Michael J. Mahon wrote:
Mr Nukem wrote:On Sep 4, 8:34 am, schmidtd <schmi...@my-deja.com> wrote:On Sep 4, 11:11 am, Mr Nukem <mrnu...@gmail.com> wrote:> I have an Apple IIe hooked up to a composite monitor and 80 columnmode is really not usable. Is there any kind of software I can run to clear up the text (it's blurry in 80 column mode), even if it's a program that makes the display monochrome if it would clear up the text that would be excellent.A monochrome monitor from the era is a good way to go. A color monitor will be too blurry to read, as you have found out. Some LCD TV monitors are pretty good to use in this situation, but the fidelity (or lack thereof) of the Apple's NTSC output can cause trouble with finicky contemporary LCDs.If there is no software solution to the issue is there an add in graphics card that gives a better composite signal I can watch for on e-bay or get from one of the few Apple II hardware vendors around still?There is no software solution. One way to go might be to get an RGB card and associated monitor, but that's getting pretty expensive. Especially since you could probably go to an electronics superstore and pick up a cheap LCD TV and try it out...I know the RGB card has a 9 Pin video connector. Would an old PC CGA- EGA 9 PIN Monitor work with any of the Apple II RGB cards? Or will I run into refresh rate issues? If it did work would it be an improvement over what I have now?CGA is a 15kHz line rate, so there should be no sync problems. However, the RGBI plus sync output of the Apple II RGB cards is not fully compatible with the IBM standard, so a little adapter will be required in most cases. Search the web for more info.
I don't know about II/II+ RGB cards but:The IIe RGB card does output a signal that can be converted into use with a CGA monitor. First the typical CGA monitor requires there to be a separate vertical sync. The IIe RGB card outputs only composite sync. The vertical sync can be made with an LM1881 see:
http://home.online.no/~kr-lund/A2E-CGA.htmThen the colors are wrong so one needs to swap them around a bit to get a passable picture. I did this with a GAL22V10.
So I use a CGA monitor with my IIe and the IIe RGB card. -- Knut (delete 'nogarbage.' for email)