keith@utzoo.UUCP (Keith Jackson) (03/30/85)
I have bought a 12-inch monochrome monitor (green) that I am currently using with my TI 99/4A. The following information may not be of too much use to you since, as you can see, I am in Canada and the same equipment is probably not available from the same sales outlet in the U.S. In any event, the monitor I mentioned is made by Jutan International. I bought a separate cable (made by the same company) that was advertised to work with Commodore, Atari, Apple and TI machines. It had the 5-pronged DIN plug necessary for insertion in the TI 99/4A console and four leads with RCA jacks on the end. All I had to do was figure out which two of the four leads carried the video and audio signals. Since the monitor has no way to handle the audio signal (there's no speaker or amplifier), I don't use sound at the moment. I discovered which lead carried the audio signal by plugging the jacks one by one into the auxiliary jack on my stereo while running a program which con- tained music. The monitor and cable were bought at a store called Consumers' Distributing which I think is a Canadian chain so it won't help you too much to know this. Perhaps there are comparable discount stores where you can buy it. Oh, the price I paid was approx. $120 (monitor) and $15 (cable) CANADIAN. Considering the exchange rate, you should be able to get this for considerably less. Apparently, Radio Shack sells a cable with a DIN plug and four leads ending in female RCA plugs. There are other brands of monochrome monitor being advertised by the 99/4A National Assistance Group in Florida but I do not have a subscription to their service at the moment and have forgotten the names. I have seen ads in HOME COMPUTER MAGAZINE for Gorilla monochrome monitors so presumably they can be used with the TI-99/4A. For anyone who hasn't tried it, the display on the monitor screen is quite good as long as you don't mind not having colour and you adjust the brightness and contrast on the monitor to appropriate levels. With Extended Basic, there's a neat little routine which will allow you to switch the screen colour and character colours so that green letters appear on a black background even in the immediate mode. This is useful for typing in and editing programs because it produces an easily-read display. Type "FOR I=0 TO 14::CALL COLOR(I,16,1)::NEXT I::CALL SCREEN(2)::ACCEPT AT(1,1):A" When the cursor shifts to position 1,1 on the screen, press FCTN 4. The colours will remain reset as long as you do not produce a serious error condition or use RUN, PRINT, or CALL CLEAR in the immediate mode.