Of course that asks the question of why use the graphics mode for text, which I ...

martijnvds · 2025-08-18T12:30:07 1755520207

The Energy Star logo tended to be made up of custom characters in text mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAHGKanqO6s

pwdisswordfishz · 2025-08-18T16:15:56 1755533756

Later versions used true bitmaps, though.

http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/Award_BIOS_logo

michalpleban · 2025-08-18T12:07:06 1755518826

It's not a graphics mode. It is just a resolution from the graphics mode, repurposed for the text mode. The reason possibly being the 640x480 resolution is universally supported while 720x400 is not - for example my HDMI TV can still display 640x480.

bananaboy · 2025-08-18T22:32:15 1755556335

CRTs were still commonplace though based on the bios dates in the blog. So 720x400 would still have been well supported. It’s strange that they did this!

the-rc · 2025-08-19T02:42:16 1755571336

Unlike CRT screens, LCD ones from that time had usually a fixed resolution and wouldn't resize the image on the fly.

bananaboy · 2025-08-18T11:58:10 1755518290

This apparently was a text mode not a graphics mode. It would have been a tweaked text mode since the standard mode 3 text mode that you can set via int 10h is 720x400.

The energy star logo was also displayed in text modes - by using custom font glyphs!