Re: Apple II Video Cards

[CUTjblakeney@sympatico.ca (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 22:14:28 GMT, "Donald C. Lee"
<coach41@pacbell.net> wrote:

>    I was bored and found some stuff on apple2history on the old 8-bit
>video card, the Supersprite.  As I read along, there was a comparison of
>the IIGS Second Sight Video card to the Supersprite.
>
>    It's interesting to read that in the long history of the Apple II,
>that while sound cards (Mockinboard, etc.), RAM cards and most other cards
>sold fairly well.
>
>    But video cards just didn't seem to take off.  I have the first ever
>issue of A+ which advertises the Supersprite.  It was a great sounding
>idea but it never took off.  The Second Sight was also the same for the
>IIGS.  
>
>    Here is a theory question:  Why did Apple never upgrade the graphic
>capablities of the 8 bit Apples in the 80's when it was obvious they were
>geting left behind left and right by other machines? 
>
>    It's just weird and unfortunate because Apple seemed content to let
>the 3rd Party companies produce products to address weaknesses of the
>machines.  THe IIGS was a good example.  If only Apple would have upgraded
>machines a little more.

Yeah, I have always been disappointed that Apple didn't do just a
little more for the IIgs.  Many people have come up with conspiracy
theories that Apple purposely crippled the IIgs to keep if from
competing with the Mac but I can't say for sure that is what happened.
It does appear, though, that after 1987, Apple didn't do very much to
promote or expand the Apple II line.

Part of the problem with video cards not taking off is like the
chicken and the egg enigma.  Developers wouldn't write software to
support the new video cards unless more users had the cards and users
wouldn't buy the cards unless there was more software that required
it.

In the case of the SecondSight card, I'm sure that a lot more units
would have sold had Sequential Systems had a less buggy ROM on the
card and had a patch to allow GS/OS to use the higher resolutions and
colour depths either when they released it or shortly after.  As it
is, there is only a few programs that take advantage of the
SecondSight's capabilities and most people who own them today are
simply using them to allow their IIgs to use a VGA monitor.  If you
could plug in a SecondSight card and patch GS/OS and have the ability
to run GS/OS and all your current programs in 640x480 with up to 24
bit colour or 800x600 with up to 16 bit colour or even 1024x768 with
up to 8 bit colour, I'm sure a lot more people would have wanted
and/or purchased the card.

The Video Overlay Card that Apple put out doesn't have much software
that supports it either but it can be used with practically anything
and does offer a few more features.  You can use it in a IIe to
display SHR graphics as well allowing a IIe to use an anolog RGB
monitor.  It also can be put into a 400 vertical line mode but that
mode is interlaced so the image is a little jittery but I've used it
many times to view graphics on my IIgs using SuperConvert.  I've also
come up with a way that you should be able to get 320x200 with 256
colours per scan line and 640x200 with 16 pure colours per scan line
and possibly 256 colours with dithering.  This would require having to
adjust some of the potentiometers on the VOC but it might work fairly
well.  I just haven't gotten around to trying it yet.

--
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II Unversity on A2Central.com
               - CUT the obvious from my address to e-mail me