LGR - Installing an 8-bit EGA Card on an IBM 5154 

Probably the reason it is faster has to do with how CGA's memory is addressed. It requires a lot more CPU time to figure out where to put things on the screen. EGA is more logical and laid out very simple.

LGR yelling at his PC about the unbelievable date made me chuckle.

"I think I read somewhere that it was" accurate description of working with old computers.

You've got 50K RAM more than you need, Dude. That's gnarly!

Haha "You've got 50K RAM more than you need, Dude. That's Gnarly!" That's the best thing I've ever seen a computer say.

My dad had a 386 PC with an EGA monitor when I was a little kid, and I always remember the clicking sounds the monitor would make when switching resolutions. I had never heard any computer monitor do that before, plus in text mode and 640x350 graphics mode the resolution was higher than anything I'd seen. It wasn't until 1992 that we finally upgraded to VGA.

Man, and people complain that some AMD cards were ten inches long...

Oh, the nostalgia. I remember playing Treasure Mountain as a kid! Thanks for showing it on LGR!

I just want to say thank you for peaking my interest in computer technology. I know it's by chance that I found your channel, but it wasn't by chance that I became interested due to how interesting you made it seem. And it is! I applied and got accepted into a STEM Academy class for Computer Systems Technology for my senior year of high school and I couldn't be more excited and thankful of you and your work! I love watching your videos and I cannot wait to learn more about computers! Thanks a million!!

"You've got 50k RAM more than you need, Dude. That's gnarly!" Ahh that DOS 640K mem space, how we miss you.... sorta. ;)

hearing louie louie, in any form makes me a happy camper.

Thank you for finally letting me know the name of Treasure Mountain I played that back in school and could not for the life of me remember what the name of it was.

There is something ASMR about the way he narrates these videos... :-) Very soothing......

I played the Macintosh version of Treasure Mountain (and the space one) in early grade school! Neat! I graduated from high school in 2010 by the way, so clearly our school district was holding on to older machines.

So much nostalgia in these colors and sounds, my friend used to have IBM PC AT, at the time we have some crazy obsession with everything basketball, we used to play Lakers Vs. Celtics on the PC and i was really good at it, then play basketball outside and every Thursday watch an NBA game on local channel, i remember the CGA colors then moving to EGA was mind blowing experience! from 4 to 16 colors! life was simple back then ... Thank you sir for this video.

Subscribed. All these old IBM machines are some solid nerd porn.

I love your DOS-game and retro-PC reviews! Hope your new place have room for even more classic setups.

Man, that looks flawless! Gotta love what you can achieve with one simple upgrade.

I'm so amazed at your knowledge of all these computers. the history of computers is so fascinating. I always enjoy these videos even though I barely understand anything about it. its just nice.

I love how this ~30 year old stuff still works. Nowadays cards often give in after 2-3 years as if they were manufactured that way so you buy the new model... Good video, loved the message about having more memory than needed. Gnarly! xD

Those monitors are beautiful.

Excellent video as always! The sounds this computer do while reading the game is awesome!

I love your videos man, to me old tech is already interesting but you make it even more interesting to learn about and see. Keep up the great work.

The PC Speaker.. the whirring floppy drive... things randomly not working.. omg the nostalgia. Taking me right back to 1990

Man, those whirring, spinning and clicking sounds of the older machines takes me right back to being sat on my old mans lap watching him play Elite until the early hours of the morning at weekends when I was about 5 years old. Great stuff!

