Talk:VGA text mode

Video timings
Expansion required: what are the actual video timings for each text video mode - interlaced or progressive, sync polarity, blank intervals, etc. --Dmitry (talk •contibs ) 14:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

"A text mode signal may have the same timings than VESA standard modes." I guess it should be "the same timings as" Slidercrank (talk) 09:08, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, my grammar mistake. WP:SOFIXIT. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the SVGATextMode section.
Thanks for the SVGATextMode section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicoloriages (talk • contribs) 21:31, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Accepted. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I read it, and am going to do testing.
 * What about the 8514/A interlaced modes? Some SVGA complatible cards say they could support it.
 * See

Modern, Recent, Latest
Please avoid such terms, or qualify them with actual dates (e.g. "modern (2010-2013) video cards"). Write the article so that it will still make sense when someone reads it in 5 or 10 years. 31.52.29.34 (talk) 03:06, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * “Modern” means roughly since 1996. It is contrasted to the “classical” VGA (both for PS/2 and PC) and its early derivatives (so named SVGA cards and some others). Where the article says anything about “latest”? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Hercules, MDA
Entry for Mode 7 states 720x350 Graphics for both MDA and Hercules. This is plain wrong. MDA had only characters, no pixels could be addressed, and those characters amount to a number of 720x350 pixels.. Hercules had 720x348 pixels which can be addressed individually. Hercules came to existence _because_ MDA didn't have pixels.


 * The entry doesn't say that. The third column says that it is displaying text, and the sixth column gives the resolution TEDickey (talk) 18:40, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Intel's claims about the extended 9-column character range
The revision from 09:40, 4 October 2014 states that the "0xC0-0xDF" is wrong, and that the characters 0xB0-0xDF all have their 8th column repeated as the 9th. The source is some Intel documentation, plus an unverified claim that "on screen shots it can be seen that the shading characters 0xB0–0xB2 do have a repeated 9th column".

I'd like to see such screenshots that aren't (1) misinterpreted, (2) taken from Intel hardware, or (3) part of this very article (with the words "self-made" in their description). None of the VGA cards I've used over the years has ever exhibited such behavior. And trust me, when you deal extensively with ASCII/ANSI art, you do pay close attention to what those shading characters look like.

This claim may be true for Intel's on-board chips, but their assertions about "errors" in IBM docs cannot be accepted without conclusive evidence. If such is not supplied, they should be removed. 79.183.71.84 (talk) 21:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)


 * It's 0xC0-0xDF, not 0xB0-0xDF. Time to fix this error – the claim of 0xB0-0xDF is spurious and without real-life proof.  Whatever statement Intel makes about "errors" in IBM's documentation is completely unsupported by fact.


 * In real life, all actual screenshots show that this is wrong (whether taken from real hardware, or from emulators that take great care duplicating the video hardware's behavior – DOSBox, PCEm, etc.). Here's the most pertinent example: the original IBM VGA card (AKA the PS/2 Display Adapter), showing its output in 9x16 text mode.


 * You can clearly see the characteristic blank columns between the repeating characters 0xB0-B2 (just like every other VGA-compatible card I've ever seen). Ergo: IBM's documentation is correct, and so is the FreeVGA Project.  The 9th dot column is inactive for 0xB0-0xBF; duplication only happens for 0xC0-0xDF.


 * The erroneous information is being removed, please do not bring it back. Vileyn0id (talk) 23:12, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 13 April 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 03:42, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

VGA-compatible text mode → VGA text mode – This subject is most commonly referred to as "VGA text mode" as far as I can tell. See, , and. - Alexis Jazz 17:12, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Support: I can agree with you, it's easy to say "VGA text mode" for a lot of us. «“ I'm Aya Syameimaru! ”I„ 文々. 新聞 “I„ ”» 06:56, 15 April 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Impulse Tracker
The Wikipedia statement (a) goes beyond the blog's offhand comment, and (b) the blog is not a reliable source TEDickey (talk) 07:55, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I've added additional sources to prove that Jeffrey Lim is an established expert on the design of Impulse Tracker, which makes his blog acceptable as RS per WP:BLOGS. Also I've added link to the user manual which has additional info on IT text mode capabilities. Those sources are relevant and at the very least do not contradict the paragraph before them, so there's no need for Failed verification template. If there are still some facts left in the article that are not confirmed by the sources, please tell which or mark them specifically in text. --M5 (talk) 09:01, 15 March 2021 (UTC)