Are you sure your MultiSync does 15kHz TTL EGA?

There were early ATI VGA cards with EGA output:

https://sites.google.com/site/atiwonderseriesdatabase/

Other than that you can use the OSSC with your VGA card to produce sexay scanlines on modern TVs and PC monitors (rather the latter due to VGA 70Hz):

https://www.videogameperfection.com/products/ … urce-converter/

Oh, it's TTL? Dang, oh well, my 1084S has got me covered on that then! (I can see a guy playing EGA on a 1084S on Youtube, so it should work, right?)

The only card I can see which supports both VGA and EGA seems to be the ATi VIP, which I suppose it's kinda rare - probably cheaper for me to just nab a pure EGA card. About that, I know about the EGA Wonder series, but are there other recommended EGA cards I should be looking for?

Also, can an EGA card and a VGA (or VLB) card co-exist in the same computer?

Yeah, I was thinking of getting an OSSC, but I'm not sure how well it compares to a real CRT!

Thanks!

EGA, CGA, MDA etc are all TTL output, VGA was the first one to introduce analog video signal. Well some CGA cards have analog out as well in the form of modulated TV signal.

Those ATi cards certainly aren't the only VGA cards with EGA-out. Pretty much all early VGA cards did. I own a 1990 vintage DFI card with Oak chipset with both and iirc one of my Trident TVGA8900 cards has them too.

jbenam wrote:

Oh, it's TTL? Dang, oh well, my 1084S has got me covered on that then! (I can see a guy playing EGA on a 1084S on Youtube, so it […]
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Oh, it's TTL? Dang, oh well, my 1084S has got me covered on that then! (I can see a guy playing EGA on a 1084S on Youtube, so it should work, right?)

The only card I can see which supports both VGA and EGA seems to be the ATi VIP, which I suppose it's kinda rare - probably cheaper for me to just nab a pure EGA card. About that, I know about the EGA Wonder series, but are there other recommended EGA cards I should be looking for?

Also, can an EGA card and a VGA (or VLB) card co-exist in the same computer?

Yeah, I was thinking of getting an OSSC, but I'm not sure how well it compares to a real CRT!

Thanks!

There are more than one ATI card that have the 9 pin EGA out. VGA Wonder 16 should have it as well. And as was mentioned many of the early VGA ones have that.

stamasd wrote:

EGA, CGA, MDA etc are all TTL output, VGA was the first one to introduce analog video signal. Well some CGA cards have analog out as well in the form of modulated TV signal.

Cheers. Must've missed that.

dionb wrote:

Those ATi cards certainly aren't the only VGA cards with EGA-out. Pretty much all early VGA cards did. I own a 1990 vintage DFI card with Oak chipset with both and iirc one of my Trident TVGA8900 cards has them too.

Hm, I might have a Trident stashed somewhere. I should check it out.

root42 wrote:

There are more than one ATI card that have the 9 pin EGA out. VGA Wonder 16 should have it as well. And as was mentioned many of the early VGA ones have that.

From what I can see on the site you linked me in the second post, every card except the ATi VIP is listed as "EGA emulation" - what does that mean?

I could be wrong, but I don't believe that an 1084S is going to let you run high resolution 16/64-colour EGA modes...only the 16 colour CGA resolutions. If you want to be able to do 350 line modes, a true EGA display or Multisync will be needed. BTW, some of the last EGA cards had extra resolutions that could only be seen on Multisync monitors. I've always wanted to try it out, but EGA + Multisync is such a rare combination.

that's correct, feeding a 25khz EGA mode to a 1084 99% will have disastrous results to the monitor. As long as you don't got 640x350 then ega is ok with a 1084.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I could be wrong, but I don't believe that an 1084S is going to let you run high resolution 16/64-colour EGA modes...only the 16 colour CGA resolutions. If you want to be able to do 350 line modes, a true EGA display or Multisync will be needed. BTW, some of the last EGA cards had extra resolutions that could only be seen on Multisync monitors. I've always wanted to try it out, but EGA + Multisync is such a rare combination.

I also have a Multisync (Microvitec 1438S), which AFAIK, supports 25KHz. Only wants RGBHV though.

keropi wrote:

that's correct, feeding a 25khz EGA mode to a 1084 99% will have disastrous results to the monitor. As long as you don't got 640x350 then ega is ok with a 1084.

Can't I just use something like this TTL-to-VGA converter to attach the EGA card to my MultiSync?
https://gglabs.us/node/2022 (this one is for CGA, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do something like this for EGA too?)

Thanks again, guys.

jbenam wrote:

Can't I just use something like this TTL-to-VGA converter to attach the EGA card to my MultiSync?
https://gglabs.us/node/2022 (this one is for CGA, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do something like this for EGA too?)

Thanks again, guys.

Check this one out. MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA Converter Released! The designer(retrocanada76) is a member here and at the Vintage Computer forum. I've built and sold a bunch of these to VCF members. They work well with CGA and EGA. Plus it has an option to show or hide scan lines. I still have a spare that I am willing to sell. PM me if interested. Dreamblaster is planning to sell his version on his site eventually. He also is talking about a 3D Printed case for it. Re: MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA Converter Released!

Greg

ibmapc wrote:

jbenam wrote:

Can't I just use something like this TTL-to-VGA converter to attach the EGA card to my MultiSync?
https://gglabs.us/node/2022 (this one is for CGA, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do something like this for EGA too?)

