Octocontrabass wrote:
Standard VGA doesn't have a whole lot of options for higher resolutions, but you can make the character cells smaller. Using the default 720x400 text mode resolution, the character cells are 9x16 which results in 80x25 cells.
Note: There is an old alternative standard, "LCD", for 80s laptops. This has 640x400 (or 640x200) pixels and 8x16 (or 8x8) characters. I mention it because some much more recent laptops implement it, even when it's quite unnecessary to do so. I have a Thinkpad X61 which implements LCD text although its screen is greater than 720 pixels wide and the characters have to be stretched in software.
Some other VGA BIOSes implemented 132-column modes, presumably 1056 pixels wide, but I haven't seen one for many years. Lilo was good at probing for these things.