Improved CGA Palette Chart

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This CGA Palette Chart illustrates all of the four-colour palettes available on a PC with a CGA card attached to an RGB monitor.

Contrary to popular opinion CGA graphics are not limited to black, cyan, magenta and white. And contrary to slightly more informed opinion, the second palette of black, red, green and yellow is not the only alternative.

These two palettes are available in two intensities each, as is a third palette of black, cyan, red and white, which is what the RGB monitor displays if you tell the CGA card incorrectly that it is attached to a composite monochrome monitor.

But the black background colour can be swapped out for any of the sixteen colours in the full CGA palette. This alters the character of these palettes drastically. Only a small number of contemporary games took advantage of this, but most of those were much improved by it.

The palette chart presented here shows all of the four colour palettes available. It omits the three colour palettes that occur when the background colour is the same as one of the three foreground colours. It shows not only four colours of the palette, but also the six dithering combinations available by mixing any two colours in a chequerboard pattern.

While a screen can be filled with any of the four colours as a background, the "official" background colour will always be shown in the screen border. The background colour of each palette card shows what colour the border will be in that particular palette.