Thank you all for your informative replies. @J022 and @BitWrangler: I am interested to hear that VGA can coexist with Hercules/MDA; I had read elsewhere that for technical reasons, it wasn't possible. It turns out my machine already has a generic PCI VGA card with some sort of plug-and-play …

Background: I have a Win98-era Dell Dimension XPS PII system that now runs FreeDOS 1.3 off a CF card. Input/sound/ethernet/VGA graphics/drives are all working in DOS, and I love it. However, playing text adventures in DOS on a modern LCD panel just doesn't feel right. For the full experience, I want …