Hi folks !
I have this nice CGA card, but the EPROM (ST M2764AFI) has lost its sticker, and when looking at the data in my TL866 I saw that it was totally blank. So the card cannot work without it. Can anybody that have this card image their ROM please ? Thanks for helping !
Edit : TL;DR the card had actually a data trace between the video chip and the RAM that was broken and the card doesn't use a standard character ROM, it needs to be shifted to work properly.
The restored ROM is available here thanks to Plasma.
Last edited by Deksor on 2022-06-28, 13:47. Edited 2 times in total.
AFAIK, CGA and MDA/Hercules dosn't have own BIOS. All needed functions build in system BIOS. So, in the EEPROM is a font. You can take any from any CGA card.
So, in the EEPROM is a font. You can take any from any CGA card.
Or you can just create your own font and burn it in.
In the Apple II times I had a switch that toggled the 2732's highest address bit to switch between german and original font.
Here's a start: Non-US character ROMs from MDA/CGA/Hercules cards?
I have dumped font ROM from my ATI graphics solution that I know works in CGA mode - but that's CGA+MDA/Herc combo, so the ROM is 8k long and it's a chip marked 2364 so probably a mask-ROM and I have a weird feeling looking at the resulting file that maybe the pinout is not the same as 2764 EPROMs...
Thanks ! I'll try that next weekend (hopefully if I can erase the rom, because I wanted to make sure it was still working so I wrote something in it, but now I can't get it out and my UV eraser has the wrong AC plug xD I've tried to let it sit in the sun last summer, but it didn't go away)
US-latin character set should be exactly what I need.
That thing is most definitely not a pure CGA card, but quite a bit more powerful.
The Paradise PVC4 chip-set supports MDA, Hercules, CGA and Plantronics ColorPlus modes and your card has the additional 16MHz oscillator needed for Hercules/MDA support.
Your card also has the DIP switches that you'd expect on a hybrid card and the two TMS-4464-12NL DRAM chips have a combined capacity of 64KiB, just like a Hercules card.
If you are going to use this card in a CGA setup, you might find the Plantronics modes particularly interesting.
They are essentially the CGA graphics modes with twice the bit depth, i.e. 320x200 16-color and 640x200 4-color.
While there's hardly any software for these modes, you can still view pictures using CompuShow (CSHOW) and, coincidentally, I have just ported a game – Planet X3 – to it a couple of weeks ago.
When it comes to font ROMs, the Commodore PC 10-III and 20-III might be worth a look, because they use the PVC4 as their on-board graphics solution.
That thing is most definitely not a pure CGA card, but quite a bit more powerful.
I have 2 conflicting sources that claim my ATI graphics solution can and cannot emulate Plantronics ColorPlus. So I'd like to test that one day but for now I don't have any compatible monitor - only tested the card via composite output and there's only luma present there. Unless I tested it wrong, it can't output colors that way.
So, could I bother you for a simple test program? I have no idea how to work CGA registers. In fact I'm still puzzled why my own code has weird colors in EGA mode 0x0e (as if intensity was somehow wrong), and why mode 0x0d is B/W only - when modes 0x0f and 0x10 work OK. It's difficult to find any examples or sources that are not VGA-oriented.
I have 2 conflicting sources that claim my ATI graphics solution can and cannot emulate Plantronics ColorPlus.
They should be compatible with Plantronics ColorPlus yes. Although I'm not quite sure about the early revisions, there's a CW16800-A and CW16800-B version of the chipset.
I'm not entirely sure if the A-revision supports it, but B should. As should all later versions (marketed as Small Wonder).
I just got lucky and found the software for the card (mine came without the floppy). Basically searching for ATI software will get you all kinds of drivers for modern ATI/AMD cards, but one server that had the PDF manual allowed me to manually browse through the folders. And there it was.
There seems to be a demo program called GSDEMO1.COM for the card that says "Graphics Solution 640 x 200 with 16 colors demo program" - with sources! No need to disassemble anything, what a find. Here's the link if anyone is interested: ftp://ftp.mindcandydvd.com/pub/drivers/ATI/Gr … ics%20Solution/
So, could I bother you for a simple test program? I have no idea how to work CGA registers. In fact I'm still puzzled why my own code has weird colors in EGA mode 0x0e (as if intensity was somehow wrong), and why mode 0x0d is B/W only - when modes 0x0f and 0x10 work OK. It's difficult to find any examples or sources that are not VGA-oriented.
There's not much to it, really. This is all you need:
1 mov ax,0004h 2 int 10h 3 mov dx,3ddh 4 mov al,10h 5 out dx,al
I.e. you set the 320x200 4-color mode, first, and then just write 10h to port 3ddh to enable the 320x200 16-color extension.
Keep in mind that the blue/intensity page that this enables at address bc000h (in addition to the normal CGA red/green page at b8000h) may initially contain garbage. You might therefore want to fill it with zeros.
Before you change the video mode, again, write 0 to port 3ddh to disable the 16-color extension.
There's another bit in port 3ddh that allows you to swap red/green and blue/intensity page.
That allows you to use unmodified CGA drawing code by drawing the red/green data, first, swapping the pages and then drawing the blue/intensity data.
See http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/plantronics.html for details.
keropi wrote:
I read that Planet X3 will support this plantronics mode - so if you have it you can test with this when it's released?
Now it does, indeed, and it has been released a week ago.
Please note, however, that the new video modes that I've been able to add in April are not available in David's current batch of physical copies. You can download new executables from the web page, though.
I'm not getting payed for this, but here's the link: http://www.the8bitguy.com/4032/where-is-planet-x3/
EDIT:
Deunan wrote:
I have 2 conflicting sources that claim my ATI graphics solution can and cannot emulate Plantronics ColorPlus. So I'd like to test that one day but for now I don't have any compatible monitor - only tested the card via composite output and there's only luma present there. Unless I tested it wrong, it can't output colors that way.
Does the monitor support NTSC? Did you test with the switch settings for Composite Color or Composite Monochrome?
There's is no color burst on "composite" pins, it's pure luma only. I've checked that with a scope. Monitor was set to CGA as this output doesn't work with 50Hz refresh rate of the MDA.
Anyway, thanks for the info and again sorry for hijacking the thread - I've now tested the card myself and the results are here: ATI Graphics Solution
There's is no color burst on "composite" pins, it's pure luma only. I've checked that with a scope. Monitor was set to CGA as this output doesn't work with 50Hz refresh rate of the MDA.
Interesting... I have an ATi Small Wonder, which has colour on composite. Be sure to test it in graphics mode though. They disable composite in 80x25 textmode. The Paradise does the same. The reason behind this is probably that text can't be read with the low res NTSC colour. Aside from that, the implementation on IBM CGA was bugged, and shouldn't be used (although we exploited it for 8088 MPH to get the high colour modes).
Also, on my Commodore PC20-III there is an onboard PVC4, and there's a jumper on the motherboard to control mono/colour composite. Perhaps these cards have some jumper or dipswitch to control that as well?
Yes, that's me, with my Commodore PC20-III.
I also did one with an ATi Small Wonder, but its colours are all wrong in the 16-colour mode: https://youtu.be/eRVwYCq8X5w
