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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Ral-Clan on January 21, 2013, 07:03:06 PM
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Why in the world did Commodore choose to put a monochrome composite video output jack onto the A500/A2000?
They already had years of experience adding colour video output to their 8-bit line of computers (VIC-20, C64, TED, etc.)
The Amiga 1000 that came beforehand had composite colour output. The later A600 and A1200 had colour composite output.
But they chose greyscale / black & white video output for the A500 / A2000.
The Amiga was marketed as a multimedia machine - colour was important to its image. Why take this step backward?
Monochrome composite output is almost useless. I never used it. Did anyone really use this feature, other than for quickly testing your machine on a TV when a monitor wasn't available, or as a stopgap measure until you got afford a real monitor or an A520 RF modulator?
It seems like such a lost opportunity, too - as having a COLOUR video composite output would have been quite handy for desktop video people who wanted a secondary display, for hooking the Amiga up to a larger TV or video projector for presentations to groups, for recording the Amiga's colour video output to video tape, etc. etc. It would also have helped sell the Amiga to those on a budget who wanted it only for gaming - they could have bought an A500 and hooked it up to a TV instead of buying a monitor.
But instead someone made the decision that it would be monochrome. WHY?!
It just doesn't make a lot of sense, in retrospect. There are only two reasons that I can think of that would explain why Commodore did it:
1. It saved a few cents of production cost per machine,
2. or initially there was no composite output planned for the A500/2000, and some innovative engineer figured out that it would be simple to add a monochrome (luma) output without adding much cost to the design.
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I just assumed they did it to force newbs into buying a proper RGB monitor.
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Wasn't it something to do with word processing? green/gray screen typing was all the rage then.
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Probably to save money. :-)
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Wasn't it something to do with word processing? green/gray screen typing was all the rage then.
Maybe, but a composite video output would barely give you the sharpness to do actual word-processing. It would be pretty hard on the eyes, anyway.
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Composite sucks anyway and monochrome came for free since it could be included on the Vidiot hybrid. Color composite would've added cost without value.
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They were trying to add features the Mac had.
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Some say that using interlaced modes on the monochrome out flickers much less. Try it out and tell me if thats true.:)
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Some say that using interlaced modes on the monochrome out flickers much less. Try it out and tell me if thats true.:)
I've had the RF output of Amiga 1200's and 600's hooked up to a B&W set, and it flickers just as bad. So my guess would be a "no". Couldn't imagine the mono output socket making a difference. I'd be surprised if it did. :laugh1:
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It was not to be used... they were looking ahead to the days of jokers on ebay having old amigas that they purportedly could not test because of no RGB monitor.
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Probably to save money. :-)
They did ship the a500's with modulators that have colour composite, so it wasn't completely a cost issue.
However it might have been cheaper and easier to build 50hz & 60hz Amiga's and then ship the appropriate one with whatever modulator is required for each country.
It might also have been a space issue.
I used both the RF and composite video from the modulator when I first got my a500 and it was fine for playing games.
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I'm sure cost had a lot to do with making it black and white as opposed to color. But black and white wouldn't have been totally unreasonable in those days. There were probably still a number of people with black and white TVs or who could only afford a black and white monitor. And in office productivity environments, color wasn't always necessary. Case in point, the A2024 monitor, which sacrificed color (and refresh rate) in order to provide a hi-res display for DTP programs.
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It was not to be used... they were looking ahead to the days of jokers on ebay having old amigas that they purportedly could not test because of no RGB monitor.
HA!
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The Biz market back in the 80's was 80%+ Monochrome because Colour monitors were quite a bit more expensive and so I supect that the composite output was to cater for that market.
I got given my c64 with a Composite Green monochrome screen and I remeberber seeing a lot of biz computers being mono only (in PC land it was MGA aka Hercules GFX cards).
iirc not having the extra colour pixels made for more pixels on mono screens and the GFX looked sharper and smoother as a result.
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The Biz market back in the 80's was 80%+ Monochrome because Colour monitors were quite a bit more expensive and so I supect that the composite output was to cater for that market.
I got given my c64 with a Composite Green monochrome screen and I remeberber seeing a lot of biz computers being mono only (in PC land it was MGA aka Hercules GFX cards).
iirc not having the extra colour pixels made for more pixels on mono screens and the GFX looked sharper and smoother as a result.
Just to be clear: The built in composite output of an A500 is way beyond PC land monochrome. A500 composite is 64 shades of gray easily displayable at once from a palette of 4096 gray shades.
Using HAM mode or raster interrupts one can get all 4096 shades on screen at once.
To view the gray-scale screen in color one had to buy an extremely high-quality 1080 RGB Analog Color Monitor for $399.00 or spend $50.00 for the Composite color output adapter that so many of us have laying around in our closets that we have no use for.
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A500 composite is 64 shades of gray easily displayable at once from a palette of 4096 gray shades.
Using HAM mode or raster interrupts one can get all 4096 shades on screen at once.
Sorry, but you won't get 4096 shades of gray out of the composite output :)
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When I got my first A500 the only monitor I had was a amber mono...