When I saw the title of this video, I squaked in joy! Along with your computer reviews (Sinclair+the RAM turbo for it, Amstrad CPC, the 5150 etc.) your Hercules card review is my favorite video of yours, actually one of my favs in all of YT! You totally made my night, so totally huge thanks! P.S. If you'd showed some Starflight footage too I would have probably creamed my pants. :)

Everytime I watch your videos with old PC hardware, I just want to drop everything to finally dig out my old IBM PC XT from my childhood and see what it all has. I don't even know if it still turns on but I want to fix it up. And when I see you use your XT I just get fuzzy knowing I have one as well. You give me hope that I can get it working.

damn bro, you have no idea how nostalgic i get when you do videos on old PCs. The very first computer i ever used was my cousins 5154 back around '86 or so. My cousin taught my how to use the command prompt to launch games and shit. then around '89 we got our first PC - a 286 with 2Mb of RAM and a 40Mb HDD (which at the time was FAST). It cost my parents like $8000 and I LOVED IT. The first time my mom went to work and left me alone with it I took it apart immediately. So imagine being my mom coming home after work one day and finding your 6 year old had taken apart your brand new $8,000 computer. She could have killed me but I put it back together and it worked fine.... I was a curious little kid and wanted to know how it worked.. ah the good ol days of computing.

Thanks as always, LGR, for making me remember such cool tech, and thus futilely yearn for and miss it. Keep up the great work! :)

This is really a go to video for demonstrating EGA versus CGA. Also you’re absolutely hilarious in this one.

Keep em coming Clint! great video.

I had the 12mhz version of this back around 87. ega, 20mb hard drive. I still had it in the early 90's and that's when I installed my first sound card. Brought home the adlib, realized it didn't do voices (no dac if remember right) exchanged it the next day for a sound blaster. I was playing Ultima 6 on that same pc a year or so earlier. Spent at least 6 months in that. Some of the best time I ever put into a video game. Man I was living dreams in a way that I just can't seem to anymore. Whenever i ask myself if the games really were better, or if I was just more "into it" cuz I was younger, I settle for "it must be something in between".

6:46 "I'm feeling kinda lazy." *Looks at channel name* Makes sense to me. 6:55 Oooo, those old PC sounds with the assorted beeps and bloops and static. The memories.

I love CRT monitors. Lovely trio you got there! And the 5154 looks really crisp. Mmmmm look at those scanlines. Yeah baby And the colors look vivid and rich. Thanks for showing how it handles EGA!

oh man, I cant even imagine how much space these take up, you've sure got a love for these ol babies. and you just know so damn much about them! I wish I knew as much as you, I'd love to rebuild my computer but I know I'd just break it.

Loving those IBM monitors a great collection there. Really love these older designs. Great video nice to see an EGA video card in action in 2016.

Pls help wil this bottleneck GTX 1080? Thx.

your videos are some good I can not stop watch keep it up man

My first PC was my dad's old IBM XT machine with 20MB harddrive (never managed to fill it up!) and a CGA board. Enjoyed this video so much it felt more like a 5 minute video and was sad it ended so "fast". Bonus points for letting us enjoy the mechanical sounds of the drive. And that lovely power down noise of the machine. Gosh... so many nostalgia tingles!

Man, I simply love your videos.

Very cool video, thanks for sharing. I'm currently working on restoring an IBM XT 286 with and EGA and 5154.

Pirates! by Sid Meier was the best EGA game i played on our old 286 AT

to see these games again was super sweet for that I am very thankful LGR. :)

Mate, this is another quality video. Thanks!

Sweet stuff :) Love that old timey feel.

Great video as always, keep it up!

Damn... That was before I got into PC. I started out with VGA with 386. Then soon after the famous SVGA with 486. The chugging sound that PC used to make when you're using a diskette brings back so much memories. Than you for sharing that with us lol

man you love these old pc, nice video

That song for treasure mountain was inspirational to me as a kid -- the constantly changing fast-paced notes influenced my choice in songs I played in recital piano competitions. Man, good times thanks for playing that game :-D

Those old IBM monitors are just so pretty! Nice design.

