using 2 numbers instaid of 4 (or more), so the year '2000' didn't even exist, that would be '00'... Get it?
Damn... That was before I got into PC. I started out with VGA with 386. Then soon after the famous SVGA with 486. The chugging sound that PC used to make when you're using a diskette brings back so much memories. Than you for sharing that with us lol
I have the IBM 5150 with the expansion unit and a 5153 monitor. Lovely computer. Almost got it fully restored to.
I miss those machines, so sturdy, robust and serviceable, not to mention fun to tinker with.
LOL! That's hilarious the CC picks up on accents and mouth sound effects! lol!
"[Thrashes on keyboard]" lol!
This video makes me feel better about buying a GTX 970, 5 days before the 1070 was announced
+Cygnus2045 I did the exact same thing, got my 970 a week ago then heard about the 1070/1080...argh! Lol.
I feel for you. I got a 780 pretty late into its life cycle, so once the 980 came out I knew it was probably best to wait a generation before I upgraded.
+Cygnus2045 same
Glad to see that XT got fixed Hard Drive. Nice to see these old machines getting better =)
That first game you played was very swood.
+Leftover Crack Don't be such a grommet.
+Leftover Crack
I'm gonna feed you some horizontal hunger, you grommet!
Those old IBM monitors are just so pretty! Nice design.
6:48 "You've got 50K RAM more than you need, Dude. That's gnarly!"
:-D
Very interesting. I did not have much experience with these type of computers when I was a kid, let alone one that has good color graphics like this. It was good to see.
6:46 feeling lazy? THAT'S GOOD!! That's why we love you ahhahah :P
Keep em coming Clint! great video.
So... should we expect a video about Metal & Lace, or is the box sitting in the background just a tease?
I used to play a game called "Wolfpack" on an XT. It was a submarine game. Lots of fun. You used to be able to flip the switches on an EGA card and get it to drive a CGA screen.
God look at that 80's PCB porn and 0.5fps. I wish I had room for this kind of vintage stuff.
OMG! When I was a kid, I have a Tandy 1000SX computer which had a CGA video card. The card would do 16 color display which was better than the regular 4 color on other IBM computers. I was tempted to get the 64 color EGA card but then I couldn't bear parting with a few hundred dollars. The computer had a whopping 384k ram and 360k floppy drive. I thought that I'd never run out of room when I got the 720k 3.5 inch floppy. The memories!
Oh yeah, EGA! I think I have 2 EGA cards floating around somewhere. As far as I remember, the original IBM card had only 64KB of memory, and couldn't take advantage of the EGA higher-res mode. You'd install a daughterboard that had memory on it, that would connect to the feature connector. The RCA jacks on the back are actually connected to pins on the feature connector internally, to facilitate connections of devices, such as a light pen.
Those IBM monitors (all 3 of them that you have) are absolutely _razor_ sharp. I think it definitely does have to do with it being a digital connection; VGA with it's even higher resolution and color depth just didn't garner the same sharpness as these original screens did. And of course by the time DVI and HDMI came out, we weren't using CRT screens anymore, so it's just not the same sharpness.
On the 5154 monitor I have (which has been buried for years now), I believe either the contrast or brightness knob pulls out, kind of like an old TV with the "Pull On Volume" control, but pulling it out doesn't seem to do anything that I remember.
I also remember the EGA 43-line text mode didn't work unless you had an additional 64KB of RAM on the card via a daughterboard; obviously your card with its snazzy 128K is exempt from these issues.
Thanks for this video, I wish you'd also chronicle its usage on the other 2 IBM monitors you have.
jaykay18 small mistake: the original card could either have 64 or 128k at launch
I love your videos man, to me old tech is already interesting but you make it even more interesting to learn about and see. Keep up the great work.
Thank you!
I see you have a boxed copy of Metal and Lace. I still have mine too. The game doesn't play very well, but it had great art/boxart.
I honestly agree. Those old IBM designs were amazing. I might have a thing for the retro-style, but... man.
I don't care how expensive it was, i just love how great it looks! Very well preserved!
Beautiful machine. Really, really nice catch.
Pretty swood, gotta tell ya
he's a sword guy
+Casey Pearson (Serendone) the fuck is a grommet?!
what are you, a street jock?
Date comment made me laugh out loud. XD
+Totally Legit Gaming [TLEG] every time I boot my saturn or dreamcast these days I think the same thing haha.
Fun fact. Smaller size there were made possible because they got rid of these bulky dip-25 type microchips by cramming most of them into smaller VQFN-64 (or whichever one of VQFN standard) microchip there in the middle. otherwise - most of the internals are the same.
That was made possible by new techniques and downscaling quartz precision few times. Still in micrometers tho, nanometers came much later.
Treasure Mountain! *That's* what the game is called!
I played that game so much as a kid, but I totally forgot what it was called / who made it. I've been looking for it for YEARS now! Thank you for picking that game to play at random, seriously.
Haha awesome, am happy to bring back some memories!
As soon as you started Treasure Mountain, it took me right back to Elementary School. We had the same setups in our Computer Lab, just with CGA colors.
Sweet stuff :) Love that old timey feel.
I am watching this from my hospital room. T
hanks for helping me past the time .LGR
"We develope technology" 3:04
That beautiful disk loading noise! @10:20
Loving those IBM monitors a great collection there. Really love these older designs. Great video nice to see an EGA video card in action in 2016.
