They are colour. In this context, B&W means "blue and white", as in the
G3 tower (and monitor) colour scheme. Pinstripy if I recall correctly.
On Wed, 4 Apr 2018, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
I never thought I'd see B&W in the context of displays mean anything other
than black & white, but of course in a discussion about Apple hardware,
anything is possible :-)
It is sometimes surprising where terminology becomes ambiguous.
At the college, with a few dozen 5150s, we used CGA cards with cheap B&W
composite monitors, including some that were marketed for CCTV. THAT
permitted us to afford substantially more machines than either IBM CGA
color monitors OR IBM "monochrome" card and monitor. That was before the
aftermarket reached full saturation.
But, when shopping for cheap composite monitors, when you asked about B&W
monitors, you would often get told that they had none. because what they
had were green or amber phosphor.
If you asked for monochrome, then they started in with monitors compatible
with the IBM MDP/MDA or Hercules cards.
What is the minimum phrase that will unambiguously (or minimum ambiguity)
specify B&W (of any color of phosphor) with composite input?
YES, the IBM monochrome monitor, or later after-market with Hercules
compatible cards, IS a much better image. But, for running a text editor
and a compiler, the choice was between 15 computers with CGA color, 20
with IBM monochrome, or 30 with CGA and cheap composite monitor. Our
priority was to try to have almost enough machines for the number of
students. And contrary to demands from SOME instructors, you do NOT need
color to learn to use WordPervert, Lotus, or programming tools. Later,
when we were finally using generic 386SX machines, we had an instructor
who was teaching a course on Unix, who insisted that all the machines had
to have VGA. Again - enough minimal machines for everybody, or half
enough machines with fancy preferred hardware?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred [email protected]
