Re: 12" apple RGB monitor question

[a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

wbdesnoy@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill) wrote:

>That said, I have used my IIgs monitor on a Quadra, with a supermac card.
>It is nowhere near as nice as using a mac monitor, because of the poor
>resolution and flickering display.  (It was setup for NTSC frequencies.)

    Which SuperMac card? I have a couple here but had no idea they
could sync down to lower frequencies (I have no Nubus slotted Macs 
to test them in).

>Why it appears so poorly on a Mac while it is fine on a IIgs is for
>somebody with more experience than I to answer (but I'm guessing that
>the course graphics on the IIgs has something to do with it).

    The two main reasons have to do with interlacing and resolution.
The IIgs uses the display in a low-resolution of 320x200 or 640x200
whereas the Mac 640x400, but the difference here is *interlaced*
video versus non-interlaced. Interlaced video flickers quite a bit 
and very uneasy on the eyes, to say the least. 

    The other issue is the high dot pitch--0.37mm. That makes graphics
somewhat fuzzy even on the IIgs and certainly enough where 640 mode
dithering appears to have solid looking colors. By contrast, today's
average display is around 0.26mm or even lower. And then there's the
obvious: An 11" viewable area and 60 Hz refresh maximum.

>So not only can't you do it (conveniently), you probably don't want to do
>it.

    I agree, it's fairly pointless these days to even bother, other
than for quick testing purposes or novelty sake.

    Especially at a time when 14" SVGA displays are being 
discarded by PC users, who often just throw these out or 
give them away. All you need is a common Mac-to-VGA
pin adapter to use them on a Macintosh.

Mitchell Spector
a_specto@alcor.concordia.ca