Ahead Systems, Inc.
Ahead Systems were an early graphics chipset manufacturer in the mid-to-late 1980s. They began operations in 1986, formed of ex-Genoa Systems engineers, and were based in San Jose, CA.
Their V5000 VGA chipset was popular with graphics card vendors such as Iris and AVGA.
 EGA2001
Launched: Nov 1986
Bus: 8-bit ISA
Memory: 64 KB
Price: $399
The EGA2001 was compatible with EGA, CGA, Hercules and MDA standards, including a 132-column text mode. The unique feature of the EGA2001 was its ability to display Hercules 720 x 348 graphics on an NEC Multisync monitor or IBM 5154 Enhanced Color Monitor (or compatible). |
EGA2001/Plus (EGA Wizard Deluxe?)
Launched: Nov 1986
Bus: 8-bit ISA
Memory: 64 KB
Price: $599
With all the capabilities of the EGA2001, the /Plus variant added extra-high resolution EGA mode of 640 x 480 in 16 colours from the EGA palette of 64. For this mode to work, an NEC Multisync monitor or equivalent is required.
It also got a 720 x 396 all-points addressable (APA) 16-colour mode that supported 3279 S3G IBM mainframe graphics. This would have been popular for terminal emulation boards running mainframe graphics applications on a PC. Again, a Multisync or compatible monitor was required for this.
For desktop publishing applications, the board also supported 80 characters x 66 lines. |
 VGA Wizard [Deluxe]
Launched: 1989
Chipset: Ahead V5000-50PC-B
Bus: 16-bit ISA
Memory: 256 KB, 512 KB or 1 MB
Part #:
Price: $199 (256 KB), $259 (512 KB) or $449 (1 MB)
The Deluxe suffix was reserved for the 1 MB version. Compatible with VGA, EGA, CGA, Hercules and MDA standards.
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.png) V5000-50-PC-B aka VGA-102
Launched: 1990
Chipset: Ahead V5000-50PC-B
Bus: 16-bit ISA
Memory: 256 KB
Part #:
Price: ?
FCC ID: FWJ4ANVGAWIZ, FWJ4RNAVGA50
 
Video ROM BIOS Dump v1.05A (1990)
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