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| Newer page: | version 4 | Last edited on Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:29:12 pm | by DavidHallett | |
| Older page: | version 3 | Last edited on Friday, October 10, 2003 8:34:12 am | by AristotlePagaltzis | Revert |
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An ancient black and white video graphics adapter superseding [IBM]'s [MDA]. In addition to the 80x25 text mode, programmers could also take advantage of a 720x350 pixel monochrome graphics mode. These display adapters occasionally came with other interfaces built onto the card such as a parallel or serial port.
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[PCGuide | http://www.pcguide.com/ref/video/std
.htm
] says : %%% One weakness of the original [MDA] display was that it did not support graphics of any kind. A company named [Hercules] created in the early 80s an [MDA]-compatible video card that supported monochrome graphics in addition to the standard text modes. %%% %%% The [Hercules] card was actually a very widely-accepted standard in the mid-80s; eventually [Hercules] clones even appeared on the market. Support for the card was included in popular software packages such as Lotus 1-2-3 to allow the display of graphs and charts on the computer screen. It has of course been replaced by later, color, graphics adapters.
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[PCGuide|http://www.pcguide.com/ref/video/stdHercules-c
.html
] says : %%% One weakness of the original [MDA] display was that it did not support graphics of any kind. A company named [Hercules] created in the early 80s an [MDA]-compatible video card that supported monochrome graphics in addition to the standard text modes. %%% %%% The [Hercules] card was actually a very widely-accepted standard in the mid-80s; eventually [Hercules] clones even appeared on the market. Support for the card was included in popular software packages such as Lotus 1-2-3 to allow the display of graphs and charts on the computer screen. It has of course been replaced by later, color, graphics adapters.
Neither the later designed [CGA] standard nor its successor, the [EGA], managed to eclipse [Hercules]. [CGA] only offered abysmal resolution (and hence, display quality), and the [EGA] text modes did not match the quality of a [Hercules] card either. Only with [VGA] did an adequate standard emerge that could replace [Hercules] in all respects.
Nevertheless, [Hercules] compatible cards remained popular particularly among programmers, because they could be used alongside a graphics card of the aforementioned standards, in effect offering one of the earliest methods for attaining dual display support on [PC]s. While few end user applications took advantage of this, [Borland] developer applications (such as TurboPascal) were capable of displaying the [IDE] on the [Hercules] screen while the program being written would run on the primary display adapter. Some other applications had similar support for secondary [Hercules] displays.
(GerwinVanDeSteeg might still have a [Hercules] somewhere, along with a working screen.)
