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Hercules Graphics Card

One weakness of the original MDA display was that it did not support graphics of any kind. A company named Hercules created in the early 80s an MDA-compatible video card that supported monochrome graphics in addition to the standard text modes.

The Hercules card was actually a very widely-accepted standard in the mid-80s; eventually Hercules clones even appeared on the market. Support for the card was included in popular software packages such as Lotus 1-2-3 to allow the display of graphs and charts on the computer screen. It has of course been replaced by later, color, graphics adapters.

Next: Color Graphics Adapter (CGA)

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