No matter what kind of computer or phone you are reading this on, it probably has a graphics system that would have been a powerful computer on its own back in the 1980s.
When the IBM PC came out, you had two main choices for display cards: the CGA card if you wanted color graphics, or the MDA if you preferred text. Today, it might seem like an obvious choice to go with color graphics, but back then, the MDA was cheaper and offered significantly higher resolution, making it easier to read.
As free markets do, companies spotted gaps and filled them. That’s how we got the Hercules card, which supported high-resolution monochrome text and also provided a graphics mode.
[The 8-bit Guy] takes a fascinating look at these old graphics cards and how they differed from each other. Interestingly, the original MDA card could actually display eight colors, but no one knew because suitable monitors didn’t exist, and the feature was kept secret.
In terms of resolution, CGA offered a whopping 640×200 pixels, while the MDA was slightly better at 720×350. The Hercules card matched the MDA’s 720×350 text resolution and added a 720×348 graphics mode. Another advantage was that you could keep using your existing monitor — an important consideration because monitors back then typically required specific inputs and were quite costly.
These graphics cards were large and packed with chips, although the 1986 version of the Hercules card introduced an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) which helped reduce complexity.
If you wrote software in those days, you might remember that the CGA video memory buffer was located at address B800:0000, whereas monochrome cards used B000:0000. This difference was somewhat inconvenient, but it did allow users with enough resources to have two monitors simultaneously — one color and one monochrome.
[The 8-bit Guy] also explores how games performed on Hercules graphics compared to running them in color. It turns out that just because a game could run on Hercules graphics didn’t always mean it should. Some games adapted well, providing a decent experience, while others simply scaled up their CGA graphics with less than ideal results.
There was even a software solution to enable color graphics on monochrome displays, but given the processing speeds of PCs at the time, you can imagine how effective that was.
Overall, the story of these early graphics cards offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of computer displays and the creative solutions that bridged the gap between technology, cost, and user experience in the early days of personal computing.
https://hackaday.com/2025/10/27/remembering-better-mono-graphics/