+1
I have a few PVGA1As in 8-Bit form and to what I remember,
they all performed nicely in comparison to the ATI VGA Wonder I had in my 286-12 once.
That "card" (was an on-board VGA) was obviously using 8-Bit i/o and it showed.
Personally, I'd make sure to always load the RAM BIOS utility for your old ISA VGAs.
If shadow memory is being supported (video and system BIOS shadowing), then even better.
Because, VGA BIOS calls otherwise have to be made over the PC bus (ISA bus).
That's were the VGA's physical ROMs/EPROMs are being located, after all.
And using the BIOS routines in ROM/EPROM does take some time.
Edit: I've read the link and don't like the conclusion, it's too biased.
A PVGA1A should be allowed to have full 512KB, simply in order to be functional, like other SVGA cards.
Otherwise, a PVGA can do merely two SVGA modes: 800x600 16c and 640x400 256c.
The Windows 2.x and 3.x drivers support these modes natively, other programs require the VBE TSR.
The GO481 can have 512KB of video RAM, also, by stacking RAM chips (piggy-back method).
If done carefully, it can look like a factory mod.
But who're I'm telling this.. The emulator people seem to obsessed with paper specs, rather than real world usage. *sigh* 😔
Many people back in the 80s did some modifications to their hardware, or have it done by someone else (friend, company, local computer shop etc).
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