27 Jul
2000
27 Jul
'00
6:46 a.m.
What I always used as a guage of whether or not it was worth "investing" in
a given monitor was the combined cost of a card capable of driving them in
the desired mode and the cost of the monitor and whatever other equipment
A/B-switch, extra cables, extra monitor, extra desk space, etc. ) came in
at less than half what the cost of a then-current comparable PC-compatible
monitor would cost, taking into consideration that the source workstation or
VAX was being discarded because it didn't meet some other need.
At the time I did most of this stuff, a NEC 5D (the typical PC-compatible
19" monitor) cost about $2k so that left some wiggle room. Nowadays, the
combined cost and nuissance of making this type of mod would require that
one get $2k along with the monitor just for hauling it away. I've yet to
see an adapter that will adapt the random fixed-frequency monitor to a PC in
all the commonly used modes, yet doesn't cost nearly a K-$. There are a few
that "sorta" work, but I don't want that kind of trouble.
As for the MAC being easier to adapt to the random fixed-frequency monitor,
that may be easier, but since, at the time this was of some economic
interest, there was no software at all offered for the MAC that would do
what I figured I wanted at the time, and since the typical mac was
MONOCHROME only, It wouldn't have helped to have one. Aside from that, the
typical mono MAC cost more than a fully loaded PC with a beautiful new 19"
Multisync monitor.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Ford <mikeford(a)socal.rr.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 12:46 PM
Subject: Re: Back to the A1097C monitor again
OK
You'll find
that MANY of the 19" monitors are optimized for odd formats.
This is particularly true of DEC monitors. In fact, DEC seemingly made
certain their monitors would be totally useless for anything other than
their intended application by choosing some odd geometries e.g. 1152x831,
The idea is that you have to use a REAL DEC monitor on DEC, not that you
can't use it on other stuff (which they could give a rat's rear about).
>The card was a Photon board with a customized BIOS ROM that made it work
Macs are way easier to get working with the weird monitors. For the PC I
have heard good things about the Matrox Mellenium G200 cards, which I
"think" are highly programmable. The real catch with the PC is supporting
the DOS startup modes at some faked variation of 640x480.