I recall the 370 part was on a card.
Its the second version of the AT Bios that was disgusting was verion 2, that ran on 6mhz 286s and prevented you from swapping the crystal for a 16Mhz/8Mhz speed up. The first version had bugs, and the third version was for the 8Mhz machines. ( still a few bugs ).
This is the AT/370:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-based_IBM_mainframe-compati...
https://www.cpushack.com/2013/03/22/cpu-of-the-day-ibm-micro...
https://anycpu.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=350
There was one additional model of the IBM AT: THE IBM XT/286: An AT class mother board in an XT sized case.
https://www.dosdays.co.uk/computers/IBM%20PC-XT-286%20(5162)...
You want really obscure? Unisys had the same idea with the "Micro-A", which was a PC running OS/2 with a coprocessor card with a single chip implementation of an A-series mainframe. I know of 2, possibly 3, still around.
These days, I've an acquired brain injury. Between that an old age, it was a bit hard to read, but also, just a little bit familiar, so I enjoyed it.
Now I am expecting "256 color VGA programming in C" to resurface at some point! :D
Old hardware was always so much fun...
Bah! You kids with your newfangled graphics modes. 320 x 200 CGA and 16 colors is more than enough. See the linked "8088 MPH" video for proof: https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-al...
with the opposite of smooth scrolling - video off during text scrolling. BLINK!
kind of like the crazy blinking ancestor of vsync off
And then there were tricks to get more colors in higher resolutions as well, especially if you used the TV output instead of a CGA monitor.
https://int10h.org/blog/2015/04/cga-in-1024-colors-new-mode-...
That's a text mode, but ok, I think some games used it for graphics.
But after wasting... oh, nearly ~800ms on this internal debate, I realized I'd already cleverly chosen to not link directly to the 8088 MPH video but instead a site containing both the video and links to explications revealing the myriad brilliant tricks and unnatural acts behind 8088 MPH. And from that rabbit hole, one may learn more than any mortal should know about CGA graphics. Especially apropos since the author of the OP was instrumental in creating 8088 MPH (although the OP's post is about BIOS things).
Bah! You kids with your newfangled 320x200x16 CGA cards.
We had 720x384x2 Hercules cards and we liked it!
mrlonglong•3mo ago
viler•3mo ago