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Speaker 1: Welcome to text Uff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and how the tech are you. I am currently on vacation,

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Speaker 1: which means we're going to have a couple of reruns

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Speaker 1: for the rest of this week, and today's episode is

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Speaker 1: called what We're c g A, E G A and

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Speaker 1: v G A, which originally published on April twenty twenty.

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Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy. For today's episode, we're going to learn

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Speaker 1: about old computer graphics standards. Don't run away. This is

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Speaker 1: actually really interesting. We'll learn how they became standards in

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Speaker 1: the first place, and what the company IBM had to

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Speaker 1: do with all of this, and why some early decisions

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Speaker 1: by IBM would lead to the company x trickating itself

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Speaker 1: from the personal computer business altogether a couple of decades later. Now,

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Speaker 1: when I was growing up, my family owned a couple

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Speaker 1: of personal computers over the course of my childhood. We

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Speaker 1: were in that rare small percentage of households with a

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Speaker 1: personal computer back in the nineteen eighties, and our first

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Speaker 1: computer was an Apple to E with a mono chromatic

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Speaker 1: screen that could only display Matrix green style letters. I

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Speaker 1: seem to recall that we eventually got a monitor one hundred,

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Speaker 1: which is Apple's color monitor, and that was compatible with

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Speaker 1: the two E, assuming that you had a to E

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Speaker 1: with the appropriate interface card installed. But honestly, that memory

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Speaker 1: might be conflated with the second personal computer that my

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Speaker 1: dad would purchase. See. Dad got these computers in order

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Speaker 1: to work on his novels. He wrote his first couple

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Speaker 1: of books on the old Apple to E. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if he still has them, but for years he

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Speaker 1: had these novels stored on old five and a quarter

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Speaker 1: inch floppy disc and those discs could hold about a

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Speaker 1: hundred forty kilobytes worth of information each, so to be safe,

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Speaker 1: Dad would typically store two to three chapters per disk,

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Speaker 1: since his novels were too long to fit onto just

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Speaker 1: one five and a quarter inch disc, and the Apple

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Speaker 1: to E had no hard drive. Anyway, I digress, but

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Speaker 1: I love thinking about those old times. I remember going

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Speaker 1: through sleeves of discs and seeing Dad's old novels on there.

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Speaker 1: Our second computer that we owned as a family was

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Speaker 1: a two eight six. But what does that actually mean? Well,

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Speaker 1: it was a personal computer that relied on the Intel

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Speaker 1: eight two eight six central processing unit, and it also

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Speaker 1: relied on MS DOSS as the operating system. So this

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Speaker 1: computer fell into what we would call an IBM compatible

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Speaker 1: computer back in the day. It used components and an

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Speaker 1: operating system that allowed it to run any software designed

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Speaker 1: for those IBM s ccific machines. I think of this

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Speaker 1: as an interesting part of personal computer history, and it

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Speaker 1: helps illustrate a sharp contrast between IBM S strategy and apples.

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Speaker 1: So let's backtrack a little bit now, before there were

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Speaker 1: personal computers, back when you needed to work for a

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Speaker 1: special research facility or be enrolled in an engineering course

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Speaker 1: in the university, or maybe one of a handful of

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Speaker 1: folks who knows about computers and works for a big

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Speaker 1: financial company, or maybe you're in the military. Back in

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Speaker 1: those days, computers really didn't have monitors at all. Computer

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Speaker 1: graphics weren't even a thing yet. The computer would typically

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Speaker 1: print out the results of a computational process on some

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Speaker 1: sort of paper or paper tape. Richard Garriott, who would

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Speaker 1: go on to create the Ultimate Computer Game series before

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Speaker 1: You would become one of seven private citizens to visit

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Speaker 1: the space station, programmed his first games on a computer

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Speaker 1: that would print out each move of his dungeon crawler.

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Speaker 1: So imagine a top down view of a done gin crawler,

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Speaker 1: except you're not looking at it on a screen. You

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Speaker 1: actually have to print out each move. So you make

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Speaker 1: a move in the game, the printer would print out

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Speaker 1: a new display of what had happened, and all the

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Speaker 1: figures were represented by the basic characters that the printer

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Speaker 1: could replicate, so it was limited to whatever the printer

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Speaker 1: could print, and that was typically stuff like your standard letters, numbers,

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Speaker 1: and symbols on a keyboard. So making a move would

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Speaker 1: require the whole system to print out a new picture

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Speaker 1: showing the results of that move. So playing the game

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Speaker 1: took a while. Obviously the refresh rate was terrible, but

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Speaker 1: eventually engineers began to create a way for computers to

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Speaker 1: display information over a screen. You might connect the computer

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Speaker 1: to a regular old television system and you might have

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Speaker 1: a little adapter to do that, or, as would later

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Speaker 1: become the norm, you would build computer monitors specifically for

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Speaker 1: the systems you were creating, and later we would call

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Speaker 1: these displays, but I'm so old I still refer to

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Speaker 1: the them as computer monitors because that's just how it

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Speaker 1: cemented itself in my brain. Obviously, you've got to have

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Speaker 1: some sort of bridge for a computer to be able

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Speaker 1: to send meaningful information to a display, which will then

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Speaker 1: follow the instructions sent by the computer to represent the

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Speaker 1: information to the end user. There's got to be some

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Speaker 1: sort of interface to make this happen on the computer side,

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Speaker 1: as well as a port that allows a user to

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Speaker 1: connect the computer to the display. There has to be

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Speaker 1: some sort of physical connection between the two, and in

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Speaker 1: the early days of personal computers there was no set,

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Speaker 1: standardized way to do this. The technology used in one

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Speaker 1: computer system wasn't compatible with another, so you couldn't mix

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Speaker 1: and match monitors and cables and based systems together. These

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Speaker 1: were the wild West days of computing, when making a

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Speaker 1: choice as a consumer was complicated because you had no

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Speaker 1: way of knowing if the computer you chose was going

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Speaker 1: to stand the test of time. You could end up

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Speaker 1: purchasing a system at rate cost and see the parent

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Speaker 1: company crumble and all support for that system would wither away.