Modern hardware just doesn't excite me, yet I can watch someone put an EGA card in an old machine and it holds my interest. I would have killed to have EGA back in the day, having been stuck with CGA for years just because the price of a better monitor was out of the question. I even used CGA on a junk 386 I rigged together that came from an old BBS. I ended up eventually getting a VGA card in a box of junk parts from someone, and used a multisync monitor I found on the curb, connecting all the wires individually by hand to make it work. The first time that screen lit up opened a whole new world for me. These days, hundreds of mhz can barely be noticeable, but back then, even a single mhz could make all the difference.

Very interesting. I did not have much experience with these type of computers when I was a kid, let alone one that has good color graphics like this. It was good to see.

I'd love to see more of your "upgrading" the old systems you have and having an explore inside too. (upgrading ram and so on)

omg treasure mountain! YES! I have been trying to remember that game for so long! thank you!

I have the IBM 5150 with the expansion unit and a 5153 monitor. Lovely computer. Almost got it fully restored to.

If you ever see anything sweet you want on the Raleigh CL let me know, I visit my folks out your way once a month or so. Keep it up, love the videos.

Amazing! I do remember this game on my old 2GS. Makes me wish I had kept my old hardware.

I went from a Commodore Colt with built-in composite CGA to a Paradise Autoswitch EGA. (Possibly the same card that you are using, but I don't quite remember. It was capable of 350-line EGA modes, though, which required a VGA-style multisync monitor.) It's hard to explain to kids today what it was like to drop in a new video card in your 80s computer and then suddenly have 4 TIMES AS MANY colors as you did before. Today it's like, drop in a new Nvidia, whee, I got 20% more FPS. Whoopie. I miss the good ole days!

I don't care how expensive it was, i just love how great it looks! Very well preserved! Beautiful machine. Really, really nice catch.

Oh my god... the super solvers series.... I loved those games especially midnight rescue

Colors look great! even for CGA! Great video!

Glad to see that XT got fixed Hard Drive. Nice to see these old machines getting better =)

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you!" I cracked up. You're so funny.

Cool video! Just ordered an ATI Wonder XL with 1m on-board memory for my 5160 😎😉

As soon as you started Treasure Mountain, it took me right back to Elementary School. We had the same setups in our Computer Lab, just with CGA colors.

Really enjoyed this video :)

Clint, I love how clean and new-looking you manage to keep those 30-year old electronics. What do you use to clean them? Retrobright? Methods of cleaning and maintaining old electronics could be a good topic for an episode. :)

brings sweet memories ! thanks !!!

6:17 This made me cackle. Poor computer... Y2K comes late for you.

I am watching this from my hospital room. T hanks for helping me past the time .LGR

I miss those machines, so sturdy, robust and serviceable, not to mention fun to tinker with. LOL! That's hilarious the CC picks up on accents and mouth sound effects! lol! "[Thrashes on keyboard]" lol!

I have both of those machines, and a few others. All working when put into storage.

Oh yeah, EGA! I think I have 2 EGA cards floating around somewhere. As far as I remember, the original IBM card had only 64KB of memory, and couldn't take advantage of the EGA higher-res mode. You'd install a daughterboard that had memory on it, that would connect to the feature connector. The RCA jacks on the back are actually connected to pins on the feature connector internally, to facilitate connections of devices, such as a light pen. Those IBM monitors (all 3 of them that you have) are absolutely _razor_ sharp. I think it definitely does have to do with it being a digital connection; VGA with it's even higher resolution and color depth just didn't garner the same sharpness as these original screens did. And of course by the time DVI and HDMI came out, we weren't using CRT screens anymore, so it's just not the same sharpness. On the 5154 monitor I have (which has been buried for years now), I believe either the contrast or brightness knob pulls out, kind of like an old TV with the "Pull On Volume" control, but pulling it out doesn't seem to do anything that I remember. I also remember the EGA 43-line text mode didn't work unless you had an additional 64KB of RAM on the card via a daughterboard; obviously your card with its snazzy 128K is exempt from these issues. Thanks for this video, I wish you'd also chronicle its usage on the other 2 IBM monitors you have.

