Apple IIgs - Manual (Page 40)

Page 40 of 84 II gs
Printed: Thursday, July 25, 2002 12:14:50 PM
easier on the eyes; others, that a green display is easier to read. Some people prefer black
and white because it more closely resembles a typewritten page. The best choice is the one that
looks best to you.
Color monitors are ideal for computer graphics and for displaying business charts and graphs.
Until recently, they didn't have good enough resolution to display text, so people who wanted a
computer to do both text and graphics had to get two monitors or settle for monochrome
graphics. Today you can get color monitors capable of displaying both graphics and clear text.
Color monitors come in two varieties: RGB (Red Green Blue) and NTSC (National Television
Standards Committee). NTSC monitors are less expensive than RGB monitors, and the quality of
the display reflects the difference in price. If you use color applications regu-larly or for
important presentations, it's probably worth investing in an RGB monitor.
RGB monitors can display color text clearly. NTSC monitors usually switch into black-and-white
mode for displaying text. (If they didn't, you'd see a color fringe around the characters.)
Important There are two kinds of RGB monitors: analog and digital. The Apple IIgs supports
analog RGB monitors. RGB color monitors de-signed to be connected to the AUX. CONNECTOR slot in
the Apple IIe are digital RGB monitors and cannot be connected to the RGB port on the Apple
IIgs. Be sure the monitor you get is compatible with the Apple IIgs.
Using a Television as a Display Device
You can use a standard television set (with a device called an RF modulator) as a display
device for the Apple IIgs, but you're limited to a 40-column display. While 40 characters per
line is fine for some applications (games and educational applications), most people find it
restrictive for business letters or electronic spreadsheets. And many business applications
require an 80-column display.
Disk Drives
Disk drives record information on disks and retrieve information from disks. Sometimes the
information is an application; some-times, a document. It's all the same to the disk drive.
3.5-Inch Disk Drives
The most popular type of disk drive for the Apple IIgs is the 3.5-inch drive. It uses 3.5-inch
disks that each hold 800K (about 400 pages) of text. You can attach one or two of them to your
computer. The advantage of having two drives is that you can use one for the application
program disk and one for the document disk. (If you have only one drive, you have to trade your
application disk for your document disk when you want to save your document.)
5.25-Inch Disk Drives
You can also use 5.25-inch drives with the Apple IIgs (or a combi-nation of 3.5-inch and
5.25-inch drives). The 5.25-inch drive uses 5.25-inch disks that each hold 143K (about 70
pages) of text. The 5.25-inch drive was the original disk drive (and for many years the only
type of disk drive) available for the Apple II. Consequently, lots of people own them, and
thousands of applications are still sold on 5.25-inch disks. The 5.25-inch drive stores less
information per disk, accesses that information a little more slowly, and takes up more desk
space than the 3.5-inch drive, but it's 100% compatible with the Apple IIgs, and it makes sense
to use one if you already have a library of 5.25-inch application program disks or you share
disks with others using 5.25-inch drives.
Hard Disk Drives