A deep-dive into composite color artifacts on NTSC. How did early computers sometimes generate color without an actual color signal? The Apple 2 line is considered the pioneer of this technique, where ALL of its colors were generated using this odd glitch of the NTSC standard. But color artifacts were exploited even earlier. Today we explore NTSC signals, color generation (both the proper way, and this odd "artifact" way), how artifacting was exposed by the hardware to early software developers, and the history of how early computers adopted this technique, including Home Pong, the Atari 8-bit computers, the entire Apple 2 line (other than the gs), the IBM PC CGA graphics card, and the TRS-80 Color Computer. Also, what's up with the color swapping that happens on the CoCo 1 and 2 when you hit the restart button?
