5.3 What VESA modes are available to me?
This really depends on the type of VESA 2.0 compliant graphic card that you have in your system, and the amount of video memory available. This is just a matter of testing which modes work best for your graphic card.
The following table shows the mode numbers you can input at the VGA prompt or for use with the LILO program. (actually these numbers are plus 0x200 to make it easier to refer to the table)
Colours 640x400 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x1024 1600x1200
--------+--------------------------------------------------------------
4 bits | ? ? 0x302 ? ? ? ?
8 bits | 0x300 0x301 0x303 0x305 0x161 0x307 0x31C
15 bits | ? 0x310 0x313 0x316 0x162 0x319 0x31D
16 bits | ? 0x311 0x314 0x317 0x163 0x31A 0x31E
24 bits | ? 0x312 0x315 0x318 ? 0x31B 0x31F
32 bits | ? ? ? ? 0x164 ?
Key: 8 bits = 256 colours, 15 bits = 32,768 colours, 16 bits = 65,536 colours, 24 bits = 16.8 million colours, 32 bits – same as 24 bits, but the extra 8 bits can be used for other things, and fits perfectly with a 32 bit PCI/VLB/EISA bus.