The program VGA will give you information about the screen modes supported
by your VGA.  (If you don't have a VGA or you do but its bios doesn't support
the VGA program, VGA will tell you.)  The syntax is

VGA hex_mode_number

(from the DOS command line).  If you leave off the integer specifying the
hexadecimal mode integer, VGA will analyze your current screen mode.  This is
probably the best way to use VGA the first time because one of the outputs of
VGA (the last line) is a list of video modes supported by your VGA.  (This
applies to your card, not your monitor.)  These are the hexadecimal integers
actually recognized by your bios.  They are not necessarily the numbers you
would use with specific applications.  One such application that I use is
QuickBasic.  The following table shows the correlation between the bios mode
integers (as output by VGA) and the integers you would use with QB's SCREEN
statement.  (The cases of multiple hex modes corresponding to the same QB screen
are due to dependencies on specific computer/monitor types.)

     bios hex integer             QB SCREEN integer
     ----------------             -----------------
00h, 01h, 02h, 03h, or 07h                0        (text modes)
     04h, 05h, or 09h                     1
     05h, 06h, or 0Ah                     2        (monochrome except for 0Ah)
           0Dh                            7
           0Eh                            8
           10h                            9
           0Fh                           10        (monochrome)
           11h                           11        (monochrome)
           12h                           12
           13h                           13

Once you know which modes you have support for, you can then not waste time
running VGA with irrelevant mode integers.  Since VGA does put your monitor
into the screen mode that it's analyzing, there is some conceivable danger to
your monitor if IT doesn't support the video mode.  Hence, use VGA at YOUR OWN
RISK.  (In particular, look for a line of output from VGA indicating that you
have a monochrome monitor.  If you see that line, it might be a good idea to
avoid running VGA with hex modes that support color!  Note that the monochrome
modes are indicated in the above table.  The text modes 00h, 02h, and 07h
*should* be okay too.)