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Speaker 1: And software developers were affected by this too in a

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Speaker 1: big way. Developing software can be an arduous process. Back

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Speaker 1: in the early days, it was feasible and even common

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Speaker 1: for a single programmer to produce a piece of software

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Speaker 1: for a system. But developers had to make the same

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Speaker 1: sort of bets that consumers were making. They had to

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Speaker 1: choose which systems they would develop four and they would

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Speaker 1: hope that they made the right bet, and it often

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Speaker 1: been dedicating a lot of their time to learning how

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Speaker 1: to program for that particular computers operating system. Since the

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Speaker 1: OS of say, an Apple computer was different from that

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Speaker 1: of the Texas Instruments trash a D system, which was

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Speaker 1: different from the Commodore sixty four, et cetera. So in

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Speaker 1: the early days of personal computers, there were many competing

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Speaker 1: systems to choose from, both as a consumer and as

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Speaker 1: a developer. Apple, Commodo or in Texas Instruments were three

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Speaker 1: of the big ones here in the United States, and

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Speaker 1: they weren't alone, but they didn't have to contend with

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Speaker 1: a really big name in computers for a few years,

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Speaker 1: and that was I b M. And that's because initially

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Speaker 1: IBM chose to concentrate on its traditional enterprise focused business

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Speaker 1: and not really get into the consumer market. They were

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Speaker 1: making products and services for other companies, not for end

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Speaker 1: users like me and you now. That would change in

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Speaker 1: nineteen one when IBM introduced the IBM Personal Computer or

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Speaker 1: the fifty one fifty. IBM didn't invent the term personal computer,

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Speaker 1: but the fact that this juggernaut had used the phrase

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Speaker 1: for its own product would shape the terminology for computers

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Speaker 1: in general. We all know that ultimately the two major

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Speaker 1: systems to emerge from those early days were Windows based

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Speaker 1: PCs and Mac computers from Apple. These would be the

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Speaker 1: two big ones for consumers. There are obviously others out

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Speaker 1: there there, Linux systems, for example, but for the majority

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Speaker 1: of people out there, it's the Windows based PC and

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Speaker 1: Apple's Mac. Well, we call the Windows based machines PCs.

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Speaker 1: Because of IBM and its influence, a MAC is a

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Speaker 1: personal computer, to a Mac is a PC in the

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Speaker 1: sense it's a personal computer, but you wouldn't call it

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Speaker 1: a PC typically because to us, PCs means a machine

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Speaker 1: built upon ibm s approach, and that leads us into

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Speaker 1: the choices IBM made that would ultimately contribute to the

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Speaker 1: company getting out of the personal computer business. Further down

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Speaker 1: the road, it all comes down to how they chose

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Speaker 1: to get into it in the first place. You see,

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Speaker 1: when IBM was making the personal computer. The company wasn't

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Speaker 1: exactly putting its full support behind that effort in order

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Speaker 1: to produce the system cheaply, which would mean the company

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Speaker 1: could sell the manufactured systems at a premium and have

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Speaker 1: a really sweet profit margin. And you know, you you

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Speaker 1: buy cheap and you sell high. IBM engineers built the

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Speaker 1: PC using off the shelf components. The company didn't build

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Speaker 1: a custom made microprocessor or anything. Instead, the original IBM

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Speaker 1: PC used an Intel eight chip as the CPU. In

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Speaker 1: a similar fashion, the engineers used other standard components to

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Speaker 1: build out the PC, and they made an arrangement with

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Speaker 1: Microsoft to supply the operating system for this new personal computer.

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Speaker 1: And the story behind all of that operating system stuff

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Speaker 1: gets really super juicy and bonkers. That has betrayal and backstabbing.

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Speaker 1: It's like a Game of Thrones episode. For one thing,

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Speaker 1: Microsoft was not the company to originally develop DOSS, but

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Speaker 1: it sure is. Heck profited from it, but that's another story.

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Speaker 1: The operating system that IBM used was called PC DOSS,

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Speaker 1: but IBM did not establish an exclusivity agreement with Microsoft,

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Speaker 1: and so Microsoft would also develop another OS called MS DOSS,

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Speaker 1: which was to all intents and purposes identical to PC DOSS,

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Speaker 1: and it would remain so for several versions. Now, all

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Speaker 1: the pieces were in place for IBM's eventual decision to

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Speaker 1: get out of the consumer PC market, and it was

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Speaker 1: just at the point when it was getting in. You see,

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Speaker 1: the basic components for the computers were available to anyone,

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Speaker 1: and the operating system was likewise available through licensing with Microsoft.

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Speaker 1: So an enterprising computer company with much lower operating costs

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Speaker 1: than a behemoth like IBM could conceivably swoop in, build

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Speaker 1: a reasonable facsimile of an IBM PC machine using similar components,

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Speaker 1: and include a licensed version of MS DOSS as the

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Speaker 1: operating system. In presto, you have a computer that runs

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Speaker 1: just like an IBM PC, including support for all software

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Speaker 1: designed for the IBM system, and it's at a fraction

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Speaker 1: of the cost. This gave birth to an entire subclass

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Speaker 1: of computers called the IBM clones or IBM compatibles. The

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Speaker 1: two eight six I mentioned at the top of this

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Speaker 1: episode was just such a machine. We didn't known an

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Speaker 1: official IBM birstal computer, but rather a machine with the

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Speaker 1: same sort of guts inside and running MS DOSS. It

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Speaker 1: would take a long time for all of this to

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Speaker 1: actually catch up to IBM. Mind you, it's not like

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Speaker 1: they were shot and sunk as soon as they launched.

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Speaker 1: The company would ultimately pull back from the PC business,

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Speaker 1: but it would stick around long enough to make an

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Speaker 1: enormous influence on computers and programming, and that includes graphics.

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Speaker 1: When the IBM PC debut in the company offered two

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Speaker 1: options when it came to graphics. Each was a type

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Speaker 1: of circuit board that could be plugged into the motherboard

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Speaker 1: of the computer, the sort of an expansion slot. These

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Speaker 1: types of cards were called add in boards or A

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Speaker 1: I B s, and they represent in the ways to

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Speaker 1: add capabilities to a base computer model. Sometimes those abilities

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Speaker 1: were fairly simple additional features. Sometimes, like in this case,

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Speaker 1: they were required in order to send images to an

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Speaker 1: external display. So without one of these two cards you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have any way of sending information to a computer monitor.

