IBM MDA Card (INV)

Performa

Member
The Wisconsin Computer Club has a Zenith 180 PC, a backplane PC that I've had for a little over a year. When plugged in and powered up it acts like it's firing up, but we can't be sure as we don't have a CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) monitor to run off of it's attached CGA card. Previously I'd tried to plug in a series of other adapters and converters, but nothing (so far) has worked to get the video from the computer over to a monitor... assuming there is a signal at all.

Thanks to @PS2it we do have a period-correct MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter) monitor- a pre-CGA standard that puts out a monochrome signal. As I expect this old rig is running some flavor of DOS anyway, that's no problem- but the CGA card wasn't playing nice with the monitor either. So, in the spirit of the scientific method, we're going to keep switching out variables until we've deduced the root of the problem. One possible point of failure is the CGA card itself, or the lack of compatibility with the various monitors we've tried. So- I ordered an MDA card on eBay to switch it out!

It is a beauty!



Now that it's here, it's going in and the testing can begin. We do have another computer that can fit this full size card, so we can test it (and the monitor I suppose) independent of the Zenith, and we'll see how things go from there.
 
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