Thread

SE 3-bit Colour?

68kMLA Peripherals 9 posts Apr 2, 2008 to Apr 2, 2008

#1 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 04:46 68kMLA

I've heard rumours that the SE can utilize 3-bit colour (not on the internal display, of course), does anyone know if this is true or not and if so, what equipment I'd need to get it to output this colour to a monitor of some sort (internal or external)?

#2 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 04:55 68kMLA

There were external video adapters that had various capabilities. The capabilities of them are based on the adapter, not on the SE. Although the SE does not have Color QuickDraw built-in, so the card would have to do something to bypass that. (For example, QuickTime will not run on an SE.)

For example, the RasterOps ColorVue SE supported 8-bit video.

#3 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 13:55 68kMLA

3-bit colour sounds a tad nonsensical, considering computers think in powers of 2. I've seen 1 bit (B&W), 2 bit (4 colours), 4 bit (16), 8 bit (256), 16 (thousands) and 32 (millions) but never 3

#4 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 16:45 68kMLA

3-bit colour sounds a tad nonsensical, considering computers think in powers of 2. I've seen 1 bit (B&W), 2 bit (4 colours), 4 bit (16), 8 bit (256), 16 (thousands) and 32 (millions) but never 3

Computers "think" in binary...

The Apple II had a 3-bit colour mode (hi-res) with 8 colours (two of which were duplicates), so it's far from non-sensical. 3-bit colour on an SE sounds like a clever hack to make the most of scarce resources.

FWIW, Apple is currently being sued over their 6x6x6-bit iMac display (262,144 colours) which they tried to pass of as "millions" of colours, so as you can see there are no hard rules concerning powers of 2.

#5 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 16:54 68kMLA

3-bit colour sounds a tad nonsensical, considering computers think in powers of 2. I've seen 1 bit (B&W), 2 bit (4 colours), 4 bit (16), 8 bit (256), 16 (thousands) and 32 (millions) but never 3

Well, there were 5-bit, 12-bit and 15-bit, that were both somewhat common, once upon a time. Although not in the Mac world.

#6 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 19:49 68kMLA

3-bit colour sounds a tad nonsensical, considering computers think in powers of 2. I've seen 1 bit (B&W), 2 bit (4 colours), 4 bit (16), 8 bit (256), 16 (thousands) and 32 (millions) but never 3

Click to expand...

Computers "think" in binary...

The Apple II had a 3-bit colour mode (hi-res) with 8 colours (two of which were duplicates), so it's far from non-sensical. 3-bit colour on an SE sounds like a clever hack to make the most of scarce resources.

FWIW, Apple is currently being sued over their 6x6x6-bit iMac display (262,144 colours) which they tried to pass of as "millions" of colours, so as you can see there are no hard rules concerning powers of 2.

That suit was settled recently. The two guys who sued couldn't get anyone to sign on to their class action.

#7 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 19:53 68kMLA

That suit was settled recently. The two guys who sued couldn't get anyone to sign on to their class action.

The suit that was settled related to PowerBooks. There is a new one for iMacs.

#8 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 19:55 68kMLA

The SE does indeed support 3 bit color. It was put there to support the color ribbon in the ImageWriter II. So you could print some thing in color but could not see them in color on the SE.

#9 Wed, 2 Apr 2008 - 20:56 68kMLA

3 bit SCSI and PDS video cards were also made for the Plus and SE. They were aimed at the business presentation and education markets. The MacPaint texture pallette was automaticaly mapped onto the colour pallette, so the hardware worked with a lot of software.