My quest to see video output

Cory5412 said:

I'll admit, this discussion would've been shorter if someone had led with that. 

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I said it was impossible right up front, and then explained why. But when I looked for the tables on Gamba to post confirmation, for some reason I got side tracked. :-/

IIci DevNote

In addition to the existing NuBus video options, a new video solution
has been built in to the Macintosh IIci, supporting the Macintosh II 12”
B&W or 13” RGB and the 15” B&W Portrait monitors. The video signals
are generated by the Apple custom RAM-Based Video

IIsi DevNote:

In addition to the existing NuBus video options, a new video
solution has been built into the Macintosh IIsi computer, supporting
the Macintosh II 12-inch B&W, 12-inch and
13-inch RGB monitors and the 15-inch B&W portrait monitor.

Oddball, "flicker free" refresh rates all around and totally incompatible with standard VGA timings.

Wondering about the Macintosh II 12" B&W monitor supported by the IIci. Was it the Pizza Box Topper or was there an earlier Display with those specs??

Cory5412 said:

whether or not the IIci works with the older monochrome 12" 512x384 display

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EveryMac claims that both 4x3 Mono displays from Apple ran at 640x480@67hz, is that incorrect? I can't find any references to a 512x384 Monochrome Apple monitor, only the color one.

Not so sure about the LC and VGA.

LCII DevNote:

Video: built-in video support for Apple 12-inch and 13-inch RGB monitors. A
color look-up table (CLUT) allows the selection of 256 colors from a palette of 16
million colors. The video interface is RS-343. An internal video connector
facilitates development of video overlay cards for the expansion slot.
Video data is stored in a video RAM (VRAM) SIMM. The Macintosh LC II can be
configured with either 256 KB or 512 KB of VRAM. With 256 KB of VRAM
installed, the following video modes are supported: 512 x 384 monochrome or 8-bit
color on the 12-inch RGB monitor, and 640 x 480 monochrome or 4-bit color on the
13-inch RGB monitor. With 512 KB of VRAM installed, the Macintosh LC II also
supports 16-bit color on the 12-inch monitor and 8-bit color on the 13-inch monitor.

VGA pops up in the DeveNote of the far more capable LCIII.

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

Wondering about the Macintosh II 12" B&W monitor supported by the IIci. Was it the Pizza Box Topper or was there an earlier Display with those specs??

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Here's Apple's specs for both. First the "High Res", circa 1989:

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP417?locale=en_US

And the "Topper", as you call it:

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP420?locale=en_US

Both list only a single video mode:

Mode


Resolution


Vert
Rate


Horiz
Rate


DPI


Macintosh


640x480


66.7 Hz


35 kHz


76

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Now I'm starting to wonder if anyone has a IIci and one of the 12" RGBs lying around so they can check and see if the IIci *actually* really does support the 512x384 mode.

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

Not so sure about the LC and VGA.

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Gamba's giant chart of monitor support shows the LC working with the "Basic Color" Monitor, which means unless he was wrong about that it supports VGA. That the LC was the first of the breed to support "plain" PC monitors is mentioned a lot of other places, I suspect if you go through the MacWorld (etc) archives contemporary to its introduction you'll see VGA support called out as a semi-undocumented feature that was new to it.

I've got 'em, but it's not worth checking, everymac screws up significantly less than LEM, but they still get a lot wrong. Go by the info I quoted from the DevNotes.

LCII DevNote doesn't appear to name the video controller at first glance. IIci and IIsi both used RBV and Apple didn't step up their game until the Sonora Video Controller of the LCIII began supporting VGA output.

From the April 1991 issue of MacWorld:

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

Go by the info I quoted from the DevNotes.

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Again, seriously, this support for VGA monitors was kind of a big deal when it was revealed. For whatever reason Apple *was* apparently coy about it for a while, that probably explains why the DevNote doesn't mention it.

And you should know by now that Apple regularly omits a *lot* of information from those DevNotes.

Also, as an aside, the MacWorld article on the introduction of the LC confirms that, yes, for whatever reason the 12" Mono monitor was 640x480 and the 12" color was 512x384, apparently when asked Apple gave this really strange reply that according to some feedback people liked lower resolutions when the monitor was in color. The magazine's editors didn't seem inclined to buy it.

That statement was specific to your musings about 12" RGB Za'Topper compatibility with the much earlier IIci. When it comes to VGA on which LC I'm agnostic, I didn't go into any depth in the DevNote, just posted the same "supported monitors" listing I'd done for the Vampire Video II generation.

edit: I'd imagine the low resolution might have had something to do with how color worked with the IIe card?

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

That statement was specific to your musings about 12" RGB Za'Topper compatibility with the much earlier IIci.

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Which statement, the one that specifically cast doubt on the LC being capable of running VGA-spec monitors, IE:

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

Not so sure about the LC and VGA...

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All evidence points to it being true, so I'm not sure why you'd think there's a reason to be agnostic about it. (Unless you want to invoke some wide-scale "Mandela Effect" sort of collective hallucination/universe shifting.)
 

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

I've got 'em, but it's not worth checking, everymac screws up significantly less than LEM, but they still get a lot wrong. Go by the info I quoted from the DevNotes.

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I was talking about having a IIci and the 12" RGB on hand, which you were wondering might work together. For that I'd go by the 'Notes.

