Scor­pio News

Colour Display

Having used a monochrome Gemini system for many years, I felt that there would be little of no benefit in having s colour display as far as most programs are concerned. I have now changed my mind, I think! The reason for my hesitation is that whilst I am very impressed by different portions of the display in certain programs being in different colours, without seeing them in monochrome too I can’t definitely say that it is a major leap forward. I do, however, have the definite impression that it may be. How’s that for a definitive statement!

In Dave Hunt’s bit, elsewhere in this issue, he goes on about selecting a monitor with 0.26mm dot pitch. Well, according to the manual, my monitor has a 0.3lmm dot pitch, which doesn’t seem much bigger to me. And yet, looking at characters on his screen, end those on mine, mine are much chunkier. We didn’t get chance to plug his EGA into my monitor and vice versa, but I suspect that different EGAs must have slightly different character sets, and that Dave’s has got narrower ones. Which is better for long term use I obviously don’t know, but it looks to me that this is possibly yet another parameter to taken into account when choosing a system!

With Dave’s EGA and monitor he got a demo program. This displays various graphics screens. Running this on my system I noticed that on some of the screens there was a short line of pixels in the wrong colour, and that each time you ran the program it may appear in a slightly different place. This was not the case with Dave’s. I reported this too when I went beck to Elonex. They put a replacement EGA in my system, but it was still the same. They had another system there with a different EGA, and that didn’t show the fault. As I have not yet noticed this problem with any other software on my system, I just asked that they acknowledge that they have seen it, and if I ever have any funnies with anything else I’ll be straight beck to see them. Meanwhile I have decided to assume that the demo program was written very specifically for that specific EGA, and there’s some specific quirk that makes it do a slight funny on my specific type of EGA!

Finally, the display on my monitor is not quite square to the tube. It isn’t much out, but when I mentioned it to Elonex they said it would need pulling apart and the magnets, coils, etc adjusting. For the moment I think I’ll live with it as it is rather than risk what may happen once fiddling begins!

Summary

For A very reasonably priced system, to a very good specification. Well designed for easy maintenance. “Known” drive manufacturers (except 360K add-on by Copal?). Fairly good looks. Appears to be very “compatible”. Good feel (in my opinion) to keyboard. Very fast for the price.

Against Maybe I was unlucky. but apparent Quality Control let down on main board, key-switch/​reset switch assembly, missing screw, monitor alignment. Possible potential problem with EGA. Still won’t run at 10MHz, 0 wait states for more than a few minutes.

Conclusions

I think you pay your money and take your choice. You will certainly find it difficult to find the same specification for the same money (at the time of writing, anyway). And, of course, if you can live without colour the price is quite a bit less. Remember, however, that my machine did have to go back, although this may well not be typical. If you don’t live within easy reach of London this could be a problem, as all sales are direct, and so you can’t go to a local dealer.

If you are cost conscious and interested in an AT, I do think that this has to be on your list. and if you’re not ins rush, keep reading Scorpio News to see how I get on with it in the future.