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Speaker 1: The first of the two was called the Monochrome Display

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Speaker 1: Adapter or m d A. This was a video card

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Speaker 1: installed on the PC that would output monochromatic signals to

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Speaker 1: the monitor. Furthermore, it didn't do so in a pixel

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Speaker 1: addressable way. So wait, wait, wait, what does that mean

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Speaker 1: All right. So let's remember that the images we see

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Speaker 1: on displays and monitors and screens like on smartphones are

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Speaker 1: made up a little points of light. By changing the

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Speaker 1: brightness and color of those points of light, you can

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Speaker 1: create full images. It's not that different from the technique

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Speaker 1: used by the famous painter George Serat in his fame

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Speaker 1: its work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Lagrange Jatt.

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Speaker 1: In that painting, all the images consist of tiny dots

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Speaker 1: of paint, but when you view it from a distance,

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Speaker 1: they form the shapes of people spending a lovely day

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Speaker 1: at a park along the Sin River. It's an example

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Speaker 1: of a style called point to lists, and it's perhaps

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Speaker 1: the most famous version of this of all time. But

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Speaker 1: television's computer monitors and electronic displays like the one smartphones

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Speaker 1: use have a similar technique, except they use points of

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Speaker 1: light rather than points of paint. Now, as I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: the m d A wasn't pixel addressable, and addressability refers

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Speaker 1: to the capacity to separately access individual units of something,

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Speaker 1: so in this case pixels. A pixel addressable approach allows

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Speaker 1: the computer system to send specific instructions to each and

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Speaker 1: every pixel, which, in turn, let's computers send full images

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Speaker 1: and graphics to a connected monitor, but m d A

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Speaker 1: didn't have that capability, so you couldn't send a black

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Speaker 1: and white photo to display on a connected monitor. The

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Speaker 1: m d A was dedicated purely to text mode. The

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Speaker 1: screen consisted not of pixels so much as it did

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Speaker 1: of character cells. So imagine a box that's large enough

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Speaker 1: to hold the largest text character, like an uppercase G

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Speaker 1: or W or something. Now imagine that the entire screen

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Speaker 1: is a grid of those boxes. Each box is exactly

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Speaker 1: the same shape, so it can a lot for the

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Speaker 1: largest of characters inside of it, but that's all they

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Speaker 1: can fit inside. Each box is one character. You couldn't

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Speaker 1: create more complex images, only pictures that consisted of those

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Speaker 1: basic characters, just like the old printers that I mentioned

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Speaker 1: earlier that Richard Garriott had been playing with. Well, with

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Speaker 1: these displays, you could get really good resolution on those characters,

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Speaker 1: so the images were crisp and clear. The picture here's

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Speaker 1: the text was incredibly clear to read. It was very

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Speaker 1: simple too. With these displays. You could get really good

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Speaker 1: resolution on those characters. The text is crisp and clear.

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Speaker 1: And that was a big drop because a lot of

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Speaker 1: these computers were meant to go towards small businesses, where

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Speaker 1: presumably the applications you're running are mostly text based. There

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Speaker 1: were some trade offs. Because the screen was made up

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Speaker 1: of a grid of equal sized boxes, and each of

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Speaker 1: those boxes could contain one character, every letter would use

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Speaker 1: up the same amount of space on the screen. So

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Speaker 1: an upper case W, which is about as wide as

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Speaker 1: it gets, would take up the same amount of space

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Speaker 1: as an upper case I. Now I don't mean that

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Speaker 1: the upper case I would be wide, but rather it

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Speaker 1: would occupy a spot that would be surrounded by an

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Speaker 1: invisible box the same size as the invisible box that

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Speaker 1: goes around the upper case W. So you get this

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Speaker 1: weird spacing between letters in the same word. If you're

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Speaker 1: using a collection of wide and narrow letters, it would

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Speaker 1: just look off. H It's called monospace font. It's it's

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Speaker 1: the same sort of thing that you would see with

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Speaker 1: a lot of printers and typewriters because they were limited

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Speaker 1: to having all of their stamps at the same size,

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Speaker 1: even if the letters were different sizes. In contrast, most

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Speaker 1: fonts we use today are proportional fonts, which means individual

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Speaker 1: characters are given space proportional to their own size, so

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Speaker 1: you don't get these odd gaps between letters that should

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Speaker 1: be right next to each other. But that was just

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Speaker 1: one option for the IBM PC. The other option had

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Speaker 1: direct addressability for pixels. It also had support for colors,

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Speaker 1: so you could have color graphics with this version, and

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Speaker 1: it was called c g A, and we'll talk about

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Speaker 1: it more after the break. So c g A stands

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Speaker 1: for Color Graphics Adapter, and describing this technology will also

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Speaker 1: require us to examine a couple of other sets of

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Speaker 1: standards that affected the graphics that displayed on old c

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Speaker 1: g A systems. C g A had big limitations had

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Speaker 1: compared to graphics cards today, they seem absolutely stone age.

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Speaker 1: The c g A system could support four different modes officially,

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Speaker 1: but clever programmers figured out ways to boost this. We'll

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Speaker 1: get into that. There were two text modes and two

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Speaker 1: graphic modes for the c g A card. The first

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Speaker 1: text mode supported four bit color and could display up

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Speaker 1: to forty characters per line, with twenty five lines making

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Speaker 1: up the total screen space, so twenty five like you

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Speaker 1: could stack twenty five vertically or you could stack forty

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Speaker 1: horizontally across the screen. The pixel aspect ratio was one

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Speaker 1: to one point two. But what that mean, Well, these

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Speaker 1: pixels were not perfect squares. They were actually taller than

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Speaker 1: they were wide. With that ratio of one for width

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Speaker 1: to one point two for height, this would mean that

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Speaker 1: the visual resolution of the screen was more like three

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Speaker 1: twenty by two forty. In actuality, it was three twenty

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Speaker 1: by two hundred. So why the three two forty. Well,

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Speaker 1: because the pixels were longer than they were wide. If

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Speaker 1: you were clever with the way you create your computer graphics,

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Speaker 1: it would seem almost like you had stacked more pixels

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Speaker 1: vertically and you could take advantage of things and make

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00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:41,080
Speaker 1: a picture that had that sort of look as if

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00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:44,359
Speaker 1: it was a resolution of three twenty by two forty. However,

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Speaker 1: if you needed to cut things short and the ratio

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Speaker 1: just wasn't working for you, it would become a detriment,

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Speaker 1: not an asset. However, if you do the math, you'll

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Speaker 1: see that this means every character on screen would have

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Speaker 1: eight pixels dedicated to it. And here how I did that.

