Hercules graphics cards was very common at the very beginning of 90s, at least here in Turkey. It was a better alternative to CGA (IMHO) and fully compatible with it, and much cheaper then VGA. But to say the truth, they were almost all clones, not Hercules brand, in addition to being more modernish, half size cards. A typical example is below:

What use it will have with a modernish computer is completely dependent to a user's needs. I remember it was possible to use them as a secondary display adapter to a VGA card (during pre PCI times), with some software supporting this feature (AutoCAD, for example). But definately not as a secondary display that we know today. Graphic on one screen, text only for the second.

The other card is probably not for anything with an on board real time clock. I can't remember the "6" in its pack, but the first five features it gives the user is a serial port, a parallel port, a game port, additional memory (384 KB ?), and a real time clock. I'm not very well versed in 286s and very early 386s, but all modernish 386 boards (1990+) had on board clocks and sockets for additional RAM, and even during those days, every multi I/O card had at least one of each ports (serial, parallel, game - typical I/O card below). So, for a relatively modern machine this card will be meaningless, but for an XT (or maybe an early 286?), it might be a worthy addition.

When they work they are sought after by XT users / collectors. Since they are not boxed their value is diminished. Check out www.vintage-computer.com. There are many XT users there.

Hercules graphics cards was very common at the very beginning of 90s, at least here in Turkey. It was a better alternative to CGA (IMHO) and fully compatible with it

They were not compatible with CGA. They had a decent amount of software support but they had a completely different memory address compared to CGA
not to mention only one 720x348 mode

I remember playing lots of games on an amber monitor w/ herc graphics and I thought they looked great specifically Lesure Suit Larry series, Space Quest I & II, Prehistorik and a lot more.

Does anyone have any actual photos of hercules screens from various games? Stuff on the web are all weird VGA renderings made to look like Hercules. In reality they look nothing like the real thing. I'm now doubting my memory.. might have to pull that monitor out of storage and see, if it still works.

tayyare wrote:

What use it will have with a modernish computer is completely dependent to a user's needs. I remember it was possible to use them as a secondary display adapter to a VGA card (during pre PCI times), with some software supporting this feature (AutoCAD, for example). But definately not as a secondary display that we know today. Graphic on one screen, text only for the second.

It is still possible to use a monochrome Hercules card with a PCI VGA card, provided you have both PCI and ISA slots. Most useful for debugging when you are developing under DOS.

I remember a friend had Hercules on a Tandon 8088. Even Space Quest IV ran on it (albeit very slow).

Half-Saint wrote:

Does anyone have any actual photos of hercules screens from various games? Stuff on the web are all weird VGA renderings made to look like Hercules. In reality they look nothing like the real thing. I'm now doubting my memory.. might have to pull that monitor out of storage and see, if it still works.

If you are aware of a screen grabber utility that works on an XT with MDA, I can get you as many as you want.
I have searched in the past for such a utility, but they either don't work on an XT or they don't get screenshots from an MDA.

smeezekitty wrote:

Hercules graphics cards was very common at the very beginning of 90s, at least here in Turkey. It was a better alternative to CGA (IMHO) and fully compatible with it

They were not compatible with CGA. They had a decent amount of software support but they had a completely different memory address compared to CGA
not to mention only one 720x348 mode

It's semantics.. 😊

If I can play CGA games just by running a small TSR for CGA emulation, I consider it as "compatible". 😈

konc wrote:

Half-Saint wrote:

Does anyone have any actual photos of hercules screens from various games? Stuff on the web are all weird VGA renderings made to look like Hercules. In reality they look nothing like the real thing. I'm now doubting my memory.. might have to pull that monitor out of storage and see, if it still works.

If you are aware of a screen grabber utility that works on an XT with MDA, I can get you as many as you want.
I have searched in the past for such a utility, but they either don't work on an XT or they don't get screenshots from an MDA.

I think Half-Saint really meant photos and not screenshots. For screenshots one could probably just use DOSBox without scaling.
The problem with screen grabber utilities for MDA/Hercules is that there is no easy way to detect if the card is running in text mode or graphics mode (most registers are write-only). There was a workaround which involved counting the displayed scan lines (350 for text mode, 348 for graphics mode). I remember reading an article in an old PC magazine where the author used this method in a hard-copy utility.

tayyare wrote:

It's semantics.. 😊

If I can play CGA games just by running a small TSR for CGA emulation, I consider it as "compatible". 😈

"Compatible" in the same sense a GUS is Sound Blaster compatible...

Yeah I meant photos, not screenshots. In the mean time I found someone on Youtube playing some games on a green Hercules monitor 😀