CGA Graphics - Not as bad as you thought!

The 8-Bit Guy · 2.4M views · 2016-03-26 · 11:27

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Overview

The 8-Bit Guy covers IBM's 1981 CGA graphics system, including how composite output and artifacting produced extra colors beyond the nominal palette. He argues CGA looked better in period than it does on RGB monitors.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it for showing how old developers exploited the smeary nature of composite signals and what CGA really looked like on period hardware.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2016–2024

Topics

Demoscene & retrocomputing Computer architecture & CPUs

What people said

djsumdog · 2017-03 · Strong recommendation
If you want to see how this type of colour magic works in video form, the 8-bit guy does a GREAT video on this: [VIDEO] He shows all the interesting artifacting that makes these extra colours possible.
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nzach · 2021-11 · Recommendation
Your comment got me thinking: "Wouldn't be nice if existed an 'awesome list' for this kind of content?" After a brief google search the best I could find is this [0] and it seems to be abandoned. Does anyone know a better source for this type of content? I'm leaving some random links to great channels that produce this kind of content: - CGA Graphics - Not as bad as you thought! [1] - DVD-RAM: The Disc that Behaved like a Flash Drive [2] - The Story of Super Mario Bros. 3 | Gaming Historian [3] [0] - [LINK] [1] - [VIDEO] [2] - [LINK] [3] - [LINK]
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laumars · 2021-03 · Recommendation
Bare in mind the displays of the time would have blended the pixels. Likewise those who complain that CGA is “only 4 awful colours” have clearly never used a proper CGA system the way it was originally intended. The following YouTube video does a good job describing what CGA was really like back in the day: [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by The 8-Bit Guy, played through YouTube.

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