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Speaker 1: You just take the resolution with that's three twenty pixels.

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Speaker 1: You divide that by the number of characters that could

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Speaker 1: fit on one line. Remember it's forty characters across, so

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Speaker 1: three twenty divided by forty you get eight. The same

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Speaker 1: is true vertically. You can have twenty five characters stacked

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Speaker 1: from top to bottom on the screen, and the vertical

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Speaker 1: resolution is two hundred pixels top to bottom. Two hundred

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Speaker 1: divided is eight, So each character and the adapter supported

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Speaker 1: two fifty six different characters could use eight pixels for

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Speaker 1: display purposes. The four bit color part also needs explaining.

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Speaker 1: So a bit is a single unit of computer information,

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Speaker 1: and we represent it as either a zero or a one,

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Speaker 1: So that means a bit has one of two possible

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Speaker 1: states at any given time. You can think of it

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Speaker 1: as off or on, zero or one. We have four

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Speaker 1: bits for four bit color, so that means we can

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Speaker 1: think of having to the possible number of states per bit.

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Speaker 1: Raised to the power of four, that's equal to sixteen.

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Speaker 1: So four bit color could support sixteen different colors total,

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Speaker 1: not all at once, but total. Like, that's the number

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Speaker 1: of colors this display could show. In text mode, programmers

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Speaker 1: could choose a foreground and background color, choosing from those

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Speaker 1: sixteen pre made colors. In addition, a bit for the

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Speaker 1: foreground color could be dedicated to make the character blink,

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Speaker 1: so you can have blinking text in the foreground. The

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Speaker 1: blinking bit, the bit responsible for that blinking command, was

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00:20:42,160 --> 00:20:45,239
Speaker 1: repurposed for the background color, and it's served as an

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00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:50,320
Speaker 1: intensity bit instead. Intensity essentially means how dark or bright

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Speaker 1: that particular color happens to appear. The second text mode

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Speaker 1: was an eighty by twenty five four bit color mode,

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Speaker 1: so that meant you could fit eighty letters across in

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Speaker 1: a line twenty five lines per screen. These letters were

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Speaker 1: half as wide as the forty by twenty five versions.

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Speaker 1: Makes sense, right, you could fit twice as many across

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Speaker 1: the screen. They must be half as wide as the

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Speaker 1: forty by twenty five. The pixel ratio that this would

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Speaker 1: create for a visual representation of the resolution was six

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Speaker 1: forty by four eighty. Now, in reality, those pixels again

351
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Speaker 1: were taller than they were wide. In fact, they were

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Speaker 1: notably taller than they were wide, so the real resolution,

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Speaker 1: the true resolution was six forty by two hundred, but

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Speaker 1: it looked like six forty eight. More programs were written

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Speaker 1: in this mode because that you could fit way more

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Speaker 1: text on a screen than you could with the forty

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Speaker 1: twenty five mode. It was less chunky, but most text

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Speaker 1: based programs relied on the eighty by twenty five approach.

359
00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:00,920
Speaker 1: If you were using a word process or something, this

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00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:03,879
Speaker 1: was the style that you were most likely looking at.

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Speaker 1: That being said, the resolution of text on a c

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Speaker 1: g A machine was lower than what you would have

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Speaker 1: found on the monochromatic m d A computers, so it

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Speaker 1: was a tradeoff. You could have a c g A

365
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Speaker 1: ibm PC running on this eight by twenty five text

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Speaker 1: mode for a specific program and it'd be fine. It

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Speaker 1: just wouldn't be as crisp and clear as the monochromatic

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Speaker 1: m d A text specific machines. Onto the graphics modes, however,

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00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:35,120
Speaker 1: that's what we're really interested in, right, What actually made

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00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:41,160
Speaker 1: the images, not just the text on these computers. Well,

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00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:44,320
Speaker 1: the graphics mode for the c g A machine had,

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00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:47,480
Speaker 1: like I said, two different modes to it, two different

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Speaker 1: official modes to it. One was a three twenty by

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Speaker 1: two hundred resolution, but the pixel ratio was one to

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Speaker 1: one point two, so again it looked more like three

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Speaker 1: by two forty. This mode could just lay up to

377
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Speaker 1: four colors at any one time using one of two

378
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Speaker 1: pre selected palettes. This is why if you ever look

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00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:10,600
Speaker 1: at old c G A games, they all start to

380
00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:14,160
Speaker 1: look really similar. They're all using the exact same colors.

381
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:18,520
Speaker 1: For colors, the programmers were working under some really tight restrictions.

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Speaker 1: The first palette of colors included black, green, red, and yellow.

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Speaker 1: This was palette zero. The second palette, a k A

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Speaker 1: Palette one had black, cyan, magenta, and white. Now, as

385
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Speaker 1: you can imagine, it's pretty tough to create good graphics

386
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 1: with this limited color selection. Now, on top of that,

387
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:45,399
Speaker 1: programmers could use low intensity or brightness or high intensity

388
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Speaker 1: or brightness. So that would add another variation. And I've

389
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Speaker 1: seen the same screen presented in both palettes at both

390
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:58,479
Speaker 1: levels of intensity, and there are differences, like you can

391
00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:01,200
Speaker 1: get a very different effect going from one to the other.

392
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Speaker 1: So programs had a little bit of flexibility, but not

393
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Speaker 1: by much. In both palettes, black is color zero, and

394
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 1: color zero was actually customizable. You could swap it out.

395
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: You could choose one of the other fifteen colors that

396
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:20,880
Speaker 1: c g A supported and use that as color zero.

397
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:23,600
Speaker 1: Black would no longer be used. The flip side of

398
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:26,640
Speaker 1: this is that the new color would replace color zero

399
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,320
Speaker 1: in all of the image. So if you wanted the

400
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 1: image to have black in it, it would get replaced

401
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:36,119
Speaker 1: by whatever color you had now designated as color zero.

