Inspired by an offhand comment Alice (@foone) made earlier today: the CGA iceberg
@curtmack @foone WTH is THE BROWN CIRCUIT?
@megatronicthronbanks There's a special circuit on IBM CGA cards so they render low-intensity yellow as brown. Some clones lacked this circuit, so they would display a darker yellow instead. Also, since RGBI was a digital signal, RGBI monitors needed their own brown circuit.

@curtmack @megatronicthronbanks

this might blow your mind but the brown circuit is not on the CGA card.

it's in the monitor

@gloriouscow I knew there was *a* brown circuit in the monitor, but wouldn't the card have its own brown circuit for composite out? Or does composite out just use dark yellow?

@curtmack It was only added to the digital RGBI 5153 monitor, so you wouldn't see brown in composite mode.

dark yellow kind of looks like pea soup or baby vomit

@gloriouscow

Sooo many compromises, because hardware was expensive and things weren't that miniaturised yet!