8514/A Fun: Windows 386 (86Box)

Описание: The IBM 8514/A Display Adapter was introduced alongside the PS/2 Systems in 1987. The 8514/A was one of the first graphics accelerators to hit the market. The IBM PGC (Professional Graphics Controller) that was introduced in 1984 only found niche uses in the high-end workstation market. While the 8514/A was still an expensive card, it found much more widespread adoption. Unlike the PGC, the 8514/A was cloned. The ATI Mach 8 series of graphics cards included support for the 8514/A standard. The display controller was very well supported by the graphical environments of their day. Windows 386 and OS/2 v1.1 included drivers for the 8514/A upon release, followed by later versions of both OS/2 and Windows.

Computers equipped with the 8514/A could run in either 640 by 480, 256 color mode at 60Hz, or 1024 by 768, 256 color mode at 43.5 Hz. The 8514/A came with it's own programming API called "Adapter Interface", or AI (Like that's not going to confuse people). 2D drawing operations were offloaded onto the accelerator. However, there were drawing operations not supported by the accelerator. Thus, in order to use the 8514/A, one needed a VGA card to pair alongside it (sounds similar to the later 3DFX Voodoo). For the PS/2 systems, which included onboard VGA, this wasn't an issue. However, with the original Mach 8 cards introduced by ATI, (clones of the 8514/A) this would be one. Later versions of the Mach incorporated the VGA chipset alongside the 8514/A one. One also needed to purchase a VGA adapter to use alongside it. Given the prices of both VGA, the 8514, and the monitor; the 8514/A was not a cheap proposition.

The original adapter made by IBM only supported the MCA architecture of the PS/2 family of computers. However, through clones, the 8514/A was backported to ISA-based PC's.

And now, with 86Box, one can experience the 8514/A display adapter in action. Here is 86Box emulating a IBM PS/2 Model 55SX with a Cyrix CX486SLC processor running at 33MHz, 387 Match Co-processor, 4MB's of RAM, 127MB hard-disk drive, and 1.44MB hard-disk drive. The PC had VGA built in, and is paired with the IBM 8514/A Display Driver. Windows 386 has the appropriate video drivers installed. Windows is running at the screen resolution of 1024 by 768, 256 color display depth.

Programs running under Windows 386 with the 8514/A includes the core Windows applets, ABC Flowcharter, Ami Word Processor, and Micrografx Designer.

Songs Used:
Digital Inspiration By X-Ceed
https://www.exotica.org.uk/mediawiki/...

Software Used:
Recorded With OBS Studio
Composed In Kdenlive

Hardware Used:
PC equipped with a AMD
FX-4300 Quad-Core Processor
running at 3.8GHz
Nvidia GTX 950 GPU