Dear List:
I am writing to bemoan the confusing and obscure terminology of the
various screen systems, and the ongoing confusion about EGA.
My continuing interest in weird monitors is for reasons of power
consumption. Those who live on solar power and cant afford laptops find
that a Hercules monitor and an efficient motherboard is nearly as good.
The typical consumption of colour VGA is at least 50 watts. One colour
VGA ( which I am writing on now), is about thirty watts. Hercules screens
get down to twenty watts and MDA, and one colour CGA I have found as low
as ten watts.
I have stated screen types like this because the word "monochrome" seems
to have been hijacked to mean MDA, and also to mean a 9 bit mode in VGA.
Very confusing.
Monochrome (sic) VGA is a very workable option if you can get such a
screen - they being very rare. Many good DOS programs will not support
lesser resolution screens, though Hercules is not really so much less
resolution as less frequent update and no grey scale.
One ridiculous reason I use Windows is that it has Hercules drivers.
As Thomas says, why would anybody use EGA? I think that the answer is
that EGA cards are often excellent and support all sorts of other
things. Also I have found that many computers report EGA in their BIOS
even when you are actually running Monochrome (640x380 is it?) This
means that the term EGA is used more broadly.
Just to finish my minor essay: another reason to use EGA is that it uses
less UMB, and as a last outrageous suggestion, it can be used to recover
motherboards with destroyed onboard VGA.........we last week got an old
PS/2 going by simply inserting an EGA card to override its defective
video. Is that retro enough?
Kali
DOS browser Arachne
