Re: Apple II RGB Monitor Problem

["Ranando King" <rk@magictouchcorp.com>]

"Tempest" <tempest@atariprotos.com> wrote in message
1120798977.681605.140290@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com">news:1120798977.681605.140290@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I tested out some games and came up with some strange results:
>
> Crossbow - Plays in monochrome, also on the screen that shows the
> instructions, the display goes all wanko on me (some random looking
> blocks).  This is odd because the screen is just plain and simple text,
> nothing unusual.
>
> Airheart - Plays in monochrome
>
> Prince of Persia - Plays alright, but some of the text is blurry and
> hard to read (like on the title screen)
>
> Kings Bounty - Same issues as Prince of Persia.  The text is blurry
> (like on the copyright screen).
>
> I have no idea what is causing this, but it's a real shame I can't use
> my RGB monitor.  I really like how the colors and image looked, they
> were so much better than the composite (which seems like a huge step
> backwards now).  I wonder if there is a way to fix the issues I'm
> having?
>
> On an interesting side note, I found the cable my friend sent me with
> the monitor and its different than the cable I had been using.  Up
> until this point I had been using my IIgs monitor cable.  The IIgs
> monitor cable has a full set of pins, whereas this cable only has a
> few.  I have no idea what the difference is, but I get the exact same
> problems with both cables.  I wonder why they made the cables different?
>

The funky results you're getting is because of mixed mode (Mode 3) that
blended the 140x192 color and the 520x192 B&W modes using bit 7 of the
graphic byte to determine if color would be displayed. Some games, like the
original Test Drive IIRC, made use of this mode properly. The result is that
on an RGB screen, the text would be crisp while displaying color DHGR.

R.