Another great video thanks!

Holy crap. Treasure Mountain!! I remembered a teacher showing me this game from KINDERGARTEN (24 now), and I could never remember the name of it! Thanks LGR! Would never have expected that. :P Loved the insightful look into the tech of yore, and I'm more appreciative than I already was about how easy PC building is today. :)

This video makes me feel better about buying a GTX 970, 5 days before the 1070 was announced

I used to play a game called "Wolfpack" on an XT. It was a submarine game. Lots of fun. You used to be able to flip the switches on an EGA card and get it to drive a CGA screen.

Treasure Mountain! *That's* what the game is called! I played that game so much as a kid, but I totally forgot what it was called / who made it. I've been looking for it for YEARS now! Thank you for picking that game to play at random, seriously.

That first game you played was very swood.

i remember playing games were you got to pick what color mode, although at the time I had a VGA machine, but it was very interesting to see how the graphics translated over the different color modes. I think I like CGA the least, but I do love a good old green monochrome display, something calming about it. I like to code in those colors too

That is the monitor I had with my first pc. It was pretty awesome. I remember sometimes running games in CGA so that they would run slower and give me more reaction time.

That's pretty gnarrly dude!

The way that Calgames uses the "secret" / glitchmode black-red-cyan-white CGA palette itself is somewhat worthy of mention itself, isn't -------- OH MY GOD WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT GUY'S KNEES?! Comparison with "MORE Color" mode would be interesting, I can't remember if that's the one that uses composite artefact colours or a form of palette switching to use more than the typical 4 colours at once by flipping between the warm, cool and glitchmode palettes and the dark and bright versions of each... Maybe even both? It's probably faster because EGA shared some of the logic improvements as later used and expanded on with VGA, in that you can do more than just throwing new data at parts of the screen memory and instead send commands to the board to move things by itself (much faster if you've got a block of pixels to shift, or if you have things that can be kept offscreen and used as sprites by bringing them back into view). CGA is a real bottleneck to any system it's used in. I think I even had it feeling rather sluggish on a PCI and 2mb SVGA 486 when tried for a laugh as an option on Railroad Tycoon...

Woo! Treasure Mountain! I vaguely remember playing that in school when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.

Date comment made me laugh out loud. XD

Its looks great even on camera!

man this reminds me back in my high school days my computer teacher showing off old tech to the class when ever he or the students got them in

4k!!!!! Nice!!!! time to watch it on my IBM 5154, 4k will look amazing!

LGR GUY i love your videos keep up the good work

Love seeing old tech get upgraded

Would this computer LITERALLY not believe you if you put in a date past 2000?

That beautiful disk loading noise! @10:20

I did this same thing on my XT but back in the late 80s. man I feel old...

Those flipping DIP switches! I did like changing cards, it made you feel like some kind of genius lols.And the industrial design on IBMs of that era was great - reminiscent of HAL in 2001- a space oddysey (which was, in fact a complicated satire on IBM)

I honestly agree. Those old IBM designs were amazing. I might have a thing for the retro-style, but... man.

Pretty swood, gotta tell ya

I love your videos!!

One thing you may want to make a video on is your Tandy 1000 video modes. The 1000 was nearly as capable as the EGA card and much more prolific. I know you have a 1000RL, but if you can find a TX or TL series, you'll have a nice little 286 machine with 16 colors. It would definitely blow the doors off the IBM XT. Great video though... EGA cards were never very common. It was neat to see one!

hahah. and here I thought common video cards were getting long. That stock one is a monster!

OMG! When I was a kid, I have a Tandy 1000SX computer which had a CGA video card. The card would do 16 color display which was better than the regular 4 color on other IBM computers. I was tempted to get the 64 color EGA card but then I couldn't bear parting with a few hundred dollars. The computer had a whopping 384k ram and 360k floppy drive. I thought that I'd never run out of room when I got the 720k 3.5 inch floppy. The memories!