It really had a high-persistence phosphorus and I was able to run interlace mode with almost no flicker. the pointer ghosted and obviously was not ideal for a 4096 color machine. I could easily read 80 column text though.
AMAX for example, if you have ever seen the Mac desktop running in interlace - it was pretty bad with the way Mac OS tiles pixels and draws rows of 1 pixel lines.
looked OK on the old amber screen...
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Im gonna fire up my 13" mono screen on one of my 500's now, I wanna see what it looks like! :D
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They did ship the a500's with modulators that have colour composite, so it wasn't completely a cost issue.
The modulators were always part of the bundle you were buying, if you got one with the computer. Someone paid for it every time, even if it was included in the retail price in the customer's eyes.
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Well this is what WorkBench 3.1 looks like on a 14" Green Composh!te Monitor from my 500+'s mono-Composh!te output!
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71121999/Amiga/2013-01-22%2019.40.19.jpg
It does look slightly better in RL but trying to photograph a 50hz screen is really damned hard! :P
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They did ship the a500's with modulators that have colour composite, so it wasn't completely a cost issue.
I never saw that here in Canada, where were you located? My A500 did not come with a modulator and none of my friends A500s did either. You had to buy it separately here. Maybe with one of the later early-1990s era "pack" bundles this changed, but by that time the Amiga in Canada was fading fast and I never saw those here.
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No idea why they included a monochrome out but I am glad they did. Not long after getting my A500 we moved house which meant as a teenager I got my own room (yay) but basically lost access to the family TV (boo) and the only monitor I had was an old crappy monochrome one which I ended up using for over a year on my A500. It was either use a monochrome or not use the A500. Later own, I bought a refurbished 1084S monitor but found future use for the monochrome when I bought an A2000 which I ran a BBS on and the monochrome monitor was used on that.
None of my friends could work out how I managed to play Wings on a monochrome monitor since they said it was impossible to tell the different between the colour of the planes. It was a strange setup since I also had an old stereo which I hooked up to the A500 (old school HMV stereo) so had great sound and no colour picture :P
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So anyone tried high resolutions using the mono-output and see if it has improvements?.
The ataris had a high resolution monochrome output that was vga, but i don't think that the amiga mono could do the same in sharpness. Is really improving in higher resolutions?
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I never saw that here in Canada, where were you located? My A500 did not come with a modulator and none of my friends A500s did either. You had to buy it separately here. Maybe with one of the later early-1990s era "pack" bundles this changed, but by that time the Amiga in Canada was fading fast and I never saw those here.
Indeed you're right. I bought mine in Sep 1988 and I had to buy the 520 separately and this was in Europe. Only later in 1989 came the pack era as you say, and was included in the price.
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Indeed you're right. I bought mine in Sep 1988 and I had to buy the 520 separately and this was in Europe. Only later in 1989 came the pack era as you say, and was included in the price.
Ok, yes I did buy an a500 batpack in 1989 & I assumed they had always bundled the 520.
But still, I don't think it was them trying to force you to buy rgb monitors.
The a500 was a cost reduced machine, part of that cost reduction was removing the colour from the horribly bad A1000 composite.
The early Atari ST's didn't have a built in modulator either.
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Well, one reason I think they might have done it is that the monochrome video output is WAAAY cleaner than the smeary color composite output of the A520 adapter. Only the luminance signal with no chroma so you can actually read 80 column text legibly on a composite monitor. The 520 adapter? Eh, not so much. I actually think that the A1000's color composite output is better than the 520 adapter, but YMMV.
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Sorry, but you won't get 4096 shades of gray out of the composite output :)
Why not?
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Why not?
You wouldn't necessarily get 4096 different grayscales because some of the 4096 different colours could have exactly the same intensity.
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The a500 was a cost reduced machine, part of that cost reduction was removing the colour from the horribly bad A1000 composite.
Okay, then why didn't they put monochrome composite into the A2000 - the pro-level machine in that year's lineup?
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Just to be clear: The built in composite output of an A500 is way beyond PC land monochrome. A500 composite is 64 shades of gray easily displayable at once from a palette of 4096 gray shades.
Well, it's really monochrome (black or white output) but each pixel can be at a different shade of intensity (luma signal amplitude I'm assuming).
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It's a shame they didnt put S-Video on the a500's and other wedge Amiga's just like the Commodore 64 had.
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Okay, then why didn't they put monochrome composite into the A2000 - the pro-level machine in that year's lineup?
The A500 and the A2000 were designed and build two totally separate teams, they probably didn't even know about each other. The A500 team were looking to cost reduce as much as possible and as Zac had already pointed out, with the video hybrid in the A500 you get monochrome Composite for free, so I guess they just added it as better than nothing :)
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The A500 and the A2000 were designed and build two totally separate teams, they probably didn't even know about each other. The A500 team were looking to cost reduce as much as possible and as Zac had already pointed out, with the video hybrid in the A500 you get monochrome Composite for free, so I guess they just added it as better than nothing :)
Are you sure about that? I know the *original* A2000 (the A2000-A) was designed by a German team, while the A500 was designed by an American team. These two teams didn't really co-operate.
