----------
> From: David Gillett <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] only 16 colors with S3 trio 64+
> Date: Monday, March 22, 1999 8:25 PM
>
> On 22 Mar 99, at 15:08, Earl Truss wrote:
>
> > Colors                        Number of bytes
> > 16                               1
>
>   .5, actually.  A vanilla VGA can do 16 colours at 640x480 resolution
> with only 256KB of installed video RAM (and some really gross interface
> programming, which is why you want the driver to take care of the
> details), and everybody emulates this as a "lowest common denominator".
>
But does it really only use 1/2 byte for each pixel?  I would think this
would be pretty horrendous for the card to handle since most hardware works
on byte boundaries rather than trying to work on four-bit boundaries.
Maybe that's what you are talking about when you mention "really gross
interface programming"?

I thought it more likely that the card is really running at EGA/VGA
resolution of 640x320 which can be done in 256K using a full byte for each
pixel.  Once upon a time, 640x480 and anything above that was considered
"super VGA" resolution.

                         PCBUILD's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>