Ver esta pàgina en Español

MDA, CGA, Hercules, EGA, VGA

 Certainly, a XT supports any kind of cards only ISA type.

 Let's begin with the oldest and the worst:

 MDA (Monochrome Display Adaptor)

 MDA is only text, that means that you only could show text characters on the screen, not images. 80 columns and 25 rows. With this video mode, it's not possible to play games, almost, because could play games like tetris, chess , othelo, mastermind or pacman all in text mode version.

 CGA (Color Graphics Adaptor)

 1981 This is the first true "graphics mode", you could do the same as on MDA, but furthermore have more graphics modes where you could draw lines, circles, etc. It resolution is 320x200 (320 pixels per horizontal line and 200 per vertical) with 4 colours to choose in a palette of 16, and another in 640x200 black and white.

 Hercules

 1982 although it may seem worst than CGA since it have only 2 colours its 720x348 gives us a great screen resolution then, if you have to draw lines with some drawing software will look fine. It's important to tell that games that were ready for Hercules looks very well.

 EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adaptor)

 In 1984 an important advance was 640x350 with 16 simultaneous colours on screen within a palette of 65.

 MCGA (Multi Color Graphics Array)

 Appeared in 1987 originally incorporated in the main board on the new IBM computers PS/2-25 and Ps/2-30, allows 320x200 but with only 256 colours.

 VGA (Video Graphics Array)

 In 1987 a new card type appeared on the market, ISA, it changed radically the used resolution and the colour quantity.