manitoba wrote: >That's a good question. From the pictures I've seen around of the //c LCD >display, it basically sucked and was only monochrome, and the actual >output on the screen was vertically squashed. I doubt I'd ever want one >unless I got one in mint condition and given to me for free. Shrug, to >each his own I guess. One person's junk is another person's gold. :) Agreed. >Has anyone here with any model of Apple II, tried to hook up a modern day >color LCD/Plasma TV/Monitor via the composite video output on the back of >your (any model) Apple II ??? If so, could you provide some feedback of >how it looks, both in 40 columns, 80 columns (if your Apple II has an 80 >column card), as well as color graphics? It looks like a good composite color monitor--no better, no worse. All but a very special monitor (like the AppleColor Composite monitor) will limit the luminance (brightness) video to a bandwidth less than 4MHz, resulting in "fat" pixels and very poor 80-column displays. All of the usual color artifacts are present, of course, since they are a result of a faithful display of the Apple's pseudo-NTSC signal. >I'm sure at least a few models of the modern day Plasma/LCD TV's have >composite video input(s), or failing that, one could hook up a composite >to S-Video adapter, as I'm sure most of these Plasma/LCD displays have at >least S-Video as a lowest common denominator input. Having more _potential_ bandwidth with, say, component video inputs has nothing to do with the _actual_ bandwidth which the monitor will extract from a composite signal. And S-video converted from composite will have exactly the same issues. A "special" S-video adapter that passed on the higher luminance bandwidth actually present in the Apple composite output could be somewhat better, but not enough better to make 80-columns look good. The AppleColor Composite monitor does a "trick" that is completely non-standard: it detects when the color burst is absent and boosts the luminance video bandwidth to 10+ MHz, making an 80-column display pretty good. No "video" monitor will (or should) do this, since there is never any useful signal there in a standard video signal. The way to use the hi-res capability of modern displays is to use them in RGB or component mode, with an appropriate video adapter for the Apple II. -michael Check out parallel computing for 8-bit Apples on my Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ Tim Haynes replied: >"Michael J. Mahon" wrote in message >news:20040720024304.26045.00000125@mb-m28.aol.com... >> >> The AppleColor Composite monitor does a "trick" that is completely >> non-standard: it detects when the color burst is absent and boosts >> the luminance video bandwidth to 10+ MHz, making an 80-column >> display pretty good. No "video" monitor will (or should) do this, >> since there is never any useful signal there in a standard video signal. > >How hard would it be to make a box that does this (or would the TV just >ignore the extra bandwidth?). I have no idea what I'm talking about, but >I'm imagining a black box that takes Apple II colour composite input and >outputs luminance-boosted NTSC to a TV. If I am smoking crack, please let >me know. :-) Since the circuitry we are talking about is _inside_ the monitor, there is no external box that can change it. A video monitor is designed to a set of standards that are quite specific about what is signal and what is interference. Since the FM sound carrier is at 4.5MHz in a broadcast composite video signal (in the usual intercarrier sound detection system), video monitors will remove signals above 4MHz from composite video inputs. Of course, unless comb filters are used (as they are in modern, high quality monitors), frequencies above 3MHz will usually be severely attenuated, since the chroma carrier is at 3.58MHz. The only composite video monitor likely to support >4MHz bandwidth is a monochrome monitor that expects a monochrome video signal. This is what makes the AppleColor Composite monitor so special: it is a color monitor when the burst is present, and a wider bandwidth monochrome monitor when it is not. It is possible in principle to modify a conventional color monitor to defeat the video filters when the burst is absent, but doing so would be a different problem for each monitor, and quite difficult on some. -michael Check out parallel computing for 8-bit Apples on my Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/