VOGONS


First post, by butterfly

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Found this ancient program I used to take advantege of for playing a CGA Centipede port on my dad's ancient 8088.

As you can understand from the subject, this program called UniCGA makes possible to emulate a CGA card on a Hercules card. That not without problems: You may have to type "in the pitch black" (without seeing what you are typing) after you started the emulator; that can be easily resolved with a batch file though.

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  • dosbox_000.png
    Filename
    dosbox_000.png
    File size
    5.87 KiB
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    9586 views
    File comment
    UniCGA help screen
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • rastan_004.png
    Filename
    rastan_004.png
    File size
    3.37 KiB
    Views
    9586 views
    File comment
    Making sure (on a VGA DOSBox) that Rastan has no Hercules support
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • rastan_000.png
    Filename
    rastan_000.png
    File size
    5.9 KiB
    Views
    9586 views
    File comment
    Playing Rastan on a Hercules DOSBox using UniCGA
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • rastan_001.png
    Filename
    rastan_001.png
    File size
    6.72 KiB
    Views
    9586 views
    File comment
    Still playing Rastan on a Hercules DOSBox using UniCGA
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 1 of 18, by Neville

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Amazing. This must be one of the first, if not the first emulator ever for PC.

But, is it of any use with VGA or SVGA cards? I've always thought they were backwards compatible with older standards, although the oldest games I ever tried under DOS were at least in EGA.

Reply 3 of 18, by dh4rm4

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From memory Hercules had pretty broad support for many years. It was the defacto standard in publishing and corporate circles.

"The Hercules Graphics Card (HGC) was a computer graphics controller which, through its popularity, became a widely-supported display standard. It was common on IBM PC compatibles connected to a monochrome (green, amber or, less often, black-white) phosphor monitor. It supported one high resolution text mode and a single graphics mode."

from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Graphics_Card

Reply 4 of 18, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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dh4rm4 wrote:

From memory Hercules had pretty broad support for many years. It was the defacto standard in publishing and corporate circles.

Yes, but not in the context of backward compatibility leileilol was talking about. VGA (and SVGA) is only backward compatible with EGA and CGA, but not with Hercules. IIRC, not even CGA is "backward compatible" with Hercules --try playing a game with 'Hercules' option on CGA card, and you know what I mean.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 5 of 18, by `Moe`

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C/E/VGA were not supposed to be Hercules-compatible (or vice versa), because the monochrome video adapters (MDA, HGC) had a separate video memory location at segment 0xb000, which enabled old systems to have one colour and one monochrome video adapter in a single system, early multi-head. I actually used that with an MDA+SVGA combination back in the 90s (under OS/2 even!). Few programs took advantage of it, but it was cool if you had some programming skills 😉

Reply 6 of 18, by dh4rm4

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Exactly what I was trying to get across. The Wikipedia link explains that in some detail. Thanks for explaining that in your own context Moe. I used such a combination at UNI in AutoCad and PCB CAD/Simulators. Speaking of which, SPICE anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE - SPICE was a circuit 'emulator' (simulator, really) that was developed as far back as 1972. Some of it's users eventually took it's ideas into MAME and other low level hardware emulation systems.

Reply 7 of 18, by butterfly

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Neville wrote

But, is it of any use with VGA or SVGA cards? I've always thought they were backwards compatible with older standards, although the oldest games I ever tried under DOS were at least in EGA.

No. It is of no use with VGA/SVGA cards.
Yet, it can give you an idea of the feel of "those times", or even make you experience CGA-capable games "filtered" through a Hercules card with somewhat of a different taste.

You can find UniCGA at this page:
garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/screen.html

If you're gonna try it, it would be useful making a batch file to run games/apps 'cos you won't be able, in most cases, to see what you are typing or the video option you're about to chose.
Furthermore, your ancient computer or your DOSBox won't "believe" you've actually a CGA card installed, so you'll have to force the CGA option

Reply 8 of 18, by dr.zeissler

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Why are the CGA-Emulators for Hercules so different? Is it because of the programming of the "emulated" game?
Did someone get really into this. Someone who knows how they are done?

My experiences are. Some so called "native Hercules" Titles listed at mobygames do not support native hercules
but they use a "cga-emulation" to display the game. (e.g. TestDrive 1+2). Lot's of Borderbound Titels use
native Hires of Hercules like PrinceOfPersia.

The main problems of emulating CGA is, that using no scanlines causes a real good image but
ghosting at every moving objekt. For me, ghosting is a nogo., therefore I use scanline-emulation.

