First post, by Xfing
Howdy folks!
In one of the discussions I had today on the Descent discord, the topic came up of my old, monochrome monitor that I used to play Descent on. After about an hour of searching, I was able to zero in on the model number - it's an SM-470.
What's interesting about this monitor (and what I'm after) is its distinct brand of monochrome, which is not equivalent to true grayscale that you can easily get on modern monitors. Here's what it looks like (this image is from some Czech auction site):
You'll notice that the grayscale is warmer and with a hint of brownish or perhaps greenish here - it's not pure, neutral gray. Moreover, this monitor rendered everything but the pale shades of blues, reds and purples as black. Unlike modern monochrome, which will just make them appropriately dark grays.
This was rather memorable when playing Descent for example, as the game's Martian levels consisting of lots of red walls were rendered as pitch black by that monitor.
My question is: does anyone have an idea what the color standard for that VGA black and white monitor could be? I've got a few hunches from a friend that it might be CsRGB or maybe YUV or YIQ, but the conversion of an image to CsRGB proved that it was not that at the very least.
And last but not least - whatever that display format is, can it be emulated somehow on modern monitors? Thanks!