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Re: Weird/Missing colors on my Apple //e...

IceMan wrote:


    Hello again,

    I decided to give my old Apple stuff some color now (after I had
successfully replaced a faulty dram) so I removed my original Apple green
phosphor monitor and added a TV/Comp/component to VGA box. I flipped the
switch in my Apple //e from "mono" to "color" and voila' I had colors on my
spare 15" LCD NEC monitor but... something was wrong. So I took out my DOS
3.3 Sample Programs disk and ran "COLOR TEST". Well, apparently I am missing
the RED component. Orange isn't orange and magenta isn't magenta while the
other colors look ok (Blue is certainly there). Here are how the colors
appear on my monitor: Magenta is GREY, Purple is light blue, Dark green is
dark grey, Lightblue is white, Orange is brown, Pink is White - so it seems
as if the Red component is missing (also some green).

   I messed with the HUE setting in my converter, but that only made things
worse. Do any of you know if there is some setting/tuning/timing/cap I can
manipulate in my Apple?

   Sidenote: my Apple is a European version running on 220V/50Hz. My TV to
VGA converter reports it's output composite signal as an NTSC signal (I
thought Euro models were PAL 50 scans - apparently they are all NTSC
anyways?). My converter is multistandard so it should handle the color
conversion correctly - but maybe this could be a problem? It looks as if it
is a conversion problem as the color "time frames" may be shifted for some
reason - or - it may be just some tuning I can work on.

   Any feedback is appreciated.


The inexpensive (<$100) NTSC-to-VGA converters that I've tried have
all been both inaccurate and "slithery", by which I mean that narrow
vertical features in the display move back and forth horizontally by
a pixel or more in a more or less random way.

I consider them barely useable, and not at all satisfactory.

The PAL composite video is enough unlike NTSC that it could easily
account for your missing/incorrect colors, but it may just mess up
certain colors.  ;-(

-michael

Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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