Why did Commodore put monochrome video output on A500/A2000?

[ChaosLord]

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.

[Britelite]

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

[bbond007]

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...

[djos]

Im gonna fire up my 13" mono screen on one of my 500's now, I wanna see what it looks like!

[Jope]

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.

[djos]

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!

[Ral-Clan]

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.

[prowler]

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

[_ThEcRoW]

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?

[xpect]

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.

[psxphill]

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.

[Mr_Vanos]

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.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Sorry, but you won't get 4096 shades of gray out of the composite output

Why not?

[psxphill]

Why not?

You wouldn't necessarily get 4096 different grayscales because some of the 4096 different colours could have exactly the same intensity.

[Ral-Clan]

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?

[Ral-Clan]

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).