ATI EGA Wonder used in / for an IBM Portable PC
Saturday, May 27, 2017, 03:00 PM
Posted by Administrator
Promised, this is the last entry about the (beautiful) IBM Portable PC 5155.
I replaced my original, really long CGA card with an ATI EGA Wonder (first series).
And I was surprised how good many EGA capable games are looking.
EGA high resolution with 640x350 pixels don't seems to work with the composite monitor:
But "
Blockout" (a 3D Tetris alike DOS game)
DOES work with 640x350 pixels. So it seems that some games forces a higher vertical frequency and some not. You have to try what game does work and what not...
But mid res EGA (320x200x16) does work always, and looks very nice:
(this is Arkanoid II, Revenge of Doh)
And of course, CGA games are still possible:
(this is TAPPER, a real classic for the PC/XT category computer)
Also, 640x200x16 (EGA high res with 200 lines) is also possible with the build in CGA composite monitor of the IBM Portable PC.
Btw. >
vgamuseum.info does NOT list the used ATI EGA Wonder<. This version has 3 large integrated chips, 2 from CHIPS Technology and one gate array chip from National Semiconductor, named "SCX6244":
Unfortunately the original software floppy disks can't be found anymore, I only found the "SMS.COM" video mode switching program for DOS.
To show PCX images, I used 2SHOW (CompuShow 2000, runs on a plain IBM PC/XT and can also display JPG for example).
Many image viewer and converter for DOS can still be found, see "related link".