But that A2000 (based more on A1000 architecture) was abandoned. The A2000-B that was actually produced was based on the A500 motherboard. And from my understanding it was developed by the same team that designed the A500. (I would like confirmation of this info).
Here is a history:
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/a2000.html
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Simple answer.
Monochrome monitors were cheap and you could look at an 80 column display on a monochrome composite monitor (I had one, although I sometime switched to 64 columns for better clarity when doing word processing).
No way were you going to try that with a color composite screen.
$100 monitor vs. several hundred dollar monitor.
A no-brainer if you're primarily concerned with office apps.
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It's a shame they didnt put S-Video on the a500's and other wedge Amiga's just like the Commodore 64 had.
S-video output on a C64?
Where?
I don't even think they had that standard at that time.
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S-video output on a C64?
Where?
I don't even think they had that standard at that time.
Yeah the 82' model with 5-pin connector doesnt but the 83-84+ models do but there was no mini-din standard plug at the time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Video#Connector_and_Cable
If you look at the 1084s monitor for example, it has chromina and Lumina inputs which is just S-Video using RCA connectors.
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=849
I personally use a c64 S-Video cable to connect to my Sony Bravia and the PQ is awesome. :)
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Indeed, A2000 was developed from German based team which took A1000 as starting point; they deleted monochrome video output (rev4.0 was last one to roll-out from that team).
US based team got involved a bit later to start B52 as a direct involvement of Rattigan's visionary acts supporting cost reduction of Amiga in general, so US -based team took over A2000 from Germans and redesigned it by using A500 components which became available in meanwhile.
As mentioned before, they spared every damn cent wherever they can find one and that literally means they omitted a single RCA socket (monochrome signal was always there at a pin#19 of video encoder chip). A520 became a part of usual kit (unit, mouse, power supply) in Q2 1989 at the end of Rev5 assembly lifecycle, when they introduced 2 special editions.
A520 used then one of available, off-the-shelf Motorola encoders (MC1377p) which were known to be mediocre compared with true RGB signal quality. Even by modern standards, you can use either Philips SAA chip or Analog Device AD724/AD725 for much better image quality (as DIY design), but you're still lagging behind RGB. S-VIDEO was possible back at times just as A520 were introduced as a hack which involved heavy unit modification.
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Yeah the 82' model with 5-pin connector doesnt but the 83-84+ models do but there was no mini-din standard plug at the time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Video#Connector_and_Cable
If you look at the 1084s monitor for example, it has chromina and Lumina inputs which is just S-Video using RCA connectors.
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=849
I personally use a c64 S-Video cable to connect to my Sony Bravia and the PQ is awesome. :)
That's too cool.
Much better then composite.
Until component video became common, I had a lot of devices connected with S-video cablles.
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IIRC, the reason for monochrome was that not all users needed color composite. A lot of Amiga 1000 users were buying monitors. So they could save a bit on the 500 and get the 1084 monitor and be done. Those who needed color composite, were not probably not buying the 1084 and would instead buy the A520 adapter. If the 520 wasn't available immediately whenthe 500 came out, it was available shortly thereafter.
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Sorry, but you won't get 4096 shades of gray out of the composite output
Why not?
Because the way the monochrome composite signal is built, which is (according to the Amiga Hardware Reference Guide) 30% Red, 60% Green and 10% Blue. And with 16 levels of each color component you get 151 unique shades of grey. And considering the quality of composite output in general, I wouldn't count on all of those shades being distinguishable from each other :)
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It was not to be used... they were looking ahead to the days of jokers on ebay having old amigas that they purportedly could not test because of no RGB monitor.
10 points for the best answer...!
Btw: I just finished counting and I've counted 4094 shades of grey. Better than any soft porn book.
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Btw: I just finished counting and I've counted 4094 shades of grey. Better than any soft porn book.
Or MacPaint gray-scale picture printed on a Commodore MPS-1250 at quad-density.
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if I had to guess, which most of us can only do in this case, I would have to guess that it was one or more of the following
1. Save money on the composite out, per unit that savings could add up
2. Push people to buy new monitors instead of hook up to existing Commodore 8 bit composite monitors or TVs which makes more money
3. those who still want color composite buy the A520 which again makes more money.
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We're talking about Commodore, so almost certainly this...
1. It saved a few cents of production cost per machine,
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The A500 and the A2000 were designed and build two totally separate teams, they probably didn't even know about each other.
They did know about each other, in fact Dave Haynie said he watched what the 500 team did (which he originally was put on) and copied a lot of it for the 2000 in his talk at VCFE 9.1. At least, the American designed one. Not the German designed one that it replaced.
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Back on those days, if you will going to buy any Amiga, was rare if you not buy a C= 1084 Color Monitor. If you haven't the C= 1084 monitor so you was loosing a high percentaje of the Amiga System.
Then, how said above i thinks thats was just any cheap alternative for those humbles and strange Amiga buyers, who not bought the C=1084 color monitor to apreciate all the Amiga power.
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Oh yes, i forgot...
This Video Composite Amiga Output, was used working on some professional Video uses.