I have a starfiled.asm that works with CGA. Using a cga-emulation with scanlines causes the upper
screenside to display a pattern that should not be there. Using hgcibm whitch normally makes
a good image without scanlines but ghosting on all moving object does the job right.

My goals in this XT-Hercules Project is:
- Finding good Textmode-Stuff for XT/Hercules (I found a dancer/rapper) 😀
- Finding good Demoscene-Stuff for XT/Hercules (mainly one one real HGC-Demo available, native CGA-Demos do not work in emulation)
- Finding ways to make CGA-Only Titles work on native Hercules with CGA-Emulation. (Some titels refuse to work, I don't know why. Wintergames,Summergames,Worldgames, Brucelee, Worldkarate..)
- Finding the best CGA-Emulator for the Game. As I told you sometimes changing the cga-emulator makes the emulation better.

Doc

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 11 of 18, by matze79

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ftp://ftp.dosreloaded.de/Grafikkarten/Hercules%20Monochrom/

I have also some CGA Emulators, if you want you can try them out.
Some HGC Cards do HW Emulation also

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 12 of 18, by Akuma

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matze79 wrote on 2020-09-29, 08:21:

ftp://ftp.dosreloaded.de/Grafikkarten/Hercules%20Monochrom/

I have also some CGA Emulators, if you want you can try them out.
Some HGC Cards do HW Emulation also

Nice, although the timestamps are not correct for some of them 😁
(CGA.COM has an embedded date of 27 oct 1986)
I tracked down what seems to be a proper version of SIMCGA.
Which sits in your package as E1.COM

  • same size
  • dated 1986-09-11 10:05:12
    (original timestamp afaict)
  • Copyright (C) 1986 by C. P. Guzis
    (has been removed in the E1.COM)
  • different checksum because of ^^

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  • Filename
    SIMCGA.7z
    File size
    601 Bytes
    Downloads
    241 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 13 of 18, by solraeck

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matze79 wrote on 2020-09-29, 08:21:

ftp://ftp.dosreloaded.de/Grafikkarten/Hercules%20Monochrom/

I have also some CGA Emulators, if you want you can try them out.
Some HGC Cards do HW Emulation also

Hi, I'm trying to play some CGA games on my recently acquired 386DX with Hercules Graphic Adapter (Winbond). I'm trying to access the FTP link but I cannot.
Any tips on which browser should be using to be able to download som CGA emulators from there?

Thanks!

Cyrix 80486DX 80Mhz, 32mb RAM, 1024kb Trident VGA, Sound Blaster 16, 4GB HDD, 3 1/2 floppy disk drive + Creative CD-ROM drive unit.
Intel 80386 DX 40Mhz, 8MB RAM, Trident VGA 256kb, Sound Blaster 16 CT 2950, 525MB HDD, 3 1/2 floppy, 52x CD-ROM .

Reply 14 of 18, by BitWrangler

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Probably on a windoze box you still have some version of internet explorer installed unless you explicitly removed it, so go to run type iexplore and feed it the ftp link.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 15 of 18, by Akuma

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solraeck wrote on 2021-08-19, 02:03:
Hi, I'm trying to play some CGA games on my recently acquired 386DX with Hercules Graphic Adapter (Winbond). I'm trying to acces […]
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matze79 wrote on 2020-09-29, 08:21:

ftp://ftp.dosreloaded.de/Grafikkarten/Hercules%20Monochrom/

I have also some CGA Emulators, if you want you can try them out.
Some HGC Cards do HW Emulation also

Hi, I'm trying to play some CGA games on my recently acquired 386DX with Hercules Graphic Adapter (Winbond). I'm trying to access the FTP link but I cannot.
Any tips on which browser should be using to be able to download som CGA emulators from there?

Thanks!

Re: Best CGA & Hercules monochrome games
Re: Best CGA & Hercules monochrome games

Reply 16 of 18, by matze79

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solraeck wrote on 2021-08-19, 02:03:
Hi, I'm trying to play some CGA games on my recently acquired 386DX with Hercules Graphic Adapter (Winbond). I'm trying to acces […]
Show full quote
matze79 wrote on 2020-09-29, 08:21:

ftp://ftp.dosreloaded.de/Grafikkarten/Hercules%20Monochrom/

I have also some CGA Emulators, if you want you can try them out.
Some HGC Cards do HW Emulation also

Hi, I'm trying to play some CGA games on my recently acquired 386DX with Hercules Graphic Adapter (Winbond). I'm trying to access the FTP link but I cannot.
Any tips on which browser should be using to be able to download som CGA emulators from there?

Thanks!

https://drivers.dosreloaded.de/index.php?b=Gr … %2FCGA+Emulator

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board