Re: RGB adapter for Apple IIe

[Martin Doherty <martin.doherty@undisclosed.com>]

Adrian Robey wrote:
> I have an Apple Made RGB adapter and monitor for the Apple IIe that no 
> website seems to have any information about. RGB. Any help would be 
> appreciated. The monitor has a button that adjusts the tilt of the screen 
> electronically 

Don't you mean electro-mechanically? ;)

I have one too.  It is the AppleColor 100 RGB monitor (model A9M0308). 
It came as part of a complete IIe system I bought off eBay.  Originally 
was driven by the Apple IIe Extended 80 column/RGB board (probably same 
as what you have), but now is connected to an Applied Engineering 
Digital Prism RGB daughterboard on a Ramworks II.

The Apple IIe Extended 80 col/RGB board was originally manufactured by 
Video-7; I think Apple just did some badge engineering, probably bought 
either the product or the company.

This monitor & adapter provides up to 16 colors using digital TTL 
outputs (please note: I don't understand what I just said).  The later 
AppleColor RGB monitors (for the IIGS) use analog RGB for thousands of 
colors, and are not interchangeable with the 100; apparently you will 
get a picture, but it's not a satisfactory image and the colors will be 
wrong.

There is some connection to the Apple III here but I'm not sure what it 
is; perhaps this RGB protocol was originally designed for the III then 
re-engineered to work on the IIe.

There are two DIP switches on the board that let you select 1 of 4 
colors for default text display: on/on = green, on/off = blue, off/on = 
amber and off/off = white. There is a flap on the side of the monitor 
that conceals the dials for contrast and brightness, and a button that 
switches from color to green monochrome. I didn't even realize there was 
a flap there for quite a while ... OOFTA! It's under the Apple logo.

The board comes with some interesting new video modes in addition to the 
double hi-res stuff in the standard 128K IIe. For example, it supports 
text displays where each character has its own foreground/background 
from the palette of 16 colors. You can have green text on a red 
background, white text on a blue background etc, and merrily mix any 
combination on the same screen (not necessarily recommended from a 
user-friendliness perspective however).

One thing about this monitor is its weight - it's friggin heavy! 
Currently it is sitting on my duodisk which is on my IIe, and I'm 
worried about bowing the top of the IIe case!   It's also very difficult 
to get inside the IIe. I'm thinking about adding some sort of monitor shelf.

I was fortunate enough to get the manual & demo disk that came with the 
board, which explains everything in plenty of detail, and the disk has 
Applesoft ampersand functions to provide programming support for the 
additional features.  I can get you more info if you want.

How did you come by your unit?

Martin