402
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: If you wanted to have green included with your white, cyan,

403
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:43,679
Speaker 1: and magenta, then it would mean that if you had

404
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:47,399
Speaker 1: a scene with a night sky, that night sky is

405
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 1: going to be green because it would normally be black,

406
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: but you've designated that color to go to green instead

407
00:24:53,520 --> 00:24:57,639
Speaker 1: of black. So yeah, very limited. However, another trick programmers

408
00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 1: could do is leverage the way see our T screens work.

409
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:05,199
Speaker 1: I'm gonna gloss over the details, but in CRT screens

410
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 1: there is an electron gun and it paints the back

411
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: of the screen with electrons. That causes phosphor to glow

412
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 1: as the phosphor absorbs electrons. But the painting is the

413
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:19,520
Speaker 1: important part. It happens at the top line on the screen.

414
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:23,119
Speaker 1: It goes all the way across horizontally, then it moves

415
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:25,760
Speaker 1: down the line and it does this again, and it

416
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:30,960
Speaker 1: does this really fast. A slow CRT monitor would repaint

417
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:35,159
Speaker 1: the entire screen sixty times a second. But this means

418
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 1: that if you're programming, you know precisely what parts of

419
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:41,400
Speaker 1: an image are going to be painted first, because it's

420
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:44,360
Speaker 1: going to go top to bottom. So if you're meticulous.

421
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 1: You can swap from one pallette set to the other

422
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:53,240
Speaker 1: palette set in mid screen draw. That allows for slightly

423
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: more colors to display on screen at one time, or

424
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 1: at least what we perceive to be at one time,

425
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: because our reception lags behind this refresh rate. So in

426
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: any given band of horizontal lines, you would be limited

427
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 1: to four colors because you'd be limited to one palette. However,

428
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:13,159
Speaker 1: you could swap from band to band, so you might

429
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: have a screen with an image in it that has

430
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,919
Speaker 1: the four colors represented from pallette zero, and then at

431
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:21,760
Speaker 1: the bottom you swap out to pallet one and you

432
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 1: get a little more variety that way. The second official

433
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: graphics mode that the c g A chip supported was

434
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: a six forty by two hundred one bit color mode.

435
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: Now this was a monochromatic approach, so you had black

436
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: the background color, and then whatever the foreground color was,

437
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 1: whether it's white or green or amber. With color monitors,

438
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:49,680
Speaker 1: you could technically choose any of the sixteen colors the

439
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:52,920
Speaker 1: c g E chips supported to be the foreground color.

440
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: And the bonus of this was that it allowed for

441
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: more fine detail. It is a greater resolution than what

442
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 1: you would find in the their mode, but now you

443
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: were reduced to just one color in addition to the background.

444
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:08,399
Speaker 1: This mode was primarily meant for users who had a

445
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 1: monochromatic display but who wanted to have graphics support. They

446
00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: didn't want to just get the text based m d

447
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:18,440
Speaker 1: A approach. You could enable this mode on a color

448
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: display and swap out that foreground color like I said,

449
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 1: but you were still limited by that one color on

450
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:25,119
Speaker 1: a screen at a time. There were a couple of

451
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 1: other tricks programmers could use to to kind of fool

452
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: the system to get more colors on screen. One involved

453
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: using the text mode instead of the graphics mode. So

454
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:38,639
Speaker 1: the text mode actually supported more colors on screen at once.

455
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: And if you could just make your game out of text,

456
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: then you could have much more colorful games. However, there

457
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: are games that are made up of text, So how

458
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:53,080
Speaker 1: do you adjust for that. Well, one of the two

459
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: fifty six characters that you could choose from was a

460
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: simple shape. It took up half of the character cell,

461
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: so one half of the cell would be this color

462
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: and the other half would be the background color. So

463
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 1: you have a foreground color in the background color. However,

464
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:11,400
Speaker 1: what if you set both the foreground and the background

465
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: to the exact same color. Well, you would get a

466
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 1: solid block of that color, and using those blocks you

467
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: could create simple graphics. But it's kind of like using

468
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 1: wooden blocks that you would have as a kid. Right,

469
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: you can make stuff out of it, but it's gonna

470
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:30,400
Speaker 1: be chunky. You're not gonna get the fine graphic detail

471
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,440
Speaker 1: you would down to the pixel level. Now, your pixels

472
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:36,720
Speaker 1: are much much bigger than they would have been otherwise,

473
00:28:36,760 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: so the resolution was just one sixty by one hundred

474
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: in this mode, but you'd be able to use a

475
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 1: lot more colors. The last trick programmers could rely upon

476
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:48,959
Speaker 1: had to do with the monitors themselves, so there were

477
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 1: two big categories at this time. The IBM PC had

478
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: an r G B I monitor, and r g B

479
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 1: I stands for red, green, blue and inten city, which

480
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,680
Speaker 1: again is the brightness of a color. But you could

481
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: also use a composite video monitor like a television set.

482
00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: You could use that as your computer monitor, and you

483
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: could feed video to it through a composite cable that's

484
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:18,640
Speaker 1: the yellow r c A cables of old. That one

485
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:22,600
Speaker 1: cable would carry out all the video information to the display. However,

486
00:29:22,760 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: composite video monitors had an interesting tendency. Colors would bleed

487
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: into each other a little bit, and that bleed that

488
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: melding of colors would present other colors that you might

489
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:38,560
Speaker 1: not otherwise be able to create in c g A graphics.

490
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: So you could kind of create through the process of transmission,

491
00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: brand new colors. So it's not like it's in the programming.

492
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 1: It's literally impairing two different colors that could be represented

493
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:54,560
Speaker 1: in c g A next to each other, because you

494
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: know when it's going to be shown on a screen,

495
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: they're going to bleed together a little bit, so you

496
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 1: get a a more rich from a color perspective image. However,

497
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 1: there was a drawback to this as well. It would

498
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 1: mean that the image is a little more blurry and

499
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: not as sharp, so it would almost be like you're

500
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: ending up with a lower resolution image. However, you would

501
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:19,800
Speaker 1: get more colors. So it just depended on what was

502
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: most important to you when you were putting these things together.

