Monitor Guidelines

When setting up a monitor to work with your Amiga, follow these three general monitor guidelines:

1. Choose a monitor that suits your needs and is compatible with the Amiga monitor drivers. Check your monitor's documentation for the horizontal and vertical scan rate specifications and compare these to the scan rates listed starting on page 7-6.

Scan rates are listed in kilohertz (kHz). The numbers represent the speed at which the monitor updates the screen display. In general, higher scan rates produce a higher resolution screen with a more stable display.

• When you have determined the kind of monitor you will be using, choose a monitor driver that provides the display modes your particular monitor can display.

  Available monitor drivers are present in the Devs/Monitors drawer. Monitor drivers that are not in DEVS:Monitors can be moved three from the Storage drawer. Activate a monitor driver by double-clicking on it. See Chapter 4 for more information on making monitors available.

• When you know which monitor drivers you can use, you can select a display mode. The possible display modes are described and listed starting on page 7-7. Depending on your Amiga chip set, you can have a number of display modes from which to choose. Before settling on a particular display mode, try the different modes available for the monitor driver.

  Note that the activation of a driver and the selection of the display mode is accomplished in one step - when you choose a display mode in the ScreenMode Preferences editor.

  Some display modes within that monitor driver can appear distorted even though your monitor matches a particular driver. If you choose an incompatible display mode, you should try others until you find one that is clear. Leaving your monitor in an incompatible display mode can cause serious damage to it. If you save a setting before you are sure it is compatible and your display becomes distorted, you can recover using the procedure described on page 7-15. For more information on using the ScreenMode Preferences editor, see Chapter 5.