"Lead me not to temptation - I can find it for myself."
ST NEWS HARDWARE REVIEW: VIEWTEK GREYSCALE MONITOR
by Kev "Taffy" Davies
It's time to purchase that one item that will increase your
pleasure beyond explanation. No I don't mean you have to take a
visit to that seedy little back street shop with the blacked-out
windows, or buy soft toilet paper. Nope! The time has come for
you to buy your first monitor, but what if your wallet doesn't
stretch in the same way as your pants elastic. Well, help is at
hand with the Viewtek Greyscale Monitor.
When this first arrives and you get it out of the box (easier
said than done; the little sod is packed in there tighter than
tight) the first thing that grabs your attention is the monitor
lead. Not that it is visually pleasing or a marvel of modern
engineering. No, what makes you notice it is that it protrudes
from the front of the monitor rather than the back, a design idea
that is right up there with the Atari joystick ports. But apart
from that the monitor looks good with the volume control, and
contrast set on little thumb wheels below the screen and the
vertical hold tucked neatly in the back. The construction of the
monitor feels solid yet unfortunately in a plasticy kinda way.
Hooking it up to your Atari is a doddle. Connect the adapter
lead (STfm/STe) to the monitor lead plug that plugs into your
Atari and away you go.
The display you get is as sharp and crisp as a packet full of
razorblades and the stereo speakers are of moderately high
quality, however there is a "Boeing 747" (flies are so small and
boring) in the ointment: It can't handle high resolution, and
they attempt to overcome this problem by supplying a good PD
emulator program "Sebra". This does the job well but it is still
"Sebra", a program which 80% of the ST owning public own or use.
The other 20% probably own it but use high resolution monitors
instead.
Finally for sixty pounds in total you get a useable monitor, but
remember: "You get what you pay for."
Disclaimer: In this article the reference to Boeing does not
imply that their products are alike to small irritating insects.
Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.