Mini LCD A/V Color Display compatible with an old Apple 2 computer?

Comments

• Mike Green Posts: 23,101

  2011-06-25 07:15 edited 2011-06-25 07:15

  The Mini LCD A/V Color Display is a standard NTSC video monitor with monaural sound input. It should work with anything that was designed for that (like the Apple IIe). Whether the screen is big enough to see what you want is another thing, but try it.
• davidsaunders Posts: 1,559

  2011-06-25 07:41 edited 2011-06-25 07:41

  I no longer recall what the video output is on the IIe. Though I know that at least the IIC, and IIGS use an RGB output as the primary (with low quality NTSC as a backup), and it is not to difficult to construct an adapter to use VGA (though it is also not so strait forward), you can find various schematics for these on the web (NTSC on the Apple IIs is poor quality). I would presume that the IIe has the same RGB as the IIc? If it is still in the older generation (those that only had composite), then I would strongly recommend getting a video card for it, there were a few made for it, and I think that there is now at least one open source one that directly uses VGA.
• icepuck Posts: 466

  2011-06-25 08:43 edited 2011-06-25 08:43

  Low res 40col should be ok, any NTSC device can handle that. It's when you use hi res 80col graphics mode is were you may have problems with NTSC devices. It looks like you may be the one that gets to test it;)
  -dan
• potatohead Posts: 10,261

  2011-06-25 20:19 edited 2011-06-25 20:19

  What you need to know is the horizontal resolution of the LCD. I think that one is pretty low, like 240, or 320 pixels. Those resolutions will display the standard 40 column display mode, and the high resolution graphics mode fairly well. Display will be pixel perfect, if the LCD has 320 pixels, and almost pixel perfect, if it's less, because some blending of the signal will happen.
  
  Vertically, most displays will work great, because the Apple only outputs a non-interlaced, simple display of 192 lines.
  
  Some displays have trouble with the signal not being interlaced. Somebody here bought a LCD that wouldn't display our simple, Apple like drivers, and we isolated the problem to the display needing a interlaced input signal. Apples won't display on those.
  
  I've a //e platinum, and every display I tried worked well so far. I don't think there are many that require the interlaced signal.
  
  Double high-res and 80 columns won't do well on the Parallax LCD. The display needs to have more horizontal pixels. LCD TVs, and most ordinary CRT TV's will do ok at the 80 column display, but it may be hard to read. YMMV
  
  Double high-res graphics will probably work on the Parallax display, because those are almost never used on a per-pixel basis. Some of the GUI type programs for the Apple, like GEOS, did use the double high res as a 580x192 pixel desktop screen, but most programs took advantage of the NTSC color artifacting that happens, using the display as a 140 pixel x 192 pixel, 16 color display. You should see that run well on the Parallax display, if it's the lower resolution one I'm thinking of. Unless I am mistaken, Parallax has shipped a coupla different displays. The first one was fairly low resolution. I don't know about the second, or maybe follow on ones.
  
  Either way it all goes, the worst case is you see a smudged display. Plug it in and try it! All Apple ][ series computers output a standard composite NTSC signal, unless they were Euro-Apples, in which case they had a extra circuit to produce a PAL display, though I don't know if that display was actually color.
  
  Nice machine! What do you plan to do with it? I'm setting up to connect a Propeller to mine.
• davidsaunders Posts: 1,559

  2011-06-26 16:40 edited 2011-06-26 16:40

  Patatohead:
  You say that there is an old apple II version of GEM? I am interested. I was only aware of GEOS, Apple II Desktop, and GS/OS as GUIs go for the apple II series pre 1994.
• potatohead Posts: 10,261

  2011-06-26 18:46 edited 2011-06-26 18:46

  Yep, I confused the two, having been reading on some early GUI stuff. I don't believe there was a GEM port for Apple computers.
• davidsaunders Posts: 1,559

  2011-06-26 21:12 edited 2011-06-26 21:12

  Patatohead:
  Ah OK. there was a GEM port for the Apple Lisa though, just not the Apple 2 series.