Welcome to . . .

the PC Video FAQ

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This FAQ was compiled and written by Michael Scott with numerous contributions by others, most notably Ralph Valentino who does a great job of keeping up the main csiph FAQ, Sam Goldwasser who has developed and now maintains the majority of diagnostic and repair FAQs for sci.electronics and sci.electronics.repair, Bill Nott from Compaq Computer Corporation and Dylan Rhodes (formerly of Hercules Computer Technology). Acknowledgments are listed at the end of part 4 of this FAQ.
Look for the
To ftp a text-only version of this FAQ, and/or the chipset list:
Compressed Video FAQ at ftp://ftp.worcester.com/pub/PC-info/pc-hardware-video-faq.Z
Compressed Video Chipset List at ftp://ftp.worcester.com/pub/PC-info/pc-hardware-video-chipsetlist.Z

The links below are to an HTML version of the FAQ. If you'd prefer a text-only version, you can get the parts by clicking on the following.

Text Only

Part 1 (57k)
Part 2 (61k)
Part 3 (72k)
Part 4 (56k)
Chipset List (50k) updated
The entire text version is also available here as one large file that has been compressed using:
compress: videofaq.txt.Z (120k)
gzip: videofaq.txt.gz (99k)
pkzip format: videofaq.zip (110k)

Identifying video card components
Video related sites on the web!updated
Circuits for driving fixed frequency monitorsupdated
This document is broken into four parts because of its size (they're >50k each!). Choose parts of interest from the headers below:

Part 1 - Introduction and questions

Part 2 - More questions and answers

Part 3 - Even more questions and answers

Part 4 - More questions and answers and appendices
In addition, you may be interested in the PC Video Chipset List. This is a list of the most common video chipsets, with a brief description of each. Also included is a list of video card models and the video coprocessors that they use. Some video capture cards, MPEG decoders and PC to TV converters are also listed.
Thanks
If you didn't find an answer to your PC video related question or problem, would like to submit a correction or improvement, or would like to submit a question and answer,
please email the FAQ maintainer!
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