Editing IBM Monochrome Display Adapter (section)

== Reception ==
The author of an internal IBM publication stated in October 1981 that he had planned to purchase the CGA adapter but changed his mind after seeing its poor display quality. Describing MDA as beautiful, he observed that "you stare at text a whole lot more than you stare at color graphics".<ref name="dievendorff19811007">{{cite book | title=IBM Personal Computer Questions and Answers | publisher=IBM | author=Dievendorff, Dick | year=1981 | url=http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/pc/pc/ | pages=25}}</ref> MDA was more popular than CGA for business applications. The higher resolution of MDA's text and inclusion of a printer port made it more appealing for the business applications that were the focus of the original PC. However, dissatisfaction with its limitations quickly led to third parties releasing competing hardware.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gibson |first=Steve |date=September 19, 1988 |title=IBM's EGA Unified Backward-Compatible CGA, MDA, Hercules Standards |pages=49 |work=InfoWorld |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mDoEAAAAMBAJ&q=IBM+MDA+more+popular+than+CGA&pg=PA49}}</ref> 

A well known example was the [[Hercules Graphics Card]]. Introduced in 1982, it offered both an MDA-compatible high resolution text mode and a monochrome graphics mode. The founder of [[Hercules Computer Technology]], Van Suwannukul, created the Hercules Graphics Card so that he could work on his [[doctoral thesis]] on an [[IBM PC]] using the [[Thai alphabet]], which was impossible at the low resolution of CGA or the fixed character set of MDA.<ref>{{Cite news |date=May 16, 1989 |title=The Resolution Time Line: Additional Pixels Enhance Quality |pages=96 |work=PC Magazine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2jkWJsu_9CoC&q=van+suwannukul+hercules&pg=RA1-PA96}}</ref>  It could address individual pixels, and displayed a black and white picture of 720&nbsp;×&nbsp;348 pixels. This resolution was superior to the CGA card, yet offered pixel-addressable graphics, so despite lacking color capability, the Hercules adapter's offer of high resolution bitmap graphics combined with MDA-grade text quality made it a popular choice, which was even shipped with many [[Clone (computing)|clones]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Ponting |first=Bob |date=June 26, 1989 |title=High-Resolution Standard is Latest Step in DOS Graphics Evolution |pages=48 |work=InfoWorld |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lTAEAAAAMBAJ&q=infoworld+1982+hercules&pg=PT47}}</ref>