Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!shelby!portia!dhinds
From: dhinds@portia.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: What are the differences between 8-bit and 16-bit VGA cards?
Keywords: VGA
Message-ID: <6980@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 24 Nov 89 21:40:55 GMT
Sender: David Hinds <dhinds@Portia.stanford.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 12


    I have an ATI VGA Wonder card, and I'm confused about what the 16-bit
bus actually does for me.  I have set the card to enable 16-bit ROM access,
but is this all the extra bus width is good for?  I've read up on the
programming details of normal VGA controllers, and it seems that they are
inherently limited to byte-wide accesses to display memory.  There doesn't
seem to be any simple or downward-compatible way to perform 16-bit accesses.
If there isn't any way around this for bit-mapped graphics modes, is there
at least a way to do 16-bit accesses in text modes?

- David Hinds
  dhinds@portia.stanford.edu