Universal

[Famicoman]

I just hooked my Atari 65XE to an old Apple Monitor using a Commodore cable. Are there any othe shared things like this, and why make the ports universal? Its not like is is now.

[danwinslow]

? I don't think I understand the question.

[+Mitch]

I just hooked my Atari 65XE to an old Apple Monitor using a Commodore cable. Are there any othe shared things like this, and why make the ports universal? Its not like is is now.

876129[/snapback]

 

The reason it works on the Apple monitor is because they both are using standard composite video, the same as you have on all modern TVs.

As far as the cable, the fact that Atari, Commodore and SEGA all used DIN connectors for their monitor ports is more coincidence than anything else, it was a common connector at the time. The pinouts are all different but because they all have standard RCA jacks on the other end you can pretty much mix and match. You just have to figure out which RCA jack goes where since the colors are all wrong.

 

Mitch

[Famicoman]

Oh, ok. That would be wierd to use it on the Genesis though.

[Fröhn]

The reason it works on the Apple monitor is because they both are using standard composite video, the same as you have on all modern TVs.

As far as the cable, the fact that Atari, Commodore and SEGA all used DIN connectors for their monitor ports is more coincidence than anything else, it was a common connector at the time. The pinouts are all different but because they all have standard RCA jacks on the other end you can pretty much mix and match. You just have to figure out which RCA jack goes where since the colors are all wrong.

It's not that much coincidence... Atari and Commodore used the same pinouts on AV and Joystick ports. (Except that Commodore extended the 5 pin DIN AV to 8 pin DIN AV later to have Y/C aswell... you can plug a 5 pin cable to an 8 pin port without problems)