Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Monochrome Nostagia

Today's monitors and LCD screens have vibrant colors. That is so unimaginable in the old days when there was just monochrome monitors that was either green or amber. I would not have imagined being able to watch a full color movie on a computer today back in the 1980s.

I played with the Commodore PET, Commodore 64, the IBM PC, Tandy 1000, and the Sperry. Thanks toChicago Public Schools for providing those toys!

Ok, the Tandy had color monitors (though only a CGA with 16 colors). But some older 8088s, 286s or Sperry didn't.

A while ago I discovered this fun DOS command. COLOR.

Try "color 0a" at the DOS prompt to simulate a monochrome monitor. The parameters of COLOR are 2 hex digits, meaning 16 colors, like those for a very old CGA monitor. Have fun.

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