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From: hadeishi@husc7.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac II
Message-ID: <1338@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Mar-87 17:55:02 EST
Article-I.D.: husc6.1338
Posted: Tue Mar  3 17:55:02 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Mar-87 01:03:51 EST
References: <10231@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Sender: news@husc6.UUCP
Reply-To: hadeishi@husc7.UUCP (Mitsuharu Hadeishi)
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 18
Summary: Software is 16-bit, hardware is 8-bit

Re: Mac having 15- versus 8- bit color

	As far as I know (haven't seen the spec sheets from Apple yet)
the software of the color workstation will support up to a full 16-bits
per R, G, B.  The software queries the display device by sending it
a 16-bit RGB value (16-bits per R, G, and B) and getting back the
"closest" value the display device can handle.  (I believe Apple
likes to call color display devices "color monitors".  That is,
the "color monitor" has extra logic to communicate with the host
machine and tell it the closest 16-bit RGB value it can produce
for a requested value.  Sounds like more than just a color monitor
to me, but that's what they call it, apparently . . .)  So software
written today should be able to handle the full 16-bits of RGB,
but the actual card can only support 8-bits (for a total of
2^(8*3) or about 4 million colors).  The card can display 8 bit planes,
for 256 colors per display.

			-Mitsu