Thanks again, guys.

Check this one out. MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA Converter Released! The designer(retrocanada76) is a member here and at the Vintage Computer forum. I've built and sold a bunch of these to VCF members. They work well with CGA and EGA. Plus it has an option to show or hide scan lines. I still have a spare that I am willing to sell. PM me if interested. Dreamblaster is planning to sell his version on his site eventually. He also is talking about a 3D Printed case for it. Re: MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA Converter Released!

Greg

Hi Greg,
Thanks for the offer. That looks like a scandoubler, though? 31KHz just doesn't feel the same as 15KHz on those old CRT monitors 😀

Anyway, I think I'll grab one of those Paradise EGA cards and see what happens... As far as I can remember, there aren't many 640x350 EGA games I wanted to play 😁

Wasn't the whole idea of EGA to allow people to continue using their CGA monitors? Hence wouldn't the EGA card sense that it was connected to a CGA monitor, maybe, and disallow the highres modes?

jbenam wrote:

...That looks like a scandoubler, though? ...

It's a whole lot more than a scan doubler. It is an FPGA based CONVERTER. It uses a high speed SRAM for the frame buffer then converts the output to VGA. As I said before, I've built and sold a bunch of these. They work GREAT!

Look here for the details https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/m … -cga-ega-to-vga

I have an EGA card that I would love to use, but unfortunately I don't have a monitor for it since normal vga connector doesn't work with it.

jbenam wrote:

Oh, it's TTL? Dang, oh well, my 1084S has got me covered on that then! (I can see a guy playing EGA on a 1084S on Youtube, so it should work, right?)

A 1084S is compatible with CGA TTL, which works for EGA in 200-line modes. You cannot use the 640x350 hires mode though.

root42 wrote:

Wasn't the whole idea of EGA to allow people to continue using their CGA monitors? Hence wouldn't the EGA card sense that it was connected to a CGA monitor, maybe, and disallow the highres modes?

That is an interesting idea. I do know that some EGA cards had autosensing, not sure if it was *that* smart though 😀

ibmapc wrote:

jbenam wrote:

...That looks like a scandoubler, though? ...

It's a whole lot more than a scan doubler. It is an FPGA based CONVERTER. It uses a high speed SRAM for the frame buffer then converts the output to VGA. As I said before, I've built and sold a bunch of these. They work GREAT!

Look here for the details https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/m … -cga-ega-to-vga

Kinda like an OSSC then? Hum. I'll keep it in mind as a future purchase, thanks!

Scali wrote:

jbenam wrote:

Oh, it's TTL? Dang, oh well, my 1084S has got me covered on that then! (I can see a guy playing EGA on a 1084S on Youtube, so it should work, right?)

A 1084S is compatible with CGA TTL, which works for EGA in 200-line modes. You cannot use the 640x350 hires mode though.

Excellent, thanks for confirmation. I don't see myself playing many hires EGA games, just a few.

I managed to get two weird VGA/EGA hybrid cards, I'll see what I can get out of them.

Not a topic I have a lot of understanding of, but I'm always interested to learn.

I understand that some early GFX modes (certain CGA modes, for instance) weren't carried forward to be backwards compatible in the VGA standard. I'm kind of hoping that someone knowledgeable in early PC gaming (Hierophant, maybe?) will make (or begin) a compatibility cross reference. I'm not sure exactly what would be interesting or relevant, but from what I read it could cover the modes (maybe some games that use them), the various vendor standards (CGA, Tandy, EGA, Incolor, etc and what mode support is gained/lost), plus cards notable for having more or less compatibility than apparent by their specification.

Of course, if something along those lines exists, please point me in the right direction.

gdjacobs wrote:

I understand that some early GFX modes (certain CGA modes, for instance) weren't carried forward to be backwards compatible in the VGA standard.

To be exact, EGA and VGA are BIOS-compatible with CGA, but not register-compatible.
This means that as long as software sticks to BIOS-routines only, CGA software should run as-is on EGA and VGA.
In practice however, most games access the registers directly, at least to set the CGA palette, and as a result, CGA games running on VGA will generally not show the correct palette, but stay in the default cyan/magenta/white/black palette mode.

More advanced trickery, such as in 8088 MPH, is also doomed to fail, since it exploits the raster timing of CGA, and also assumes that you have composite output.

Some VGA clones can be switched to a CGA-compatibility mode, which will give it some level of CGA-compatibility. This usually fixes the palette issues, but other register-tricks or timings will still not work, because VGA uses different resolutions (CGA uses 200-line modes at 59.94 Hz refresh-rate, compatible with NTSC. VGA uses a 400-line mode at 70 Hz, and 200-line modes are simulated by line-doubling).

There already is the CGA compatibility tester made by Trixter, which covers these issues to a certain extent:
http://www.oldskool.org/pc/cgacomp
CGA Compatibility Tester vs. VGA cards
Re: CGA Compatibility Tester
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?137 … ard-in-CGA-mode

The short version however, is that VGA is too different from CGA for any clone to hope to get anywhere near 100% compatibility.

Hm i never got any VGA Card with EGA fully compatible with EGA.
Many Software still detects VGA.. and often you can't change that behavior.

Connecting a EGA Monitor to a OAK for example will not give you what you expect.