Re: Apple IIGS monitor replacement

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

On Apr 29, 2:00 am, Michael Black <et...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>
> Even when the VGA standard was introduced, it would have taken some
> years for it to become common, so even if the introduction of VGA had
> proceeded the IIGS by enough for the computer to include VGA output
> in its design, it would have been too early to know that it would
> become the standard and cheap and plentiful.  Remember, before VGA,
> there was CGA, and monochrome, and EGA for the "IBM PC", every one of them
> requiring a different IBM board to use the monitor with.  It's only
> in looking back that one can decide that VGA was a keeper.

That's correct. VGA is pretty much the only "standard" surviving
the Microchannel-Architecture debacle (which had no mega-
success for years) and it really got a push when the boards
became widely and *cheaply* available from third-party producers
- like the Tseng ET3000 and especially ET4000-based boards.

> ANd of course, the problem isn't that the IIGS didn't output VGA, it's
> that the design is over twenty years old now, so what was easy to
> get back then may no longer be the case.  But history doesn't intend
> to be historical, so it didn't matter at the time what was used in
> the IIGS.

I remember reading that Apple didn't want to use 400-line
monitors for the GS for several reasons (upgrade path for
Apple II users, higher resolutions being reserved for the Mac).

bye
Marcus