Abstract: A type 286, 386, or 486 Personal Computer having a host controller comprising a standard VGA controller, a microprocessor, a receive and transmit unit, and an encoder is coupled via a ten line telephone cable to a remote VGA color display workstation having a base unit comprising a decoder, a RAMDAC, and microprocessor, and a receive and transmit unit. The encoder intelligently combines ten video signals (a pixel clock, six pixel signals, a video blanking interval (VBI) signal, and vertical and horizontal sync signals) and an I/O data transmit signal into four signals which are transmitted in a balanced fashion (requiring eight lines) to minimize signal noise so that shielding is unnecessary. An additional line is used to provide a ground reference to the remote workstation, and another line is used to provide an I/O data receive signal to the host controller microprocessor.