Timeline for Why were early personal computer monitors not green?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 22, 2018 at 5:30 | comment | added | supercat | @BobJarvis: For machines with long-persistence phosphors I don't think it was a case of being careful. I think there was simply an assumption that the faint dark streaks would be less objectionable than slower display output. | |
| Jun 22, 2018 at 2:34 | comment | added | Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні | @supercat: that was a problem with memory-mapped displays on personal computers, which would suffer from displayus interruptus if programs weren't careful about when they wrote to display memory, but I don't recall seeing that on standalone terminals such as the DEC VT-100 & family. | |
| Jun 21, 2018 at 15:00 | comment | added | supercat | The Compaq portable computers used CGA-style display hardware, but displayed higher vertical resolution by reducing the vertical scan rate by almost half. The screens had a very long persistence green phosphor, however, so flicker wasn't noticeable at all. On the other hand, I suspect on many computers the issue wasn't so much "flicker" as update noise; many display designs would momentarily blank the screen any time the CPU was writing it. On a low-persistence screen, this would often cause random black streaks to appear superimposed on the screen. | |
| Jun 21, 2018 at 14:28 | comment | added | Robert Columbia | The ghosting due to high phosphor persistence that green screens were famous for is famously imitated in the "Matrix" movies. | |
| Jun 21, 2018 at 11:04 | history | answered | Bruce Abbott | CC BY-SA 4.0 |