I was finally able to power on and test my Digital Apple RGB Monitor //.
I used these years ago, and I could swer that shen put into monochrome mode, the phosphour colour was teal-blue. This one is very much green. It also has a colour issue in RGB mode, which may be related, where white is orange-y.
My first question: Do any of you recall these being teal monochrome; and were there different phosphour modes on them in monochrome mode?
I have another one but the actual video connector is broken off. That could have been my old teal one, but I won't know until I take it apart and build a new connector. That one seemingly does nothing after powering on, so I need to open it anyway.
There were indeed some monochrome monitors out there that leaned toward the teal color. These CRT's had a lighter colored phospher on the face of them but there weren't that many around from what I remember. The amber ones looked cool too, but the teal was a nice color break from the forrest green color presented on the old Apple Monitor ///.
From your description, it sounds like the blue gun (or driver circuit) is weak or faulty. Since it is a color monitor, the phosphors would have to be pretty close to RGB (see CIE chart).
I am specifically asing if anyone else remembers the Apple COlour Monitor 100 using a teal phosphour when you press the monochrome button on it, not if teal monitors existed.
I have seen monochrome CRTs in white, grey, green, teal, blue, amber, and red; all with varying shades. The Colour Monitor 100 is a colour, digital RGB display that has a monochrome mode. The one I am now using outputs vibrant green with the monochrome switch pressed, but I recall my old one being teal/blue.
The standard text colour is also orange, not white. I feel that this should be a calibration issue, but other colours appear right, including white, and videos of it on-line also show amber-orange as the default text colour, so either this was intended, or a lot of these monitors are misaligned.
The monochrome switch does not change the phosphors. They need to be RGB to display color. Yes, true monochrome monitors existed with single phosphors in many shades, but a color monitor can only "simulate" a monochrome one. The color would be determined by which guns were active. The best you could do is have just a single channel active which would give you a true monochrome color; but because of the multiple phosophors, color mask, and other necessities of a color tube, it would not have intrinsic resolution or "look" of a true monochrome display.
That's true-enough: It'd be the guns and not the phosphour colour, as that is never tinted; only the grille inside could have been different, but I wonder if the monitor that I used 30 years ago was simply defective, and I never noticed. It'd deactivate the red gun and thus eliminate that component, resulting in teal text in monochrome mode. I should have stated phosphour colour simulation, but I thought that my question was clear, regarding the monochrome output colour. At least I ave discovered something interesting out of this:
I also noticed that mine is outputting peridot text today, not amber text, in colour mode, after I changed from the normal Apple 80-Column+RGB to the AE Ram+RGB daughter card, so the text output from the 80-col card does indeed seem to select a colour, and THIS could be what I remember from thirty years ago. Perhaps whatever RGB board I used at the time output text in teal. (When the //e is in low-res t+g mode, it does produce white, colour-fringed text normally.)
I have a third RGB card, but my cable is too short to use it, and it may be that the third card is what I used to use with the monitor. If I decide to make a ribbon extension, I will post the restults. There is essentially no documentation on these small nuances, and I do not feel like disassembling eerything, unbolting the DA-15 port, and testing it with the ribbon in my hand.
iie-zip4mhz-rgb.jpg
That's a look at the text output from the AE Ramworks II + RGB daughter card. That is my system, and here is someone else's machine, which shows the amber text that I saw before.
s-l1600.jpg
That one has Apple's 80-column+RGB card, so, the bottom line is that the 80-col card decides on what text colour to use, and I think that my other card (Checkmate MultiRAM RGB) may have used teal.
I do now feel like going in and setting the monochrome switch on a set of toggles so that I can select which colours it uses, externally, for monochromatic mode. As I have a second of these monitors that I already need to repair, I may do it on that one.
P.S. Pardon the goopy stuff around my keyboard. I peeled off a rubber dust protector that I plan to re-install after I give it a bath. It's a shame that none of the vendours have reproduced that clear-formed-rubber. I smoke, and it was always handy to keep ash out of the mechanism.
Specs, if anyone is curious:
//e, Enhanced, with ZIP-II 4Mhz
Slots:
1 - CP/M Z80 card
2 - Super Serial Card
3 - NULL, used by RAMcard
4 - Mouse Card
5 - 3.5 Drive (Superdrive) Card
6 - DuoDisk controller
7 - Empty at present.
RAM: RamWorks II, fully populated, with RGB daughter card.
Peripherals: DuoDisk, 1x 3.5 Drive at present, Joystick, Mouse.
It is about as fully-loaded as it can be with hardware from its era. I have not installed a HDD for it, as I did not want it to bootstrap from 7.
If I can find a ProFile card, I may put that into a slot instead of something else, or I may reserve that for my ][+.
I found what I was seeking:
Checkmate Technology MultiRAM RGBThis card did indeed have the option of setting the text colour, but you had to r/r a PAL on the card. As I have no clue at present how the PAL is encoded, or if it is read-protected, I cannot post further details, and I am unsure if the AE card had a similar option, but for reference:
MultiRAM RGB Text Colour, from the product User Manual
The RGB card from AE, was even better, as it allowed setting the colour via a DIP Switch:
AE RGB Card Text Colour Settings
Thus, the card that I am using has the capability to drive blue text, and I simply need to change its configuration. This is what losing both the documentation, and your memory causes. Part of me wants to make this switch external.
The Apple brand card, again, displays in amber. AFAIK, this is hardcoded, but you could probably modify it if you truly want to do that, and don't forget that you can drive IBM TTL monitors with the AE and Checkmate cards, if you don't have an AppleColour 100.
The Apple card also sees to have tis feature:
Your Extended 80-Column Text/ AppleColor Card can also simulate monitors of different color phosphors when used with an RGB type monitor. If you are accustomed to doing your word processing in green, blue, amber, or white, you can select the desired text color by setting two mini-slide switches. However, highlighting of text (i.e., inverse video) is always white.