Saturday, April 18, 2015

IIc PAL Colour




The PAL version of the Apple IIc only came out with monochrome output (at the RCA plug on the back panel and at the composite pin on the video expansion port). External circuitry is required to get colour. The external circuitry needs to interrogate the serial video signals on the video expansion port.

A number of adapters exist which use the serial video signals to produce a colour output.




The A2M4020 P/N 825-0830-A "PAL Modulator/Adapter" is not the adapter you want. This will generate PAL colour output but only from an NTSC IIc. Using a PAL IIc with this adapter will only produce a monochrome picture. Also the adapter only has RF (radio frequency) out so to display a picture it needs to be attached to a TV via the aerial connection (using an RCA to RF cable as pictured).




The easiest option is to get the A2M4023 "PAL Modulator/Adapter" if you can find one. The adapter has composite out as well as RF out. The problem is that these adapters are not easy to find.

If you fancy building a project yourself then check this out https://kaput.retroarchive.org/appleii/. It's a IIc video expansion port to component (YPbPr) adapter. It's a relatively simple circuit and should produce a good quality picture.

Video 7 produced a couple of adapters but these are extremely hard to get a hold of and I didn't have any to test so I don't know if they will process a PAL signal. The Video 7 Color Enhancer IIc produces digital RGB out while the Video 7 RGB converter produces analog RGB out.

There is another solution that I am playing with at the moment but that will be covered in the next few blog entries.

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