Reply 20 of 43, by Jo22
- Rank
- l33t++
Cool, I didn't know that! 😎
64 colours would have been cool to work with back in the 80s.
Heck, even 32 colours would have been neat! 😃That's what our BTX online services had used, I think. It was a CEPT based, like Ceefax/Videotex on TV.
That's one of those moments in which EGA was a bit ahead of Standard VGA, maybe.
Another one was "EGA Dual-Page Mode", as used by Commander Keen series (double buffering using two video pages, essentially).
Edit: What I mean is the ability to have more than 16c in high-resolution modes. 640x350 pels and up.
Two main modes of VGA are 320x200 @256c and 640x480 @16c.
640x480 @64c would have been nice to have back then.
Because, in the mid 80s, the rare IBM PGC did offer 640x480 @256c already. W/ VGA timings and similarly specs (31,5 KHz + 60Hz, but combined HC Sync).
If VGA had been made more like EGA, 64c would haven been possible as a regular video mode.
That would have been nice for both business and entertainment.
It would also have had affected MS Windows and GEM, maybe. The standard icons would have had been in 32c or 64c, maybe.
That way, fine pixel-art and pretty gradients would have been possible. A sweet spot, so to say.
But even 32c would have been somewhat satisfying already, I think. 🤗
It would have allowed for four different reds, greens, blues (16c palette had two of each of the important colours I believe).
Four intensities, so to say. That would have been a real gift, already, considering that "four" is a magic number in display tech.
CGA had 4 colours, Gameboy had 4 shades of pea-green, Nokia Communicator 9000 had 4 shades of monochrome etc.
That being said, VGA can emulate EGA. Old ISA VGAs have a dedicated emulation mode, even.
But the timing is ofc, sadly. EGA is all 60 Hz, while VGA does 70 Hz.
Not sure how compatible this is with the finicky timing of palette changing. 🤷♂️
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