Apple II Europlus NTSC colour

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Apple II Europlus NTSC colour

I own an Apple II Europlus, but currently live in north america. I've been considering swapping the crystal and converting the machine to NTSC colour, and I just ordered the parts to do so. As the parts were being shipped, I finally got around to setting up an ADTPro disk (I've just used this machine for writing BASIC programs occasionally up until this point), and I used it to re-burn my diskette of oregon trail that was corrupted. In this process I noticed that I appear to be getting colour out of the machine already (inside the game). This isn't the hugest surprise, because the pervious owner was very technical and could've defintley made the mod, but that begs the question: Why didn't colour work in my copy of DOS 3.3 (with the colour demo) or in any of the asciiexpress games I've tried?

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Maybe the previous owner did

Maybe the previous owner did switch it to NTSC already. What frequency is written on the crystal right now? Also how does this part of the motherboard look? If it looks like mine below, it has been set to 60 Hz already. If only the crystal has been changed to 14.31818 MHz, while the motherboard is still set to 50 Hz and you are getting a color image, it means your monitor supports NTSC-50.

 

What monitor are you using? There was this rare Apple color monitor that would work with PAL 3.56, and hence produce a color image from an unmodified Europlus.

 

 
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I'm unsure if the crystal has been changed but looking at my board, neither of the bow tie shaped pads have any additional solder on them like on yours. I don't have any monitors that work with my Apple II so it's currently just plugged into the green/yellow av port of a bog standard lcd television. Can the stock PAL model output colour at all with the right display? My understanding that it was impossible no matter the display hardware, and was just fully disabled for PAL units because of the incompatibility. If my unit is producing colour, it must be the device has been modified somehow, right?

 

edit: I did just retry the dos 3.3 colour demo on this television and it's displaying properly with colour, I believe the black and white image was only with another display. I guess I'm glad the colour is working, but that still leaves the question of if my machine is outputting NTSC?

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Your motherboards used to be

Your motherboards used to be an NTSC board since it was manufactured. 

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That's definitely an NTSC

That's definitely an NTSC motherboard, which should pair fine with the majority of colour displays. An original Europlus looks like this: 

 

To your question - is the Europlus intrinsically capable of colour output?    The Europlus does have a fully intact colour circuit... BUT.... it's not usable with anything apart from Apple's own color composite displays (and then only the international variants)

Here's a New Zealand perspective on this:

 

Link  to topic

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Alright, I was suspecting

Alright, I was suspecting that I had an NTSC  board after looking at it while taking that photo (especially because of the trimmer for the colour), but wasn't entirely sure. That's not a huge surprise since the guy I got it from definitely has a collection and a swapped board isn't too bizarre. I guess the monochrome output was probably just an issue with how the display handles the signal since it's newer. I'll get an RCA to HDMI or VGA and see if that works for me. Thanks for the help identifying my system!

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NebulaBC wrote:Alright, I was
NebulaBC wrote:

Alright, I was suspecting that I had an NTSC  board...

 

Yep, definitely a native North American motherboard that has been brought home after all these years.  :)

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>Thanks for the help

>Thanks for the help identifying my system!

You'll be happier with an NTSC board I suspect! For a crisp picture over VGA or HDMI there are good modern solutions

Sleuth mode:  found pics showing Apple II Europlus native colour.  Comparable to NTSC Apple in every way (since no PAL colour conversion taking place):

 

 

As seen on ebay — an international-type Platinum Apple IIe with matching colour monitor (the kind that works with Europlus). The seller (in Europe) did nice demo videos which remain up on youtube....  real RARITY in the flesh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeCIcCJ14AE&list=PLQIJz5RJ0wR8L5Q03APZnVASjlVDfnp1j

 

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