Video Display Adapters

The video display adapters found in IBM PC—compatible computers have a hybrid interface to the central processor. The overall display characteristics, such as vertical and horizontal resolution, background color, and palette, are controlled by values written to I/O ports whose addresses are hardwired on the adapter, whereas the appearance of each individual character or graphics pixel on the display is controlled by a specific location within an area of memory called the regen buffer or refresh buffer. Both the CPU and the video controller access this memory; the software updates the display by simply writing character codes or bit patterns directly into the regen buffer. (This is called memory-mapped I/O.)

The following adapters are in common use as this book is being written:

Monochrome/Printer Display Adapter (MDA). Introduced with the original IBM PC in 1981, this adapter supports 80-by-25 text display on a green (monochrome) screen and has no graphics capabilities at all.

Color/Graphics Adapter (CGA). Also introduced by IBM in 1981, this adapter supports 40-by-25 and 80-by-25 text modes and 320-by-200, 4-color or 640-by-200, 2-color graphics (all-points-addressable, or APA) modes on composite or digital RGB monitors.

Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA). Introduced by IBM in 1985 and upwardly compatible from the CGA, this adapter adds support for 640-by-350, 16-color graphics modes on digital RGB monitors. It also supports an MDA-compatible text mode.

Multi-Color Graphics Array (MCGA). Introduced by IBM in 1987 with the Personal System/2 (PS/2) models 25 and 30, this adapter is partially compatible with the CGA and EGA and supports 640-by-480, 2-color or 320-by-200, 256-color graphics on analog RGB monitors.

Video Graphics Array (VGA). Introduced by IBM in 1987 with the PS/2 models 50, 60, and 80, this adapter is upwardly compatible from the EGA and supports 640-by-480, 16-color or 320-by-200, 256-color graphics on analog RGB monitors. It also supports an MDA-compatible text mode.

Hercules Graphics Card, Graphics CardPlus, and InColor Cards. These are upwardly compatible from the MDA for text display but offer graphics capabilities that are incompatible with all of the IBM adapters.

The locations of the regen buffers for the various IBM PC—compatible adapters are shown in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1. Memory diagram of an IBM PC—compatible personal computer, showing the locations of the regen buffers for various adapters.

Please refer to the printed book for this figure.