In the mid-1980s, the IBM PC graphics landscape was fragmented. You had CGA for colour, Hercules for sharp monochrome, MDA for text, and by 1984–85, EGA was entering the scene. For PC users, it wasn’t always clear which card to buy — or which monitor they’d be stuck with.
ATI (founded in 1985) entered this market with one of its first commercial graphics cards: the ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution. Despite its humble name, this card was anything but small in ambition. It provided broad compatibility in a single package, cementing ATI’s reputation as a company that could do more than just clone IBM’s designs.
Features and Capabilities
- CGA compatibility – Runs IBM’s standard CGA graphics and text modes.
- MDA and Hercules emulation – Supports monochrome text and high-resolution graphics modes.
- CGA-on-MDA grayscale emulation – Like its later sibling, the Graphics Solution SR, the Small Wonder could display colour CGA games on a monochrome monitor in grayscale tones.
- Bus interface – Standard 8-bit ISA, compatible with the IBM PC, XT, and early AT systems.
- Monitor flexibility – Works with both monochrome and colour displays.
Why It Mattered
The Small Wonder wasn’t the first multi-standard graphics card, but it was one of the most affordable and practical solutions of its day. For users of systems that shipped with only a monochrome monitor, this meant:
- Productivity during the day (Hercules and MDA for spreadsheets, word processors, CAD).
- Games in the evening (CGA-on-MDA, albeit with flicker due to interlacing).
This dual-purpose ability gave the Small Wonder real staying power in offices and homes alike.
Technical Details
The card’s operation was controlled via DIP switches that let you choose between colour and mono modes.
- CGA Emulation: Switches set to emulate colour output.
- Hercules Mode: Switches set for high-resolution mono graphics.
- CGA-on-MDA Mode: Switches configured to map CGA colour into grayscale tones on a mono monitor.
Like the later Graphics Solution SR, the CGA-on-MDA trick was both ingenious and flawed: it introduced interlace flicker, but it made games playable on displays that would otherwise be useless for them.
Small Wonder vs. Graphics Solution SR
The Small Wonder Graphics Solution and the Graphics Solution SR share many traits, but there are differences worth noting:
- Small Wonder GS: Earlier release, simpler design, and ATI’s first big step into the PC graphics market.
- Graphics Solution SR: A refinement of the same idea, with more polished emulation modes and better documentation.
In practice, both cards solved the same problem — giving MDA/Hercules users access to CGA games — but the SR is generally seen as the more mature and stable product.
Legacy
The ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution was one of ATI’s earliest forays into PC graphics, and it set the stage for the company’s later success. By providing compatibility, flexibility, and practical value, ATI quickly carved out a space in a crowded market.
ATI would go on to refine the Small Wonder line, eventually replacing it with the EGA Wonder and VGA Wonder families — cards that gained widespread adoption and cemented ATI as a major player in the graphics industry.
Final Thoughts
The Small Wonder Graphics Solution is a fascinating piece of retro hardware. It wasn’t the most powerful graphics card of its era, but it solved a very real problem for early PC owners — and it introduced ATI to the world as more than just a clone manufacturer.
For collectors and enthusiasts today, the Small Wonder represents the roots of ATI’s graphics empire, long before Radeon and AMD came into the picture.
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