Hello,
I am looking for a green monochrome monitor for my Apple IIc. While searching I asked myself a question:
since the IIc's composite output is PAL or NTSC depending on region, is there a similar difference in monitor?
In other words, would the US monitor work with European IIc (or vice-versa)?
I may lack a deeper understanding of PAL vs NTSC, which I understand define color coding, so I thought about asking smarter people.
... color encoding difference does not matter. The difference that matters is 50Hz (Europe) vs. 60Hz (US) frame rate. And the 110V/220V line voltage difference. I can't use my European Apple-IIc monitor here in the USA because of the latter. There are 110V/220V transformers to fix this but they cost a lot of money and they are yet another bulky, heavy piece to lug around. The frame rate of any CRT based monitor can be changed by just adjusting the "V-HOLD" knob or, if the adjustment range is not enough, by changing one cheap component in the monitor's electronics (typically a capacitor). But unless you have a lot of spare time to kill, you need the schematics of the monitor to know which component sets the timing for the frame rate. And you need to know what you are doing. But in principle, yes, you could adapt any 50Hz/60Hz monochrome monitor you can find to any flavor of Apple II.
What Bernie said +
You cant just switch between countries in Europe to begin with.
Im in NL and we had 220V~ mains. GB had (has?) 240 V~.
But they upped V here, gradually since 1990 from 220 to 230V, to normalize European power grid.
So i recently got my 2c's out of storage to start selling off most of my collection. Monitor started smoking. Fuse blew aswell.
After examination, it seemed the filter cap over the mains had blown. Eventually i noticed it was a 250 V ~ type (quite some seem to be that in my 8 bit collection).
Since the mains have an upward tolerance of 6% (down 10%), V can reach 244 V...
If cap has downward tolerance, it will blow.
According to 2c monitor schematic they should have 400V~ caps, but they dont. The brits probably got the 400V ones.
So you cant just interchange between countries in Europe. Youll first have to check which mains V they have and what your monitor was made to handle.
An American Apple Monochrome Monitor will display a 50hz (PAL) signal with a minor tweak to the vertical hold in the back of the monitor. I know because I've used my Monitor /// with my PAL C64 and ZX Spectrum regularly without any problems.
Can't imagine the European Monitors would be any different in that reguard.