Electronic video display unit that uses a cathode ray tube to generate text, graphics and imagery. It looks much like a normal TV set; however, the monitor has a much higher degree of resolution.
(executive system) (operating system) (supervisory system) A general computer program which keeps track of what is being processes and what programs are in use, providing for the efficient control of the computer's facilities.
The person responsible for overseeing the operation of automatic equipment.
Terms associated with Monitor include:
MDA: Monochrome Display Adapter, introduced in 1981 by IBM with the original PC, offered 720-by-348-pixel resolution, a fixed 9-by-14-dot character cell, 80 columns ad 18KHz operation. Strictly for word processing, MDA supported no color, so IBM presented the world with...
CGA: Color Graphics Adapter, which provided 320-by-200-pixel resolution for color or 640-by-200-pixel resolution in monochrome mode, at 15.75KHz. CGA offered four colors but text was fuzzy, with its 8-by-8-dot cell for text. CGA provided no readable text or high-resolution graphics, so Hercules stole the march on IBM and introduced...
Hercules adapter: With its 720-by-348-pixels, Hercules quickly became the standard for monochrome text and graphics on a standard monochrome monitor. But it supported no color, so IBM came back with...
EGA: Enhanced Graphics Adapter, which offered 640-by-350-pixels at 21.8KHz. While EGA took color one step beyond where it had been, it lost a step for text, with its 8-by-14-dot character cell. IBM's most recent entry into the color sweepstakes is...
VGA: Video Graphics Array, announced for the PS/2 last April, offers 640-by-480-pixels for color and 720-by-400 for monochrome text, at 30.5KHz. While VGA can display up to 256 colors from a palette of 262,144, it does so at the expense of resolution and image size.
Resolution: The total number of dots displayed vertically and horizontally. The smaller and more numerous the pixels, the crisper the screen images.
Dot pitch: The measurement of the distance between phosphors of like color (dots) on the display screen. The smaller the dot pitch, the closer the dots are to each other and the higher the resolution.
Refresh rate: The vertical scan frequency, or the number of times the screen is updated, measured in hertz.
Interlaced: To double the effective resolution of a display, some display adapters divide the screen into odd and even lines and paint the two sets of lines twice per video image. This eliminates the need for costly high-frequency scanning and video amplifier circuits. While economical, the circuitry in interlaced displays tends to be slow, causing flicker.
Non-interlaced: Every pixel is updated on every scan. It's more expensive to make non-interlaced displays because the circuitry is twice as fast, but the benefit to the user is that the image doesn't flicker.
In video, a television with composite video inputs. A computer monitor ususally accepts RGB rather than composite input.