503
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: But why was there such a limitation on colors in

504
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: the first place, Like, what was the factor that was

505
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 1: making this be so primitive. Well, it wasn't because of

506
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 1: display technology, like color televisions have been around since the seventies,

507
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: really earlier technically, but definitely commercially. They had been available

508
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: since the seventies, and there's no reason why a monitor

509
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to handle lots of different colors. The

510
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 1: real issue lay with computer memory. See in the early days,

511
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: computer memory was a pretty valuable and scarce resource. It

512
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: was expensive, it was hard to implement. Most computers had

513
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: a very limited amount of random access memory or RAM.

514
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: Computers pulled data into RAM from some other storage source

515
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: like a floppy disk or a hard drive, and then

516
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: the computer response to input provided by the user or

517
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: by some program and performs operation on the data in

518
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 1: this memory, thus producing output. The more information the computer

519
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 1: can hold in RAM, generally speaking, the better because it

520
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: brings downloading times and speeds things up quite a bit.

521
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:32,480
Speaker 1: But RAM was pretty precious in the early days of computing.

522
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: The IBM PC shipped standard with just sixteen kill a

523
00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:40,720
Speaker 1: bytes of RAM, so rather than eat up that memory

524
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: by supporting more colorful graphics, IBM chose to give limited

525
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: support to color representation and reserve that RAM for other stuff, like,

526
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:52,880
Speaker 1: you know, actually helping the computer execute programs. Other companies

527
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: looked at IBM s c g A approach and they

528
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: reverse engineered it. Soon they could also produce computers that

529
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 1: supported a c g A graphics. Thus c g A

530
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: approach became a standard, and originally you could just think

531
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:09,600
Speaker 1: of it as being proprietary. It was an IBM proprietary technology,

532
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: but through reverse engineering it became a standard in computer graphics.

533
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: And some of these third parties took this approach a

534
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: step further. There was a company called Hercules Computer Technology

535
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: that introduced the Hercules Graphics card in n two. The

536
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: card came about as a matter of necessity. The developer

537
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 1: needed a way to display Thai characters from from the

538
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: language of Thailand, and that was his native language, was Thai,

539
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: and in a resolution similar to I B M S

540
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: M D A. That was the goal, like to have

541
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 1: these very clear, crisp figures in the Thai language, but

542
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 1: the M D A didn't support that alphabet. The Hercules

543
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 1: Graphics card had a resolution of seven twenty by three fifty,

544
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: but unlike the m D A, it was pixel addressable,

545
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 1: so it could display both text and graphics at high resolution.

546
00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: It was a monochromatic technology, so you weren't going to

547
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: get full color this way, but the resolution was superior

548
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: to the c g A standard, So you could program

549
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: a game in the c g A one bit mode,

550
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: that monochromatic graphics mode of c g A, but at

551
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: a much higher resolution than what you would do with

552
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 1: the c g A computer. Now that being said, not

553
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: many programmers actually took advantage of this, because it wasn't

554
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 1: standard for developers to cater to a specific add in

555
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:32,320
Speaker 1: board like that, but man those times would change. However,

556
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: a lack of BIOS support for this card meant not

557
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: many programmers would actually take advantage of this and develop

558
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: games specifically for computers with that type of card. Other

559
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 1: companies would begin producing similar cards, and IBM was hard

560
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: at work on the next generation of graphics capabilities. We'll

561
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 1: talk about how they enhanced graphics in just a second,

562
00:33:52,440 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break in IBM boosted

563
00:34:04,360 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 1: the graphical capabilities of its line and personal computers by

564
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: a decent amount, though again by today's standards, still primitive.

565
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 1: The company introduced e g A, or Enhanced Graphics Adapters.

566
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:19,880
Speaker 1: These add in boards, similar to c g A, included

567
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:22,280
Speaker 1: a bunch of chips that would show a marked improvement

568
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: over the old c g A approach, e g A

569
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: could support sixteen colors at the same time for some resolutions,

570
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:33,200
Speaker 1: So think of that four times the number of colors

571
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 1: on screen at once. Wow, and it could pull colors

572
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:40,959
Speaker 1: from a palette of sixty four total options. No longer

573
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: were you forced to decide between supporting dark yellow or

574
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: having brown. C g A chose brown because it was

575
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:49,879
Speaker 1: decided that that was a color that would far more

576
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:53,759
Speaker 1: frequently be used than dark yellow. The resolution support for

577
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,880
Speaker 1: graphics had increased as well. E g A support resolutions

578
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 1: of up to six forty by three fifty, though there

579
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 1: are some caveats I'll get to in a second. The

580
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:07,439
Speaker 1: card itself included sixteen kilobytes of RAM. RAM is read

581
00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 1: only memory, and as the name suggests, read only memory

582
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: cannot be written to or changed. Data stored in ROM

583
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:18,439
Speaker 1: typically includes sets of instructions that are necessary for doing

584
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: stuff like booting up a program or running a critical process.

585
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 1: In the case of e g A cards, the RAM

586
00:35:24,560 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 1: included basic instructions for graphics applications that took some of

587
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 1: the load off the host computer's own memory. In addition

588
00:35:32,120 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 1: to those kilobytes of RAM, the card also had sixty

589
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:39,360
Speaker 1: four dedicated kilobytes of RAM or random access memory. This

590
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: is like the short term memory stuff, you know, the

591
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:44,760
Speaker 1: memory where a computer stuff's data in order to access

592
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 1: that information rapidly while carrying out operations. The card also

593
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: allowed for a secondary memory card to boost the capability

594
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 1: of e g A another sixty four kilobytes, which is

595
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 1: good because at the base level of sixty four kilobytes

596
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 1: from the basic e g A card, you would only

597
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 1: get four colors on screen at once if you were

598
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: showing graphics at the full resolution of six forty by

599
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,200
Speaker 1: three fifty. The e g A card provided support for

600
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:12,800
Speaker 1: both the c g A and m d A modes

601
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:16,200
Speaker 1: of IBM's previous graphics adapters, in addition to the new

602
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 1: capabilities of the e g A itself. And IBM provided

603
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:24,359
Speaker 1: extensive documentation on the e g A, and that documentation

604
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 1: came in handy not just for people who wanted to

605
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,800
Speaker 1: program for systems with an e g A card, but

606
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 1: for companies that wanted to produce their own version of

607
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 1: the e g A card. It would go on to

608
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: become one of the most cloned cards in computer history,

609
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 1: and only that companies were upping the anti by including

610
00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:45,800
Speaker 1: more ram on these cloned cards, providing greater graphical support

611
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 1: than what IBM was offering out of the gate. So

612
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 1: while a basic e g A card would support four

613
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: colors at full resolution, these clones would allow for all

614
00:36:54,640 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 1: sixteen colors simultaneously at that same resolution. OUCH. Just two

615
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: years after IBM introduced e g A, we saw more

616
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: than twenty companies offering up clones of that technology. Some

617
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: iconic games that came out during the e g A

618
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: era include Ultimate five Warriors of Destiny. I mentioned the

619
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: Ultimate series earlier in this episode. The first several Ultimate

620
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,440
Speaker 1: games came out for the Apple platform primarily and then

621
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:26,280
Speaker 1: we're later reported to other computer systems. Ultimate Five included

622
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: e g A Support, and I remember this game fondly.

