BitWrangler wrote on 2022-05-12, 03:36:
I smell revisionist BS... [..]
Well, that's the dilemma. History itself may not change, but our definitions of it do.
Remember that "history is written by the winners" line?
Some people, I guess, associate this with Germany and the lost war (gratefully, btw, otherwise I hadn't been born).
However, what if Germany had won WW2? Would the history books still tell the same, uhm, truth as they do now?
That's the problem with history. You can name and documents events easily, but as soon as judgment is involved, people start to develop different views. Which isn't bad per se.
So yes, a 286/386 in 1990 was usually seen as a full-fledged PC.
But as what was it seen in 2000? A door stopper, piece of old metal?
Different generations or cultures may or may not have the same perception of things.
People from hundred s of years ago didn't have pets, for example.
They held cats and dogs for a special purpose. They were "things" to them. Well, for most of them. Sure there were people feeling like us, too, albeit rare.
Then cats and dogs became pets to us. Nowadays, they're like family members to us, even, and we finally acknowledge their feelings and self awareness.
This is a big development in human history, I think.
However, someone could call us revisionists, too, because our point of view conflicts
with tens of thousands of years of human history in which animals were merely seen as objects.
Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-05-07, 05:21:I get what you're referring to. […]
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Jo22 wrote on 2022-05-07, 03:53:Yes and no. I mean, you're not wrong. You're thinking of 256c stuff an VBE, I guess.
But I think of Standard VGA, mode 12h, as u […]
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Yes and no. I mean, you're not wrong. You're thinking of 256c stuff an VBE, I guess.
But I think of Standard VGA, mode 12h, as used by DOS applications in general.
640x480 in 16c was supported way down to 1987.
Also, Super VGA in 800x600 in 16c was a very popular mode, predating VBE a bit.
It even has two mode numbers in VBE (6Ah and 102h) which is unique.
The only "issue" was detecting the correct mode number of the SVGA - the memory layout was the same among OAK, Trident, Paradise etc cards.
I believe, that's why it was possible that there was a single 800x600 16c SVGA driver in Windows 3.10 already:
It wasn't much trouble to implement. No palette or memory issues.
To get things like Wonderland (Magnetic Scrolls) running in SVGA on non-supported cards is a matter of modifying the executable with a hex editor.
That being said, the VGA CRTC was very flexible.
People reprogrammed the EGA/VGA drivers of older OSes like Windows 1.0 or GEM to use a VBE mode number.
That works, as long as the default settings don't require much alteration.
Anyway, that being said, the lack of commercial Standard VGA games did put me in the odd situation
that foreign PC-98 games in 640x400 16c did look more sane or used to me than our low-res DOS games that we had.
Edit: I'll soon add some screenshots of the 640x480 DOS games that I remember.
I get what you're referring to.
Wish that the 640x480 16 color mode was used a bit more with DOS games especially that VGA can change the color palette and would have led to interesting things but alas many stuck with the CGA 16 color palette.
The 800x600 16 color mode that originated with the Paradise SVGA was quite popular among various video cards. It was very easy to write a TSR that emulates it by just calling the VESA equivalent because it doesn't require bank switching for the memory layout. Sadly, the same can't be said with early SVGA 256 color modes unless the non-standard CRTC registers were compatible.
I have done this with PC Paintbrush and several of these Moraff's DOS games. 😁
Thanks for your understanding, that's what I meant. 😄
What I also remember are some oddball VGA resolutions from the demoscene. Say 320x400 or 360x480.
They work most with every generic VGAs, but weren't necessarily "monitor safe" . Whatever thst meant.
Albeit, the 320x400 was just a little hack that involved disabling VGA's line doubling feature; bevause due to it 320x200 is seen as 320x400 by the monitor, anyway.
So using these 200 lines didn't change the signal?
Anyway, it's kinda sad it wasn't used more.
Perhaps people in these days just didn't know it was possible, not sure.
The image quality with twice the lines already makes things so much better in my modest opinion.
-I've attached some sample pictures for demonstration, hope that's okay. 😅
Edit: I forgot to mention.. I had taken photos from a 19" VGA CRT.
Edit: I also forgot - photos were reduced by 50%, bevause they were too large to fit as attachments.
Edit: Some typos fixed. Also, I hope the picture isn't being perceived as offensive, whatsoever. Someone has to be careful with that these days.. 😅
I've found it on the internet and thought it's pretty colorful. 😅
So it's ideal for testing, as a wallpaper etc. Also, if some of you know the author, please let me know, so I can give credit.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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