> lots-of-color meant 256 colors.
Sixteen- and twenty-four-bit color weren't just widespread by 1998. They were standard.
Not supporting 24 bit color was unheard of for a normal desktop monitor and normal desktop graphics.
Sixteen- and twenty-four-bit color weren't just widespread by 1998. They were standard.
Not supporting 24 bit color was unheard of for a normal desktop monitor and normal desktop graphics.
But by 1998 the pace of hardware changes were moving so fast that anything top of the line from 1994 was just trash, you could get one for free if you asked.
But Windows 3.11 started to change that and by the time Windows 95 was out nobody wanted to use a 2 year old machine anymore.
(Though to be fair most people I knew went from CGA/Hercules straight to VGA, there really wasn't a "driving need" for EGA, especially if your machine was business oriented - Hercules was better for text). VGA was a "sweet spot" also in that it always worked, SVGA started getting really hairy sometimes, and could be a bear to get working right.
Maybe in 800x600, but not in higher resolutions.
A lot of PCs still had 1MB video ram cards like the S3 trio - I remember running Xwindows on a s3 card that would change the colour palette for whichever app was active when you ran it in 1024x768.