Re: Help me identify a monitor.

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"Mew" <mew24e@hotmail.com> wrote:

>In 1985 or approx. I receive an apple II Microcom clone with a monitor,
>since I don't have the apple II and the monitor anymore but I try to
>identify it to try to find one like it.
>
>It was a color monitor, with brightness button in front panel and the
>power button too. the front panel is brown and the rest of the monitor
>is almost white.
>
>This monitor have a rca input to connect to the computer and have a
>kind of box we attach in the back of the monitor where we can control
>volume and have input audio/video rca. this monitor was cool because
>with this rca input I plug my nintendo on it and was I perfect monitor
>to play nintendo with it.
>
>Its looking like a little tv, but was not a tv, was a color monitor.

    Sounds like the Zenith ZVM-135 monitor I bought for my Apple II clone;
besides composite and digital RGB video, it also had an RCA audio input.
Years later my brother ended up using it for an original Nintendo too. :)

    There's several color composite monitors like it, especially those made
by Commodore which supported composite, s-video (chroma/luma) and
an audio input (but not RGB). My brother picked one up for his Super 
Nintendo in the early 90's, I think it was a Commodore 1702.

    I still see these types of displays floating around second hand shops
in my area (you're in Montreal too, aren't you?).

>I got it with my apple 2 when I buy it at R&R software from dorval,
>qu�bec.

    That name sounds familar....flipping through some 5.25 floppies
from an Apple IIe system I bought a decade ago:
Ah ha, I thought so... :)

"R&R Software Club -- 2060 Trans-Canada, Dorval. 683-3464"
"Evaluation (6502)"

    Funny, I remember there were probably dozens of those shops 
around Montreal in the early to mid 80's (I even remember two such 
shops in walking distance from my parent's house in the suburbs!).
They'd sell pirated software under the false pretense of an evaluation
rental library, sort of like how you would rent a VHS video. You'd pay a
$2-$3 rental fee per disk and were asked to return the disk after a day. 
Of course they'd "accidentally" let it slip that 99.9% of their customers
never returned the disks with commercial Apple II software still on them.
 
    I'm fairly sure the RCMP (the Canadian version of the FBI) shut them
all down eventually. Also for selling pirated clones of Apple II computers
and hardware (was neat though, I remember they had bare Apple II
motherboard, cases, keyboards and powersupplies on display so you
could essentially assemble your own).

Mitchell Spector