Message-ID: <12574@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Aug-84 23:38:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12574
Posted: Fri Aug 17 23:38:56 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 20-Aug-84 01:17:14 EDT
Lines: 59


	Apple has just released its own color monitor for the IIe. It
comes with a board which fits in the auxiliary slot and does all the
things a standard 80 column board does, as well as supporting Apple's
monitor. Most importantly, it offers a number of NEW AND IMPROVED
GRAPHICS MODES which really look great. Here are my impressions:

	THE MONITOR: The Apple Color Monitor 100 is a high
resolution, high bandwidth (25 MHz!) RGB monitor. It compares very favorably
with corresponding units from IBM and Princeton Graphic Systems. Text
is very easy on your eyes, and there is no flicker. It displays all
graphic and text modes available on the Apple (and a few new ones--
more on this later). An interesting switch on the monitor makes the
display into a green monochrome display at any time. It also has a
tiltable display comparable to that of the Apple Monitor II but is
motor driven (cute but useless). Presumably this monitor works with
the Apple //c but my documentation doesn't mention it. I read in
ST.MAC that this will be the monitor used for Macs with color output
(see interview in August issue). Its resolution would make it ideal
(I can't wait!).

	THE CARD: The extended 80 column card with RGB output has
several truly interesting features. It has some DIP switches that
allow you to change the color of the text displays (40 and 80 column)
to blue, green, amber, or white. (This is fully compatible with ALL
software.) Graphics modes are displayed properly and CLEANLY. Even
lo-res looks nice because the is no mixing of colors on the
boundaries of blocks. Hi-res looks best with pictures on it, as
opposed to text. The circuitry which generates the standard hi-res
RGB display treats the screen as a color 140 X 192 display by
default. The manual is sketchy about this and other things, but it
may be possible to change this using softswitches. I am not sure
whether the high bit shift is supported on the RGB monitor. Again,
all software is compatible with the graphics modes.
	There is also a new text mode. It is a 40 column mode in
which every character on the screen has one of sixteen foreground
and background colors. The information on the colors is stored in
text page 1X (alternate text screen 1). This mode is just touched on
in the manual. Another mode which is entirely ignored in the manual
but is demonstrated on the impressive demo disk is a hi-res "overlay
with foreground/background and 40-column text". (Your guess is as
good as mine, but it looks neat.)
	The most interesting modes by far, though, are the double
hi-res modes. There are three possible ways to display the double
hi-res screen on the RGB monitor: 1) 560 X 192 monochrome 2) 140 X
192 16-color with no restrictions on adjacent pixels' color 3)
"Combined" modes 1 and 2. The demo disk also shows a "three color mode"
but it looks to me like black, white, and grey. The mixed mode really
works, even though I can't see how. The demo disk comes with
documented ampersand software to plot on these screens and print
toolkit-compatible fonts on the screen. Saving and loading of screens
and fonts is also supported.
	If anyone has better technical info than I do, please post
it. The manual is uncharacteristically incomplete, and it is my only
source.

						-David Temkin
						Highland Park, NJ
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