🚀 go-pugleaf

RE: video slowdown when adding monochrome card

In article <1jj6fs$hfk@agate.berkeley.edu> ereiss@ocf.berkeley.edu (Edward Reiss) writes:
>Lo and Behold - whenever the second monochrome video card
>is plugged into its slot, my main monitor slows down by at least 40%. Whenever
>it is removed, the system behaves normally.  Can someone tell me how to get
>around this problem.  My system does have one unused serial port. Can I plug
>the monochrome monitor into this port and route the output of the debugger
>to it?  Was it the type of monochrome card (cheap Hecules compatible with
>graphics capabilities) that slowed it down? Would a different card remedy
>the situation?  All suggestions will be appreciated.

Due to the way the ISA/EISA bus works, each 128 KB region of I/O buss memory
must be accessed as either all 16-bit or all 8-bit.  Your VGA card was happily
chugging away in 16-bit mode until you added an 8-bit mono card, at which
point it too had to be accessed in 8-bit mode.  I don't use a mono card unless
I really need it, for this reason.

Your mono monitor is not going to work plugged into the serial port!

The only mono card that would not slow you down would be a 16-bit one, but
I'm not sure that there is any such thing.

-- Tad