re viewing jpeg files in apr ucbeh san uc edu lwilson ucbeh san uc edu writes can i view jpeg files without special hardware lucy wilson access services librarian college of engineering university of cincinnati yup most jpeg viewers seem to require specific video drivers since they support only specific video cards some have the standard ibm bios video support for the vga x colour mode but they leave out the other cards such as the hercules monochrome card which by the way can give very good picture quality if your dithering works right i can t remember the name of a jpeg viewer since i usually convert jpeg s to gif s before viewing them but some require vesa driver for the video cards you don t need any special hardware to view jpeg s except perhaps for a vga card and maybe a processor most people these days program for computers and neglect the rest of the processors i have a clone a nec v processor and a hercules card i have had to write some programs so that they will view gif s and animations for the vga and other colour graphics boards on my monochrome hercules card i use floyd steinberg dithers and have found that if one does something neat with the colour palette the resulting dithered image gives much greater detail than it normally would when viewed on other monochrome systems compushow has fs dithering but it does the standard thing with the image palette before dithering my way gives a brighter more detailed image anyway enough of my rambling in the wrong direction the final point is as far as i know you don t need extra hardware to view jpeg s other than the vga and perhaps a or better have a day gerry
