DWALLI@MTUS5.BITNET (02/15/91)
Original message asked if the LC. IIsi, and IIci need video cards. The answer is... (drum roll, anyone?) Maybe. The built-in video circuitry on a IIsi and a IIci is the same. It will drive the Apple 12" monitors (B&W and color), the Apple 13" monitor, and the Mac Portrait display. There are also a lot of third-party monitors that will work with this port if you have the right cabling. Radius just introduced a version of the Pivot that will work with the built-in video on those two machines, as well. However, the built-in video on the IIsi and IIci will _not_ drive a large (19" +) monitor, grayscale or color. It just can't handle that many pixels. For those monitors, you need a separate card (like the Apple 8*24 that I use to drive my Mac 21" B&W). However, note that the on-board video on these machines uses some of the motherboard RAM to drive the monitor; if you use color a lot, you'll want to boost your main RAM to help your speed along. Note also that these things don't apply to the LC. The LC's video circuitry has separate VRAM, but it is only designed to support the 12" monitors and the 13" color. It will also drive a standard VGA monitor-- but only if you have a highly non-standard cable (to be produced by some enterprising, but still mythical, third-party vendor). You have to upgrade the VRAM with a special Apple VRAM SIMM to get the 13" color monitor up to 8-bit color, but that same SIMM will bump the 12" RGB up to 32,000 colors. Pretty nifty, huh? Hope this clears up some of the confusion. Don Walli Michigan Tech U All-around Apple geek "You put _what_ in the disk drive????"