At 10:16 pm 21/08/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>Adrian Vickers wrote:
>
>>Not this bad - my AH QL had a nice clear picture (despite the variety
>of
>>ropey TVs it was used on, including two ancient B/W jobs picked up
>for £1
>>each at a boot sale); I didn't get a monitor for it until about 1991
>or 2,
>>and a colour monitor a few years later (picked up from a QL show in
>Chester
>>- I *think* I bought it off Dilywn's stand...).
>Can't have been me, I didn't have a stand at that one, despite being
>the organiser. A family death meant that although I made a token
>appearance, I wasn't really up to it the event was handled by Mike
>Kenneally and some Club QL International members on the day to help me
>out in the circumstances, the only DJC presence being a few copies of
>Norman Dunbar's PE Idiot's Guide making an early appearance at £1 each
>for charity IIRC. Certainly no monitors from me, sorry!
Oh, must have been someone else then (ahem, stating the obvious). I do
recall you being somewhat distracted however.
>>This one is very flakey, with washed out colours and lots of
>interference.
>>OTOH, it may be because the QL is surrounded by CBM PETs... :)
>Some Spectrums had flakey pictures on some TV sets which could be
>improved by deliberately mistuning the TV slightly.
This one has two points where there's a half reasonable picture, but it
goes very fuzzy between them. I find this unusual, hence wondering if the
UHF modulator's getting a bit wobbly.
> The QL's TV
>picture output is not too bad on the whole, by comparison with some
>Spectra for example. The main problem with using a QL with a TV is
>that mode 4 csize 0,0 text is barely readable and most TV sets cannot
>display the full 512 pixel wide screen.
Yep, had that problem for a *long* time... I also discovered, having
written many a Basic program using B/W TV or green monitor, that when I
plugged the colour monitor in the colours I'd used were atrocious! Good B/W
contrast, but they looked terrible together...
>If you have a TV set with a SCART connector, it can make a pretty good
>monitor. Connection details were published in QL Toady some time ago.
That's a pretty good idea... I really ought to subscribe to QLT - whom
should I contact?
>
>CBM PETs??? I remember the name, but not the computer itself, is it
>from the VIC20 and C64 era?
>
PETs - 1977 to 198mumble. There's a whole scree of pictures at this website:
http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/
I currently have a 3016, an 8032 and an 8032-SK, soon to be complemented by
a 2001. The 8032 is 17.5"x19"x18" (w,d,h), the 3016 marginally smaller -
although to be fair they've all got built-in monitors. They also weigh a
ton! I've 2 dual 5.25" disk drives for them, each drive unit is about
14"x14"x7", and they weigh as much as computer+monitor...
Mind you, they were pretty advanced for their time; the 8032 was
top-of-the-range when the ZX80 was new, and the 8032-SK qualifies as one of
the most aesthetically pleasing computers ever made (although it would have
been even better had it been all-black with a Sinclair logo on it :)
Cheers!
Ade.
--
B-Racing: B where it's at :-)
http://www.b-racing.co.uk
