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12.4) What kinds of monitors can I use with my Atari?

In general, you either need a Composite Video monitor, or a standard TV.

Television:
You'll need a video cable (not detachable on the 400/800), and a TV Switch
Box. Used with VHF Channel 2 or 3.

Monitor:
The 8-bit Atari produces a color Composite Video signal, plus
separate chroma (color) and luminance (brightness) signals which the best
composite video monitors can take advantage of.  Popular examples of such
monitors include the Commodore 1702 and 1804 (and many others).

The pinout of the Monitor port is in the pinout section of this FAQ list.

Gotcha's:

-the 400 and North American 600XL lack a monitor port entirely.  They can only
be used with a TV.

-the 800XL lacks separate chroma/lumi (can be added via hardware modification)

-the XE Game System provides an RCA-style jack in place of the Monitor port;
 so it provides Composite Video but lacks separate chroma\lumi signals

-the XEP80 Interface Module produces a monochrome Composite Video signal via
 an RCA-style jack.  This higher-resolution signal produces crisp, clear 80
 column text on 80-column monochrome composite video monitors.

mailto:buesch@srv.net (Brent Buescher, Jr.) writes:

"The best monitor for an Atari 8 bit that is readily available today would be
a television with an S-video input---these tend to be large and high-quality,
so the s-video input is the deciding factor there. You'll have to build the
cable yourself, and if you have an XL you'll want to do the Super Video
upgrade that Ben Poehland published in Atari Classics a few years ago---this
puts the chroma signal back on the pin that it should be and cleans up the
video signal enormously. It's really more of a fix than an upgrade.

I use a commodore split-video monitor.  They work great and are
cheap-to-reasonable when you can find them."

Jerry Jessop, mailto:jjessop1@home.com explains why French Ataris produce
fewer colors:

"I will tell you why it only has monochrome out, because it's SECAM and a
SECAM GTIA was never produced. The PAL GTIA is used in France and the Lum
outputs are run into an onboard encoder to produce a "psudo" color depending
on the Luminance output, composite only. This is why a SECAM VCS or 800 has
nowhere near the same number of colors (16) availible as a PAL or NTSC unit
(256).

The FGTIA was never completed as the market size did not warrant the expense.
The largest SECAM market is not France but the Soviet Union (former) and in
80-84 sales of these items there were not possible."