Amiga 1200 video output problem. Please help!

[spaceman88]

Composite is monochrome output on the Amigas, not sure why. You need to connect it to the RF out/TV out.

No, the 1200 has colour output on composite. It's probably a PAL 1200 on a NTSC  monitor, some monitors will "roll" others will have no colour others won't show anything at all if you have a PAL/NTSC mismatch. You could try holding down both mouse buttons when you turn it on and go into the boot menu and select "NTSC" and boot. Not 100% sure that will fix your problem, but it's worth a shot.
Len

[spaceman88]

I think what I did was plug the composite out of the Amiga 2000 to the RF in on the TV and got a B&W image. Must be something unique to Amiga and few consoles.

Yes, the composite output of 2000's and 500's is B&W, the 1200 ( and I think 600) is colour.

[spaceman88]

@spaceman88

booting an Amiga and changing in the early boot menu (by holding both mouse buttons) from PAL to NTSC or vice versa, will not help. Let me give you the long explanation:

Video signals for television in North America are different from
those used in Europe. North America uses the NTSC system, and most
European countries, as well as many others, use the PAL system. Since
the Amiga uses video-based screen modes, they are made for the different
modes according to the country.

The main differences between the two modes are resolution and frame
rate. NTSC displays have 200 lines vertically, or 400 in interlaced
mode, and displays 29.97 frames (59.94 fields) per second (most people
round it off to 30). PAL uses 256, or 512 interlaced, with a frame rate
of 25 frames per second (50 fields).

If you have the ECS chipset, you can switch your display between the two
modes using the Screenmode Prefs program, in the Prefs drawer. You can
also switch from the default screenmode at boot time with the Early
Startup Menu, which you access by holding down both mouse buttons when
booting.

Some programs, most notably games, which are not fully OS-compliant,
only support one of the modes. Many of the games on Aminet, for example,
are PAL only. If you have an NTSC machine, you will be able to use most,
but not all, of them as long as you have the ECS or AGA chipset and at
least 1 MB of CHIP RAM.

This method of switching to NTSC or PAL modes is only used to make
software work which is designed for the other standard. It's not
sufficient if you want to use an Amiga with hardware video equipment
from the other standard. For this purpose, you would have to rework your
Amiga's motherboard to a high degree, e.g. change the main crystal and
the modulator.

Hope it helps you to understand it!

Hi,
I had my doubts whether switching modes would help, but it's so easy to do I thought it would be worth a try. I use scala MM300 from a CU Amiga cover disk, which I have to boot into PAL mode to run. My TV will not display the screen until I select "NTSC output" and hit "Run" in Scala, so it may not be a true PAL signal but something changes at the composite output.
Len