623
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: In fact, it's my favorite of the Ultimate series. But

624
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:36,320
Speaker 1: other iconic e g A games included Cosmos, Cosmic Adventure,

625
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 1: Commander Keene, and the original Newcomb platforming game, and many more.

626
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 1: One of the big advances in graphics found its way

627
00:37:45,120 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: into e g A, which was the concept of bit mapping.

628
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: So remember when I said that images on a screen

629
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:54,399
Speaker 1: are made up of individual points of light called pixels. Well,

630
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:58,080
Speaker 1: in the older version of interlaced graphics. You would include

631
00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: information about each pixel, so you might say pixel in

632
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: column one row one is red pixel, and column two

633
00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 1: row one is red pixel and column three in row

634
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 1: one is red. That gets pretty tedious. Bit mapping allowed

635
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: for a different approach. With bit mapping, you would only

636
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: include data on a pixels color if the color was

637
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 1: different from the pixel immediately before that one. So if

638
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: pixels one, two, and three are all red, you would

639
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 1: only have to define it for pixel one. The system

640
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,400
Speaker 1: would understand that if you didn't have any new information

641
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 1: for pixel two that it would also be red, the

642
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: same as for pixel three. It would only be when

643
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 1: you had new information that would say, all right, now

644
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:47,920
Speaker 1: we have a new color like blue. This made displaying

645
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:51,840
Speaker 1: shapes that all were the same color throughout much more efficient.

646
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 1: There's more to it than that, but it gets technical

647
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: and we'd have to talk more about electron guns and stuff,

648
00:38:57,120 --> 00:38:59,279
Speaker 1: so we'll just leave it off from here. But it

649
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:02,760
Speaker 1: was a big fans. It wouldn't be long before IBM

650
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:06,800
Speaker 1: introduced another advance in graphics technology. E G A debut

651
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:10,840
Speaker 1: in nine four, and just three short years later, IBM

652
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:15,279
Speaker 1: introduced the video graphics array or v G A. No

653
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: longer were we talking about adapters. Nah, This here was

654
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,360
Speaker 1: an array. So what does that mean? Well, it actually

655
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:24,880
Speaker 1: matters in this case. The c G A and e

656
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:28,240
Speaker 1: g A adapters were added boards that you would slot

657
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,640
Speaker 1: onto the main frame circuit board of a computer. So

658
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: you'd open up the computer case. There would be these

659
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 1: little slots where you could slide in circuit boards. You'd

660
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:39,719
Speaker 1: slide the circuit board in and it would have a

661
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 1: port in the back that would poke out the back

662
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: of the computer case and you could plug stuff in

663
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,840
Speaker 1: that way. This was very typical VEXT still is to

664
00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:51,680
Speaker 1: this day. There's still computers that do this with expansion slots.

665
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:55,520
Speaker 1: So v G A was different. V g A was

666
00:39:55,680 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 1: hardwired onto the motherboard itself for the IBM computers. Later,

667
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: third party companies would make v g A adapter cards

668
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:07,160
Speaker 1: to give computers that did not have the v GA

669
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 1: installed directly on the motherboard the added capabilities of the

670
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:15,240
Speaker 1: new graphics standard. So while IBM took a different approach

671
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:18,719
Speaker 1: to this, other companies would replicate what IBM was doing

672
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 1: on expansion cards that you could then plug into an

673
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:25,399
Speaker 1: existing machine. So what were those capabilities? Well, you could

674
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 1: use lots of colors if you were also using lower resolutions.

675
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: So at a resolution of three twenty by two hundred pixels,

676
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: the array could support up to two hundred fifty six

677
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: colors simultaneously. Wow, But if you want better resolution, then

678
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:44,480
Speaker 1: you had to reduce the number of colors. Higher resolution

679
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: mode of six forty by four eighty supported just a

680
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 1: modest sixteen colors. The palettes could draw from a global

681
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 1: collection of more than two hundred sixty thousand colors. One

682
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: other big difference between v G A and its predecessors

683
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:01,080
Speaker 1: is that v G A would send out data in

684
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: an analog signal. E G A and c G A

685
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: used digital signals. So what's the difference there, Well, an

686
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 1: analog signal is continuous. It's unbroken, so you can plot

687
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:16,719
Speaker 1: that as a smooth wave. Uh, it doesn't have to

688
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 1: be like a smooth, gentle repeating pattern. It can be

689
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:24,440
Speaker 1: all over the place, but it's unbroken. It's a continuous signal,

690
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:28,759
Speaker 1: so it can get really squiggly, but it's still one continuous,

691
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: unbroken signal. So imagine playing a stringed instrument and you

692
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 1: strum a string and it's playing a tone, but then

693
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 1: you move your finger up the front board while the

694
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 1: string is vibrating. That increases the frequency of the strings vibration,

695
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: and thus we perceive that as the pitch of the

696
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,239
Speaker 1: note going up, and you can bend the note up.

697
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: So if you've ever heard that kind of sound, you know, oh, well,

698
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: that's like a continuous experience. It's not like I've heard

699
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,360
Speaker 1: it play low and then play high. I heard it

700
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: shift through all those different frequencies until it reached its

701
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:08,799
Speaker 1: its ending frequency. It was a very smooth transition. That's

702
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: kind of like describing just an analog signal, this smoothness.

