First post, by peasant
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I have 2 giant CRTs stacked in my closet in various states of disrepair, one of which I bought less than a year ago and paid more for in shipping than for the monitor itself, only to have it poop out on me in under 6 months. I'm in the process of moving and don't have room for hulking CRTs that I can't even afford to get repaired, and the lack of longevity makes sinking any more money into CRTs completely out of the question - unless of course you have lots of disposable income you're not going to miss. I don't.
I have said my farewell to CRTs and am in the process of sizing up my LCD options for a PC DOS/FreeDOS system I've been trying to put together for years. As most of us know by now DOS games were made to display on a 4:3 screen and don't look right on a 5:4 1280 x 1024 display. However, one of my favorite games from near the end of DOS's lifespan, Blood, has resolution options that actually go all the way up to 1280 x 1024 as I recall (haven't played in a while). To the best of my knowledge this would be the highest selectable resolution allowed natively from within any DOS game, unless there's one that went to 1600 x 1200 I don't know about.
This leads me to ponder the existence of a 1280 x 1024 monitor that will display black bars at the top and bottom to retain the correct aspect for 4:3 resolutions. I suspect the connection would have to be analog as DVI would probably make 320 x 200 display in a tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny window like my widescreen monitors are wont to do over DVI. If such a display did exist that showed all 4:3 resolutions (and I know 320 x 200 isn't 4:3 but I digress) fullscreen with correct aspect I believe it would be the magical unicorn monitor to fulfill all my wants and needs for a DOS display.
Come to think of it, the monitor would basically have to be smart enough to display every resolution, even wacky old 320 x 200, at 4:3, EXCEPT of course for its native res.
Yeah, I think maybe I'm dreaming. 😅
edit: On second thought, perhaps what I should really be looking for is a 1600x1200 display that includes 1:1 pixel mapping (or 'do-not-stretch' mode) which I could use for 1280 x 1024, although I've never seen that feature on a non-widescreen display before. It's fairly common on higher-end HDTVs and monitors.