LGR - Installing/Using an EGA Card on an IBM 5154

Peter Bridger

One of my biggest (geeky) regrets is throwing away the EGA monitor I had with my 286 Compaq back in the day... I'm making up for it now by hoarding old hardware and rescuing old machines when I come across them. The company of many doesn't ease the loss of one...

LGR

Quite possibly, a thought which I did mumble about very briefly in the video :) And according to another commenter: "It has to do with how CGA's memory is addressed. It requires a lot more CPU time to figure out where to put things on the screen. EGA is more logical and laid out very simple." I could see that being the case too, sort of a combo of faster chips and different methods of addressing the hardware.

MrMattan

Ahh, now it works! Great! :)

LGR

Nope, it's not private. You're free to watch :)

Henrik Andersson

Same here, can't see the video...

Chloe Lawrence

This video is private? How disappointing

MrMattan

I'm getting the message from youtube that this video is private, am I missing something? :)

Michael Nelson

Peter Gabriel games on the shelf and Master System games in a stack. This makes me happy for some reason.

Lindsay Michelle

This is really dorky, but when I was studying electronics/electrical engineering (I only know just the basics, I'm sure you know way more than me), I always liked looking and playing with the dipswitches. They're just so... cute and fun to... dipswitch. XD Too bad those EGA graphics were so laggy on that IBM... they did look great, though! ...And in the beginning, I noticed you had CompUSA sign on display. That's so dorky... wouldn't expect anything less from LGR. :D hehe

Eric Christopher

You know clint, some day when I'm actually successful in my field I am going to probably end up using some of your videos to get some old school gaming rigs going. Great video man!

Flushing Noodle

Yeah, once I filled up the rest of the memory, games looked correct.

Martin Ravensholt

Yeah - I wish I would've kept the hardware.

Alyxx the Rat

Sweeeet

Braxen

huh, alright.. i'm pretty sure i hear some reverb in the voiceover though

LGR

It's interesting, and super sad. I recall seeing tons of old IBMs and similar things at the dump in the 90s

LGR

Oh geez. Still, fascinating stuff there, I was wondering what it would look like if I didn't have enough memory.

LGR

I really want that as well.

LGR

Dip switches pre-internet were all sorts of "fun," haha. I screwed up a few computers at school by messing with switches I shouldn't!

LGR

There were smaller ones later one, so not necessarily :)

LGR

Oh yeah, IBM went with some nice tubes, at least for the time. Still not as sharp as others I've used, but for computer monitors of the time they're great.

LGR

Totes! I plan to do a video on the AT in general once it's working again, and I'm sure I'll have the 5154 hooked up to it

LGR

Man, the ET3000 is great card! Very lucky to have had that with an EGA monitor, actually :)

LGR

I don't believe that happens anymore with EGA. I know it could with MDA and CGA though.

LGR

This was filmed in my old game room location, which I still have!

LGR

Mentioned it many times now; I'm working on it. Although this video was filmed in my old location, so there shouldn't be an echo like other recent vids

It's interesting how 15 years ago people threw most of these PC's in the garbage, and now the few that are left are worth something again.

Flushing Noodle

Good choice on the EGA card. While it's cool to have the official IBM EGA card, it's near useless without the rare and pricey memory expansion daughter card. Without the full amount of memory your programs look like this <a href="https://youtu.be/BeQHVZ1_gyc" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/BeQHVZ1_gyc</a>

SuperBunnyBun

That off sound. like a ghostly "Noooooooo". I so miss the audio of old computers. Wish there was a modern case that made such noises, even if just emulated. or had a classic toggle on/off button that felt like you were pulling a circuit breaker (which I guess it actually was)

Charles Wiltshire

Great video. Reminded me of upgrading an IBM 5150 from Hercules to CGA as a kid. Installing hardware pre-internet was always a bit of a nerve racking experience, I hope to never set another dip switch again (admittedly unlikely). Anyway thanks for the video.

Braxen

I guess you haven't set up any soundproofing stuff yet? There's quite the echo in the recent videos.

RetroSwim

Also EGA had some rudimentary blitting and other manipulation techniques, CGA was basically 100% frame writes to VRAM.

Kris Asick

The reason for the EGA mode being faster than the CGA mode has nothing to do with the card's memory and everything to do with how fast the chips on the cards are. Even back in the 80s and 90s, the brand and make of video card could make a HUGE difference in graphics performance! :O

Marnix

Was my CGA card as huge as that one? I can't even remember. I do remember playing Barbarian in slowscroll mode (both CGA and EGA). It was subjectively awesome.

Rob Caporetto

That is some really crisp output there. I don't know if it's just Big Blue picked some good tubes or what - but it's really darn crisp. Maybe it's been so long since I've seen a good CRT doing that that I've forgotten what it could be like (I had generic screens on my PC's, but that was mid-90s SVGA era, nothing like this). Those scanlines though. So sharp. So crisp…

Alyxx the Rat

You should totes do a followup video when you install this card in your AT.

Alyxx the Rat

Hehe, fitting you install an EGA card while I'm working on a game with EGA graphics! :P

Martin Ravensholt

Niiiice ... When I was a kid, my dad bought me a 286 16MHz (yeah, the fast one) , with 2MB RAM and a TSeng Labs ET3000 with 512kb memory, and it was a combo EGA/VGA card. The first monitor we had for the computer was an EGA monitor, although I don't remember the brand of the monitor. I loved that machine. I played the hell out of every game I could get my hands on that supported EGA.

Can the wrong video mode blow out one of these old monitors e.g. sending an EGA signal to a CGA monitor?

The Black Toaster

My 1st computer was an XT/AT clone with EGA graphics! I didn't know how lucky I was then. I wish I had that thing now.

The Enforcer

Mmmm, EGA goodness. The colors look great. And scanlines... SCANLINES! Also, I no longer hear ze echos. I'd your room properly foamed up now?