CGA As You Have Never Seen It Before
A new technique has been developed to enhance the capabilities of old CGA graphics cards. By synchronizing a CGA card with a Raspberry Pi Pico 2, users can achieve high-resolution graphics in text mode. This innovative approach allows for the display of retro graphics alongside traditional text, resulting in unique visual effects.
- ▪A CGA card has been modified to display 60 Hz high-resolution graphics in text mode.
- ▪The technique involves clocking the character ROM continuously across the screen.
- ▪This method allows for the overlay of text and graphics, creating interesting visual effects.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
CGA As You Have Never Seen It Before No comments by: Jenny List May 17, 2026 Title: Copy Short Link: Copy An old-style graphics system as found on many 8-bit computers and on early PC graphics cards drew its characters by retrieving their bitmaps from a ROM. With a little sideways thinking, [GloriousCow] has exploited this process to make a CGA card perform graphical tricks it was never designed to do. The CGA card clocks its character ROM continuously across the whole screen, even at the edges where nothing would normally be displayed. By placing the ROM in tandem with a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 they were able to use this ROM clocking as a synchronization signal, and inject whatever pixel data they chose.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hackaday.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Hackaday