703
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: Digital signals are done in a series of steps, so

704
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: this is more about taking slices of time and applying

705
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 1: a specific value to whatever signal you're sending out in

706
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 1: that slice of time. The finer you slice the time,

707
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 1: so the smaller or thinner the slices, the smoother you

708
00:42:33,920 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 1: can make the signal. But in turn, it requires way

709
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: more information to describe that signal. So rather than it

710
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: being smooth and continuous and unbroken, if you were to

711
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: zoom in on a digital signal, you would see these

712
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:53,280
Speaker 1: little edges of these steps of time as the signal

713
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: goes up or down, depending on whatever it is you're

714
00:42:56,120 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: measuring or indicating here, but it indicates a discrete amount

715
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: of time and the data associated with that discrete amount

716
00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:05,359
Speaker 1: of time. If you've got a lot of processing power,

717
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:08,839
Speaker 1: you can make those time slices very very very thin.

718
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: And if you can do that thin enough, then it's

719
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: almost as if you're listening to an unbroken signal. You

720
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:19,840
Speaker 1: get beyond the level of human perception. But there is

721
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 1: a point where human perception definitely picks up on this stuff.

722
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: So one downside of analog is that analog cables, if

723
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 1: they're not properly shielded, can suffer from interference problems. Digital

724
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:36,920
Speaker 1: cables don't. You don't get interference with digital cables, but

725
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:39,800
Speaker 1: generally speaking, with an analog cable, the longer the cable,

726
00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: the more prone it is to interference issues. Uh. And

727
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: the shielding, as I said, is a big factor. So

728
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 1: if you think of a cable as having several wires

729
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:52,880
Speaker 1: inside of it, if the individual wires are not shielded properly,

730
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:56,720
Speaker 1: you could get interference between them and that would result

731
00:43:56,760 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 1: in poor performance. From graphics perspectives, v g A really

732
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,680
Speaker 1: did set a new standard for computer graphics. On the

733
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:05,719
Speaker 1: PC side of things, and it would also lead to

734
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: IBM no longer being the entity that would define those standards.

735
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 1: The rise of third party companies creating IBM clones by

736
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: this time we pretty much just called them PCs would

737
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:21,919
Speaker 1: prompt ANYC home Electronics to announce the intention to form

738
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 1: a new organization. This organization is called the Video Electronics

739
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:30,880
Speaker 1: Standards Association or VESA, and the purpose of vesas to

740
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: come up with technical standards for computer video displays and graphics.

741
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: The group would build upon the v g A proprietary

742
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: standard to create what has collectively been referred to as

743
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 1: super v g A. So think of v g A,

744
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: but with even more capabilities and no longer dictated by

745
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: a single company, but rather by a consortium of companies

746
00:44:54,520 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 1: that have decided what the standards should be. Super v

747
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:00,839
Speaker 1: g A could expand the resolution up eight hundred by

748
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: six hundred pixels. Again, it's not one single standard, it's

749
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,480
Speaker 1: rather a collection of super sets of the v g

750
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:09,479
Speaker 1: A standards. So it's a little tricky to talk about

751
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:13,040
Speaker 1: super v g A. It's not just one thing. IBM

752
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:16,360
Speaker 1: would continue to go on to create the Extended Graphics

753
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 1: Array or x g A, but by that time super

754
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:21,399
Speaker 1: v g A had kind of taken on a life

755
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:24,320
Speaker 1: of its own as the new model for computer graphics.

756
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:27,840
Speaker 1: IBM would no longer be front and center when it

757
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:32,280
Speaker 1: came to defining how PCs would display graphics on a monitor.

758
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,080
Speaker 1: By this time, we're getting into the mid nineties, and

759
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:38,760
Speaker 1: the term IBM clone was pretty much dropped in favor

760
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 1: of PC, and that would apply to any computer running MS,

761
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,440
Speaker 1: DOSS or later like after nine five or so Windows.

762
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:50,239
Speaker 1: IBM's decision to cut down costs by going with the

763
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:53,800
Speaker 1: off the shelf components, coupled with the failure to secure

764
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 1: an exclusive license for DOSS from Microsoft, meant that IBM

765
00:45:57,640 --> 00:46:02,640
Speaker 1: set the stage for its own competition in the consumer space. Ultimately,

766
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:06,480
Speaker 1: those competitors got big enough to create their own standards organizations,

767
00:46:06,560 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 1: and so it became a group effort to come up

768
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 1: with the way computers would continue to work. This, in turn,

769
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 1: made it easier for lots of companies to enter the space,

770
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:19,759
Speaker 1: offering up competing products at competitive prices. IBM, for its part,

771
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: would exit the personal computer market completely by the mid

772
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 1: two thousand's. The company sold off its PC division to

773
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: Lenovo in a deal that was valued at one point

774
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:34,480
Speaker 1: seven five billion dollars a princely some IBM was just

775
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,760
Speaker 1: finding it impractical to compete in that space and instead

776
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 1: would return a full focus on enterprise level products and services.

777
00:46:42,200 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 1: But if it weren't for IBM, we wouldn't have seen

778
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:48,520
Speaker 1: this particular progression with computer graphics. I'm sure we would

779
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:51,160
Speaker 1: have arrived at some sort of place similar to where

780
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 1: we are now without the IBM PC. But who knows

781
00:46:55,480 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: what it would look like. You know, maybe there's a

782
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:00,720
Speaker 1: parallel universe out there, and which we see a world

783
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:03,919
Speaker 1: where IBM never gotten to the consumer market at all

784
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 1: and someone else took on that role, and maybe computer

785
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: graphics themselves would be very different from the way they

786
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 1: are today. But I can't travel in parallel dimensions, so

787
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:19,239
Speaker 1: I'll just have to imagine it. That was what we're

788
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 1: c G A, e G A and v G A

789
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 1: from a couple of years ago. I will be back

790
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:27,200
Speaker 1: with all new episodes next week, so I look forward

791
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 1: to chatting with you then. As always, if you have

792
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics for me to cover on tech stuff,

793
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:34,759
Speaker 1: or suggestions for people I should have on the show,

794
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 1: anything like that, let me know on Twitter. The handle

795
00:47:37,239 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: for the show is Text Stuff hs W and I'll

796
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:48,279
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an

797
00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:51,959
Speaker 1: I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,

798
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

799
00:47:55,600 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Zero