On 6/10/2006 at 4:35 PM Fred Cisin wrote:
Wait--you had
to buy a modulator for the CGA. When I saw the 80x25 text
display of the CGA (on an IBM monitor), I decided that color wasn't for
me.
WHY?
Because if I had to read the darned text for more than an hour or two, I
was going to go blind. 0.31 mm (or was it 0.38 mm?) color dot pitch makes
for some really bad looking text. Compared to CGA, the MDA text was
postively wonderful--and let's face it, on the PC, what does one write
programs in--text or graphics mode?
When I got the Sony, I think the dot pitch was 0.25mm which, while still
not up to monochrome, was passable. With my nystagmus, display
deficiencies are magnified.
It ALSO had a 4 pin (minus one for keying) berg plug on
the inside that
was exactly right for a SupRMod][, but why degreade the signal by RF'ing
it, and then tuning it back in?
I think that's the way most folks would probably use it if they didn't
spring for an IBM CGA monitor or equivalent. Wasn't that the point of the
CGA anyway? Seems to me there's even a diagram of that in one of the
manuals (the maroon installation one?).
B&W was substantially better. (Mode 2).
But still no comparison to MDA on a monochrome monitor in terms of display
and font quality.
I couldn't imagine installing a PC with CGA in an office for, say, word
processing on an 8-hour per day basis. That would have been just plain
sadistic.
And if you needed graphics, Hercules (or clones thereof) was very nice.
True, the MDA text mode wouldn't let you change the font, but then there
was the Herc Graphics Plus card, which gave you quite a bit of downloadable
font memory.
Cheers,
Chuck