Running monitors at unsupported refresh rates
- Thread starter sfj
- Start date
getting EGA and CGA displays to run on unsupported resolutions is actually very wierd... in MDA, Hercules / Monochrome,CGA and EGA , DAC was actually IN the Monitor. NOT in the card. MCGA, VGA and XGA had dacs in the card. (I am not sure about the TGA, because it's very rare and I never got a one.)
Nite_Hawk: Most Likely you actually had MCGA monitor (many of them were sold as CGAs) and your EGA card was last ones with lot's of off standard enchacements. for example ATI's EGA Wonder had few non-standard working modes. are sure about the resolution you mentioned? EGA had standard 640x350, which looks a bit wierd because non-square pixels.
afaik, no EGA monitor could do 640x480. but MCGA does. the card does not support more than 2 colors on that mode. VGA bring the 16 colors and also legendary X-Modes, like 320x240 and 640x400.
Nite_Hawk: Most Likely you actually had MCGA monitor (many of them were sold as CGAs) and your EGA card was last ones with lot's of off standard enchacements. for example ATI's EGA Wonder had few non-standard working modes. are sure about the resolution you mentioned? EGA had standard 640x350, which looks a bit wierd because non-square pixels.
afaik, no EGA monitor could do 640x480. but MCGA does. the card does not support more than 2 colors on that mode. VGA bring the 16 colors and also legendary X-Modes, like 320x240 and 640x400.
Well I will say running out of spec does seem to damage monitors. I used to run a (I might not recall the name of this monitor exactly correct its been a while) Gateway CrystalScan 140TN (oh an exciting 14" monitor got with a 486DX when those were brand new) out of spec. Can't remember resolutions and frequency but both of them were higher than supposedly what the monitor supported. Long run the monitor slowly started to lose capabilties of what it could actually do till trying to get 640x480 to work was too much of a PITA (used to be able to use some programs to actually kinda get it to work but not at actual optimal desirable frequencies). But hell I don't think it started losing its capabilities till long after I had definately gotten its money worth out of it (talking prolly at least 7 to 9 years before it started dying). Then again it could of just been dying by its own natural causes.
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