II Something
by Clark Hugh Stiles
March 13, 2002 

I can't believe I got so far behind in these columns, even though I've been making them short and haven't been putting in much Apple II content. 
The Monitor Project 
I have a Hitachi TV from 1985. For some years now I'd intended to get an adapter cable to run the GS off the RGB port on the TV, but hadn't had much success finding someone to do it, or even to tell me how to do it. My main question was whether to combine the horizontal and vertical sync lines from the monitor to the composite sync of the computer. 

There are a couple of GS monitors around here. Actually, there may be only one. The other is on loan to the great computer museum my dad runs at their house. 
Table I 
Pin GS Cable GS Port Hitachi Port DIN 8 (existing cable) 
1 Red video GND Red video GND Intensity Black GND 
2 Red comp video Red comp video Red Green 
3 Composite Sync Composite Sync Green Yellow 
4   Blue Red 
5 Green comp video Green comp video GND Black GND 
6 Green video GND Green Video GND GND Black GND 
7  -5v Horz Sync sm Black 
8  +12v Vert Sync Blue 
9 Blue comp video Blue comp video 
10 
11  Sound 
12  NTSC comp video 
13 Blue video GND Blue video GND 
14 
15 
I think I need to hook the R,G,B comp outputs of the GS to the R,G,B inputs of the Hitachi port (2 to 2,5 to 3,9 to 4), hook all the grounds together (1/6/13 to 5/6) and composite sync output to H and V sync input (3 to 7/8). 
I don't know what to do with the Intensity input on pin 1 of the Hitachi. 

A few months ago the Hitachi lost the top third of its picture. I plan to have this fixed because I like the TV, but have since got a new TV. It's just a 20 inch, which was the smallest one I could find with an S-video connector. Since the analog TV broadcast signal dies in four or five years, and hundreds of millions of TVs don't have a digital broadcast capability, there's no doubt that magic converter boxes will be available and the better ones will offer S-video connections. 

So, is there an adapter for the conversion of the GS video output to S-video? 

II Infinitum! 