Today i installed a VGA adapter in my 8088 EuroPC.
I have some time tried to decide how to utilize the 8bit ISA slot. I had three options: 1. IDE CF Card - 2. SoundBlaster and 3. Graphics card. For a while now i have used a EGA card. The reasoning for not using SoundBlaster/Adlib is that so few games from that area uses Adlib/SB. Putting av CF card would destroy the charm of finding a diskette and waiting for it to load. I would also loose the nice floppy disk sound. An EGA card gave me more colors, but i still had the hassle of finding an CGA/EGA monitor. Also i only have one EGA/CGA monitor - my trusted C1084s - which i also use for my C64/Amiga. With a VGA card i could have the machine set up together with my other PC's and a VGA switch.
I tried two card i bought on eBay:
1. Cirrus Logic. I do not know the exact specs. But see picture below. It worked without changing any jumpers. The drawback was that everytime the diskdrive was used the screen would flicker. Maybe the power supply was not delivering enough power?
2. Trident TVGA9000i-3. It worked fine. I had to set the three jumpers to 8bit. No flickering.
After playing some games i can say that most games gained about 10% more speed. Ex. Digger, brucelee and OutRun. But F29 Retaliator and Elite was about twice (100%) faster. WOW! F29 was actually playable on this 9Mhz 8088.
If you want a VGA card that workes in a 8Bit machine take a look at this VGA 8bit Friendly Card list. http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?264 … y-ISA-VGA-cards