Agnostic has the wrong connotations, wasn't talking about belief or disbelief, was just trying to say I don't give a rodent's rump about which LC started the trend. [] Though you bring up an interesting point, why wouldn't Apple specifically mention VGA support in a DevNote?

I'll have to look again, on a quick look around, it appears I was in fact thinking of the Apple High Resolution Monochrome Monitor, which is shown here: 

from http://www.vectronicscollections.org/gallery/ads/macintosh/0046.php

I'll poke around more. 

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

talking about having a IIci and the 12" RGB on hand, which you were wondering might work together. For that I'd go by the 'Notes

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The only reason I have to doubt the tech note is the claim the IIci works with that oddball monitor is repeated in a number of supposedly reputable sources. But in the real world that would be a really strange combination, so for *that* I'm open to the idea that its alleged support is the result of a game of telephone. Testing would answer that definitively.

But when it comes to LC monitor support, no, it supports VGA.

I'm wondering about the resolution of the LC 12" RGB and popularity. While it wasn't an education specific model like the later Molars and eMacs, the LC was very much designed around the IIe Card to ease the Apple II to Macintosh transition for K-12. At what resolution did the large base of Apple II ed titles and games run in color? If less than 640x480 and Apple tested in K-12 that context might handily explain the MacWorld statement. Found out recently that IIe/Mac modes were an either/or proposition at startup when I'd though all along that the IIe Card ran inside the Mac environment. Starting up in a color resolution not suited to lower res(?) IIe educational titles would be a bad thing TM.

edit: Got it about the VGA thing. :approve: I'm all but certain Cory just hit the nail on the head about the earlier 12" display being the one supported by the IIci. For the RBV ASIC (vampire video limited) IIci and IIsi, VGA ain't never gonna happen.

The Apple IIe card ran most Apple displays at a slightly different resolution, I believe it was 560x384 based on what mediawiki says, but I've also heard tell of a resolution at approximately 700x500. Most of Apple's own displays "supported" or could be coaxed into this resolution by the LC and a couple other systems.

I don't know how popular the 12" color pizzabox display was outside of the LC series. I odn't even feel like the 12" monochrome display from the Mac II era was very popular, I've never seen one in person.

And, thinking about it, I'm pretty certain that the 12" monochrome display as I found it on vectronics is the one.

Trash80toHP_Mini said:

Found out recently that IIe/Mac modes were an either/or proposition at startup when I'd though all along that the IIe Card ran inside the Mac environment. Starting up in a color resolution not suited to lower res(?) IIe educational titles would be a bad thing TM.

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I don't know if I follow 100% here but in my experience you can hop in and out of the IIe card's environment, it doesn't take over the entire computer. It's like the PC compatibility card on later Macs in that particular sense.

It is perhaps true that you have to select what you want to use when you start the IIe card up, but you shouldn't have to reboot the entire Mac to make that change.

A quick look at LEM says otherwise about the startup thing and it makes a world of sense as regards the 12" RGB. LEM says it supports 560x384 when booted into IIe mode. As I said, that would handily explain the native resolution choice and its popularity in testing.

http://lowendmac.com/2018/apple-iie-card-a-tool-for-getting-macs-into-schools/

LEM: stew over, rinse, add grain of salt.

"no access to the Mac until you rstart, or press the keyboard command that lets you switch back to the Mac environment" -- which, subsequently, gives you access to the Mac environment.

Obviously the original LC isn't exactly a multitasking powerhouse but this description makes me think I'm correct - you can switch in and out of the IIe card the same way you would a PC card.

The thing you can't do is run it windowed. That's different from the suggestion that, like, the Mac environment is somehow off or inaccessible entirely while you're running the IIe.

Vectronics has a good article as well: http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/archives/vintage/0002.php

(reading the Vectronics article, it actually looks like you ahve to quite IIe to get back to the Mac, which is different from what I thought but still not an "either-or situation" and "choose at startup.".) In most situations, I imagine (since the real market here was K12) that the Mac would likely not have been doing much, and ProDOS software would launch quite quickly if you ran it off the Mac's internal hard disk partitioned with a prodos volume, so I don't know if needing to start/stop the IIe emulation is really that bad, all things considered.

I'm not stuck on the operation model I'd seen earlier, not even sure IIRC. I just thought I'd mention it and then got more curious about it and followed up a bit. Further down in the LEM article it says the Mac is running in the background for video support etc. and somehow handles the controls for the IIe card, probably a blank windowed feed like how the TV-Tuner display piped directly into the Mac environment as Video was displayed in a "blank" window that shows up in bluescreen on a screenshot.

I was curious about the CC and later on it says CC and CCII also supported pixel doubled IIe video output. Such flexibility could explain resolution choice for that platform and the "640x480 done the right way" for the CC @techknight has been playing with for application to the 12" RGB.

We're a bot far out on a tangential orbit, but this is interesting!

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The IIe Card Takes Over


And that brings up an important point: When the IIe Card is running, you have no access to the Mac OS until you restart the computer or press Option, Escape, and the Apple/Splat/Command key simultaneously. The Mac is busy behind the scenes handling graphics and sound and other things the IIe Card needs to do its magic. (Control-Apple-Escape will open the IIe Option Panel.)

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I'm a bit rusty on the KBD shortcut list: is this particular combination a common Mac shortcut or a macro specific to the IIe/LC environment? If the latter, it might be a "feather touch" reboot avoiding POST check of a "Soft" reboot?