Display adapter
Display adapter used as interface between a Personal Computer and
a Monitor.
.
Display adapter are also called Video adapters ,video cards, video
boards, video display boards, graphics cards and graphics adapters
It is used to create a picture on a display
A plug - in card in a desktop computer that performs graphics processing.
Also commonly called a "graphics card" or "video card.
The display adapter determines the maximum resolution, refresh rate and
number of colors that can be displayed, which the monitor must also be abl
e to support.
On most PCs, these graphics circuits are built into the motherboard's
chipset.
A separate plug-in card is required only to greatly enhance rendering
for video games or other fast-motion graphics application
Modern video adapters contain memory, so that the computer's RAM is not
used for storing displays. In addition, most adapters have their
own graphics coprocessor for performing graphics calculations.
.
VGA
Short for Video Graphics Array, VGA is a popular display standard
developed by IBM and introduced in 1987.
VGA provides 640 x 480 resolution color display screens with
a refresh rate of 60 Hz and 16 colors displayed at a time.
If the resolution is lowered to 320 x 200, 256 colors are shown.
VGA utilizes analog signals, which means it's only capable of lower
resolutions and a lower quality display on screens.
VGA pin functions
.
It’s a three row 15 pin connector comes with a screw type locking
mechanism.
A VGA cable carries analog components RGBHV video signal (Red, Green,
Blue, Horizontal sync, Vertical Sync) and DDC data.
Due to VGA carries analog signal it may suffer signal loss if increase the
wire length.
The maximum resolution that a VGA can provide is 2048 x 1536 pixels.
The disadvantage of a VGA is it doesn’t carry audio signal
Specifications
The original VGA specifications are as follows
256 KB Video
16-color and 256-color paletted display modes.
262,144-color global palette (6 bits, and therefore 64 possible levels,
for each of the red, green, and blue channels via the RAMDAC)
Selectable 25.175 MHz or 28.322 MHz master pixel clock
Usual line rate fixed at 31.46875 kHz
Maximum of 640 horizontal pixels
Maximum of 480 lines
Refresh rates at up to 60 Hz
Vertical blank interrupt
Planar mode: up to 16 colors (4 bit planes)
Packed-pixel mode: 256 colors (Mode 13h)
Hardware smooth scrolling support
No Blitter, but supports very fast data transfers via "VGA latch"
registers
SVGA
Short for Super VGA
A set of graphics standards designed to offer greater resolution than VGA.
SVGA supports 800 x 600 resolution, or 480,000 pixels.
The SVGA standard supports a palette of 16 million colors, but the
number of colors that can be displayed simultaneously is limited by the
amount of video memory .
carries analog signals
The SVGA standards are developed by a consortium of monitor and
graphics manufacturers called VESA.
When the SVGA standard was first defined it referred to a resolution of
800*600 4-bit pixels (total number of pixels would be 480,000) which
means that each pixel could be one of 16 different colors. This definition
was quickly extended to 1024*768 8-bit pixel resolution, meaning that
there is a choice of 256 colors
SVGA pin functions
SVGA uses a 15-pin D-sub connector, it has three rows,
The table above provides the pinouts and signal names for the connector
SVGA uses three analog pins to send color information to the monitor, Red, Green
and Blue and two additional analog sync pins
XGA
Short for extended graphics array, a high-resolution graphics standard
introduced by IBM in 1990.
XGA was designed to replace the older 8514/A video standard generally
considered to be a 1024×768 pixel display
consider XGA a successor to SVGA
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XGA Description and Pinout
The XGA Interface bus uses a high density 15-pin D-sub connector. The table
below provides the pin-out and signal names for the DB15-pin connector.
The 1990 release date indicates two things; first the standard is obsolete and the
second the signal assignments are fixed and will never change.
Of course analog monitors are out-dated, and the Red, Green, Blue signaling, used
here, have been replaced by digital signals.
XGA Connector Pinout
Pin # name Description
1 RED Video Red Video
2 GREEN Video Green Video
3 BLUE Video Blue Video
4 ID2 Monitor ID, Bit #2
5 Test Self Test
6 RGND Red Ground
7 GGND Green Ground
8 BGND Blue Ground
9 Key No pin installed
10 SGND Sync Ground
11 ID0 Monitor ID Bit #0
12 ID1 Monitor ID Bit #1
13 HSYNC Horizontal Sync
14 VSYNC Vertical Sync
15 ID3 Monitor ID Bit #3
