VGA support on IBM XT (clone)

[Ruud]

Hello,

I have a real IBM PC-XT with a VGA card. I often test software first on PCem on my laptop but in VGA specific cases that is impossible because PCem doesn't support VGA for the IBM-XT. Or do I do something wrong or missed something?
If not, is it possible to support VGA, please?

Thank you!

Kind regards, Ruud Baltissen

[Battler]

It does support an IBM VGA card on an XT, you just need the correct BIOS. That, and for some reason it likes hanging the XT on POST.

[Ruud]

Hallo Battler,

Oops, I completely overlooked the fact that I even have to supply the BIOS of the VGA card.

I work with all my PCs in the same way: I connect them to my KVM switch. For the PC/XT compatibles I need an extra gadget: the AT2XT keyboard converter. For the same reason I also equipped my PC/XT compatibles with a VGA card. And AFAIK all have been equipped with a 16-bits card that can operate in 8-bits mode. Two clones are available, the IBMs have been stored. What I can do is check what kind of cards they are and save their BIOSes to disk. I upload them to my site where you can download them. I'll notify you.

[Ruud]

I upload them to my site where you can download them. I'll notify you.

http://www.baltissen.org/temp/et4000.bin

As you can see, only one. One was a WDC card that you don't support AFAIK. I tested et4000.bin on a general XT, the Commodore PC30, the IBM XT with my own BIOS and on the IBM XT itself. But here is a story. The first time I tried it, I got an error message. Unfortunately I forgot it. But the weirdest thing, ET4000 wasn't available any more as a choice for the other three computers. Only after I removed the bin from the various directories, restarted the emulator and added the bin again, I was able to select and use it again. And weird enough, after adding it also to the original IBM XT, I was able to use it there as well.

Have fun!