Hi there (sorry for the long Subject),

yesterday I watched too much TV again in the evening, so I came across
the show "Akte whatthehell/04" on the Sat1-Channel (Germany). This
show wants to be some kind of investigative journalism, but it's not
at all better than other shows of that type.
In this show however, one guest was a man of the "Technikmuseum
Berlin" (which is quite famous), I think it was even the head of it or
something. They were taling about how fast computers have developed
from mansized things to small notebooks. To show the difference, they
had set up a C64 (even the one in the brwon case) showing "Pacman".
"Wow", I thought, "our beloved friend C64 receives some recognition on
TV, that's great!". But when the host of the show asked the guest "How
many colors does the C64 have?" (What kind of question is that
anyway..?), the "expert" from the museum said, obviously confused,
"Uhm, 64!".
Well, next time I'm around Berlin I'll have to pay a visit to this
museum, maybe I will find this 64-colour-C64. Selling this on ebay
ought to make me rich ;)

BTW, is there _any_ good TV-Show where the C64 has an appearance and
is described correct? I'd really like to see this...

David

P.S.: I mailed a 1571-Lever to one of you guys a couple of weeks ago,
but since my e-mail crashed and I dont's have his Adress and cant's
remember his name (Dan?), I'd like to aske here if the Lever has
arrived yet :)

david.mueller@post.rwth-aachen.de (David Mueller) writes:

> "How many colors does the C64 have?" [..] "Uhm, 64!".

How many "colours" can one get with various VIC tricks? I think I've 
seen 27, but is there a limit on how much you can trick the eye?

-- 
Anders Carlsson

"Anders Carlsson" <anders.carlsson@mds.mdh.se> wrote in message
news:k2gy8nyoxjl.fsf@legolas.mdh.se...
> david.mueller@post.rwth-aachen.de (David Mueller) writes:
>
> > "How many colors does the C64 have?" [..] "Uhm, 64!".
>
> How many "colours" can one get with various VIC tricks? I think I've
> seen 27,

Sorry, I can't answer this one, but.....

> but is there a limit on how much you can trick the eye?

There are certainly limits on the range of colours that the human eye can
see (ie, we can't see infrared or ultraviolet), but within these constraints
the eye can be tricked into seeing almost a limitless range of colours -
This is clearly demonstrated if/when you realise that a TV set (or computer
monitor) only has 3 coloured guns (red, green and blue) so any other colours
that you think you see aren't really there. ;-)

Cheers
Rod

I always get the idea when people talk about the history of computers the
C64 often is left out. The 80's was the 8 bit era and the C64 the most sold
8 bit ever.

-- 
Etienne von Wettingfeld                        [Slackware GNU/Linux]
Voice mail & Fax: +31 (84) 8835157      -//-      www.wettingfeld.nl

"Rod Gasson" <rod@videocam.net.au> writes:

>> but is there a limit on how much you can trick the eye?
> There are certainly limits on the range of colours that the human
> eye can see (ie, we can't see infrared or ultraviolet),

Ayep. I was thinking more along the lines "how many combinations
of the VIC-II official 16 colours can be distinguished as unique".

However, if Technikmuseum Berlin had kept a Plus/4 in their
collection, the intendent could truthfully have answered 127
to the question about its number of colours.

-- 
Anders Carlsson

In article <k2glljxkix9.fsf@legolas.mdh.se>,
Anders Carlsson  <anders.carlsson@mds.mdh.se> wrote:
>However, if Technikmuseum Berlin had kept a Plus/4 in their
>collection, the intendent could truthfully have answered 127
>to the question about its number of colours.

Isn't it 8*15+1 = 121 ?

-Pasi

-- 
"I for one have always found men to be sensible creatures who
 only need to be shown the wisest path once to choose it."
	-- Faile in The Wheel of Time:"The Shadow Rising"

"Anders Carlsson" <anders.carlsson@mds.mdh.se> wrote in message
news:k2glljxkix9.fsf@legolas.mdh.se...

<snip>
> However, if Technikmuseum Berlin had kept a Plus/4 in their
> collection, the intendent could truthfully have answered 127
> to the question about its number of colours.

But could he name them?  <g>

Cheers
Rod

albert@pikkukorppi.cs.tut.fi (Ojala Pasi 'Albert') writes:

>> Plus/4 [..] truthfully [..] 127 [..] colours.
> Isn't it 8*15+1 = 121 ?

Oops. You're right. Maybe I meant to include some fuzziness in 
"truthfully", although 127 is closer to 121 than 64 is to 16.

-- 
Anders Carlsson

David Mueller wrote:

> Well, next time I'm around Berlin I'll have to pay a visit to this
> museum, maybe I will find this 64-colour-C64. Selling this on ebay
> ought to make me rich ;)

There was a time, when I was younger, that such things would have pissed me
off too, but then you have to understand that expert  almost probably knows
about a lot of other machines and computers as well, it's easy to get
confused.

Anders Carlsson has a good experience on Commodore computers, and we know
it, but still he wrote a wrong number of colours the TED is able to display.
It happens.

> BTW, is there _any_ good TV-Show where the C64 has an appearance and
> is described correct? I'd really like to see this...

You should give a look at "The Computer Chronicles" archived episodes, I
think you would appreciate the quality of those early shows covering all
things Commodore.

Riccardo

Anders Carlsson <anders.carlsson@mds.mdh.se> writes:

>>"How many colors does the C64 have?" [..] "Uhm, 64!".

>How many "colours" can one get with various VIC tricks? I think I've 
>seen 27, but is there a limit on how much you can trick the eye?

I think it tends to be limited by colour luminance. In some of my
experiments, while you can theoretically cross any colour with any other, to
get a good smooth shade the relative brightness of each component colour
must be roughly the same or the flicker is unacceptable.

--
      Cameron Kaiser * ckaiser@floodgap.com * posting with a Commodore 128
                personal page: http://www.armory.com/%7Espectre/
  ** Computer Workshops: games, productivity software and more for C64/128! **
                  ** http://www.armory.com/%7Espectre/cwi/ **

On 12 May 2004 10:32:46 +0200, Anders Carlsson
<anders.carlsson@mds.mdh.se> wrote:

>david.mueller@post.rwth-aachen.de (David Mueller) writes:
>
>> "How many colors does the C64 have?" [..] "Uhm, 64!".
>
>How many "colours" can one get with various VIC tricks? I think I've 
>seen 27, but is there a limit on how much you can trick the eye?

Depends on who's head it happens to be in at the moment. :-)