On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 11:22 AM, Lee Hart wrote:
I'm not sure how much resolution is "enough". 32, 40, 64, and 80 chars/line were all common. For a small screen, are the lower resolutions OK? The quality of TVs, monitors, and LCDs can limit the bandwidth as much as the video board.
Lee,
The old analog monitors were pushing hard at 80 chars but tended to be crisp at 64.
The trade is that at 64 chars most editors and apps were easy to live with but less
(Osborne at 50chars) it tended to really suck for a lot of aps and editors or program
development.
The Kaypro used decent monitor (Ball and friends) and at 80
chars looks very good.
The bigger issues is before the CTRC part it was mostly TTL and a lot of parts.
(scan, row and dot counters), plus rom for the character generators.? Graphics
adds even more.? Generally not much in the way of graphics in Z80 CP/M
applications.? Things important were the full set of attributes and cursor
controls.
The IBMPC was pretty much in step with what video was at that time it was
MDA to CGA that improved that and morphed into VGA and on. Two things
had to happen one was monitors especially color had to go up in resolution
and down in price.? Also memory had to become cheap.? The PC with graphics
was late 80 or later depending on the budget!? That was pushed by apple
as IBMPC didn't have a graphic GUI until windows 3 (yes there was 1 and 2
but they stank up the place).? I still have a? 1998 S7 video cards that did
640x480x8 colors the VGA standard.
One problem I've found with LCDs is the NTSC inputs are very picky as to timing or
the screen will be offset or have the wiggles and they want NTSC color timing!
Finding a RCA or sanyo/panasonic analog monitor is tough!? I have a ball I've
kept for some project as they are scarce and it takes three input Vsync, Hsync,
and Video and by jumper option any combined flavor of that up to NTSC mono.
One set of systems I have is the Visual 1050 system Z80 main cpu and 6502 for the?
video that does both bit graphics (320x240 mono) and character modes.? At the
time it was done that was 16K of Dram for the bitmap (about 2k for characters).
Again USB is easier to get PS2 is starting to get scarce.??
Over all computer video as we know it is a recent thing being less than
2 maybe stretching it 3 decades old.? ?Before that I was using a 21 inch
Trinitron and VAX/VMS DECwindows at 1024x1024 color on a
MIcroVAX-II/GPX.? That was the tail end of the 80s when the worstation
era? [1megapixel, 1MIPS]?and desktop or deskside was the ne plus ultra.
