The newest machines run 8 bit cards without a hitch. I test mda, herc, cga,
ega, etc on a Pentium all the time. The tricky thing is to test an 8 bit hard
card on one, the cmos on some goes nuts. I just put an external Sony CDROM
with an 8 bit proprietary interface card in a 486DX-50 for a local guy last
week.
Tony Duell wrote:
this is newer, but i have several 8bit vid cards and assorted mono/cga
etc type monitors. can i plug in one of those cards in a modernish
system and realistically use it for a display? just need dos & linux
term capabilities, but I'm not sure whether or not the system will like
that, etc. any input here would be very helpful. thanks!
I know _for a fact_ that Linux will use an MDA card. I'm using one now.
And I believe it'll use a CGA card - the sources certainly imply it.
I would hope modern BIOSes would include the drivers for MDA and CGA
cards, since they were part of the IBM BIOS. A machine that doesn't can't
claim to be IBM compatible IMHO. On the other hand, having found so many
old features are missing from modern machines, I'd not bet on it.
-Eric
-tony
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