Bryan Villados wrote: >I'm having video problems with my Apple II+. I'm currently using a composite >color monitor to view on. Video in text mode looks great. However, when the >video switches to hi-res (could also have a problem with lo-res, but I >haven't tried it yet), it's looks really bad. I took a snap-shot of the >display running Lode Runner: > >http://www.macgeek.org/temp/DSC00068.JPG > >Thanks for any advice! :) Unfortunately, the nature of composite color pretty well precludes getting crisp monochrome text, since any "crisp" feature will be interpreted as chrominance information and result in significant color fringing. In fact, this is the name of the game for Apple II's to produce color! That's why the same vertical line of pixels changes to its color complement when you move it left or right one display pixel--the Apple II dot frequency is twice the color subcarrier frequency, so a one pixel shift is 180 degrees around the hue circle. The standard filtering in a composite color monitor to separate chrominance information from luminance (intensity) information will limit the bandwidth of the luminance signal to less than 3MHz, resulting in fuzzy text, even when there is no color burst in the signal. The Apple Composite Display uses some special tricks to disable the luminance filtering when no burst is present, so monochrome text looks crisp (even at 80 columns), but when the burst is on, as it is for any graphics display mode, the filter is on and the bandwidth is limited. Assuming that you're using a Apple Composite Display, it has a manual switch on the front panel to disable color filtering and display, so if you push it you'll have a crisp, monochrome graphics/text display. You have to choose between crisp monochrome and fuzzy color--that's just the way composite video is. ;-( -michael Email: mjmahon@aol.com Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ Joel wrote: >The AppleColor composite monitor gives a pretty good picture. It also has a >black and white switch which can improve the display quality on text and >monochrome graphics. The Laser 128 has a mono/color switch which can often >improve the display for text and graphics when set to mono. The function of the switch on the Laser 128 is to eliminate the color burst from the composite signal. All Apples and compatibles incorporate color burst supression for text modes, but, of course, the color burst is on for all graphics modes. The reason for this is that composite color is an "artifact" of isolated, precisely timed graphic "dots", and text is made up primarily of just such dots. As a result, a text display with color burst on will show lots of distracting color fringes. Since many applications and environments present text in a graphics mode, having a manual switch to disable the color burst is quite handy. The AppleColor Composite monitor is a very special case. Virtually all composite monitors have a luminance (intensity) bandwidth which is limited to about 3MHz, because the chrominance information is carried on a suppressed-carrier 3.58MHz subcarrier signal. A better (and more expensive) way to filter the subcarrier from the luminance signal is to use a comb filter, but these are very unusual in older composite color monitors. Because of this luminance bandwidth limitation, most composite color monitors display "fuzzy" text and graphics, and are incapable of sharp 80-column text display. The AppleColor Composite monitor has a special luminance filter circuit which limits the luminance bandwidth to 3MHz _only_ when a color burst is present. When the color burst is absent, or when the monochrome button on the front panel is pressed, the luminance bandwidth is increased to 6 or 7 MHz (IIRC--I can't find my manual). This allows 80-column text to be cleanly, if not crisply, reproduced. -michael Check out 8-bit Apple sound that will amaze you on my Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/