Holy crap. Treasure Mountain!! I remembered a teacher showing me this game from KINDERGARTEN (24 now), and I could never remember the name of it! Thanks LGR! Would never have expected that. :P Loved the insightful look into the tech of yore, and I'm more appreciative than I already was about how easy PC building is today. :)
Excellent video as always! The sounds this computer do while reading the game is awesome!
I did this same thing on my XT but back in the late 80s. man I feel old...
Yes only is that CGA card one of the super-long 8-bit cards - if you look closely, you can see its edge-connector is positioned in such a way that it will only fit in an 8-bit slot. The 16-bit ISA slot would make contact with the edge of the card that drops down just beyond the 8-bit edge-connector - meaning you could yes install this card in anything but an IBM 5150. That’s hilarious!
Seeing that "hercules monochrome" option sure brought back memories.
oh man, I cant even imagine how much space these take up, you've sure got a love for these ol babies.
and you just know so damn much about them!
I wish I knew as much as you, I'd love to rebuild my computer but I know I'd just break it.
brings sweet memories ! thanks !!!
When I saw the title of this video, I squaked in joy! Along with your computer reviews (Sinclair+the RAM turbo for it, Amstrad CPC, the 5150 etc.) your Hercules card review is my favorite video of yours, actually one of my favs in all of YT! You totally made my night, so totally huge thanks! P.S. If you'd showed some Starflight footage too I would have probably creamed my pants. :)
Very cool video, thanks for sharing. I'm currently working on restoring an IBM XT 286 with and EGA and 5154.
Man, I simply love your videos.
Thanks as always, LGR, for making me remember such cool tech, and thus futilely yearn for and miss it. Keep up the great work! :)
SimCity DOS supports 640x350x16 EGA mode, as does Flight Simulator 3 and 4. In that mode, there are additional colors available from a 64 color palette (16 out of 64, simultaneously). In 320x200x16 (most games) and 640x200x16 (a few...Zeliard among them) modes, only the standard 16 colors that are available in CGA text mode are accessible.
I have both of those machines, and a few others. All working when put into storage.
You're taunting me with those SMS and Genesis cases. I wouldn't mind you covering those sometime.
man this reminds me back in my high school days my computer teacher showing off old tech to the class when ever he or the students got them in
to see these games again was super sweet for that I am very thankful LGR. :)
i remember playing games were you got to pick what color mode, although at the time I had a VGA machine, but it was very interesting to see how the graphics translated over the different color modes. I think I like CGA the least, but I do love a good old green monochrome display, something calming about it. I like to code in those colors too
I was going to leave a comment before I realized I already did, so I'll leave a different one. Clint, I discovered recently the different modes of CGA that allowed it to NOT look like ass (namely, the composite modes). Have you seen these? For my entire 31 years of my life I've pictured CGA as cyan and purple with like bright green (that is, clashing neon colors). Apparently it wasn't always like this and thanks to the wonders of dithering/blurring, CGA could actually display much more nuanced color schemes. The CGA modes in California Games here actually look WAY better than any normal CGA I've seen (think, Alley Cat) so this makes me wonder if it's taking advantage of an actual IBM monitor to display better than we normally would have seen growing up with our 486s and stuff. I dunno about you but I LOVED playing Stunts and other games in ALL of their modes.
the xt, such a classic. Its one of the best looking pc's ibm ever made imo, from an aesthetic point of view.
Yes, it's definitely one of the best-looking PC ever made. The best-looking PC ever made being, of course, the Olivetti M280.
omg treasure mountain! YES! I have been trying to remember that game for so long! thank you!
Awww, and here was me thinking you could have two ega cards running in sli.
If you ever see anything sweet you want on the Raleigh CL let me know, I visit my folks out your way once a month or so. Keep it up, love the videos.
One thing you may want to make a video on is your Tandy 1000 video modes. The 1000 was nearly as capable as the EGA card and much more prolific. I know you have a 1000RL, but if you can find a TX or TL series, you'll have a nice little 286 machine with 16 colors. It would definitely blow the doors off the IBM XT. Great video though... EGA cards were never very common. It was neat to see one!
Do you clean your plastics to reduce yellowing?
I clean them with some water and soap, but that's it! These things don't really yellow, since they're coated in a paint that mostly prevents it.
Lazy Game Reviews You do a good job then. I forget for a moment that was these first IBM PCs were built to much the same standard as the mainframe and min-computer peripherals.
I used to have an updated version of Treasure Mountain that I played on an eMachines eOne. Designed from the ground up for Windows, it actually scrolled smoothly, had significantly improved graphics, and was in general a really cool game for nerdy nine-year-old me.
your videos are some good I can not stop watch keep it up man
Not only is that CGA card one of the super-long 8-bit cards - if you look closely, you can see its edge-connector is positioned in such a way that it will *only* fit in an 8-bit slot. The 16-bit ISA slot would make contact with the edge of the card that drops down just beyond the 8-bit edge-connector - meaning you could *not* install this card in anything *but* an IBM 5150. That’s hilarious!
LGR, you fucking rock. I have been trying to remember the name of Treasure mountain forever. I loved that game growing up but completely forgot what it was called.
6:17 haha "You wouldn't believe me if it told you!!!" Best. Ever.