30Video: New video board for SE/30 / IIsi / more?

[jmacz]

Perhaps you could put a matte screen protector on it to cut the glare?

As an added bonus, it ought to protect the lens from scratches, as I believe acrylic is fairly soft and gets scuffed and scraped up rather easily (proof: many used Power Mac G4s get their glossy (acrylic) plastics scuffed and scraped such that they end up not looking so good).

c

One of these days I will try adding an anti glare film or spray. But from my experience the few weeks I had it installed:

When video ON: initially great but after 10 minutes or so I got eye fatigue and a headache from the glare.

When video OFF: looks great in passing but if you stare into the lens straight on, it has a slight fishbowl effect which makes it look hypnotic.

I have packed it neatly away for now but again will try some film or something in the future. The only issue is I think I will only get one shot at a film. Reason being that if it doesn’t work, I think I will get scratches or swirl marks removing it so it will never be the same polished finish afterwards.

 

[CC_333]

I see.

I wonder if it could be lightly sandblasted or something?

c

 

[superseth]

I too would be interested in ordering a kit when they become available again

 

[zigzagjoe]

I too would be interested in ordering a kit when they become available again

They're back in stock - send me a PM

 

[zigzagjoe]

I'm aware of a bug preventing HC cards from running A/UX - seems like it would go to a white screen at boot. Accidentally found this while trying to test 16 bit support under A/UX. I've got a fix identified, which may also resolve another issue that was bothering me.

Due to the amount of changes since the last release I'm going to need to do a more in depth testing cycle before I can release this one. Feel free to contact me for a beta firmware however.

Does not affect 30Video / SI / GS cards.

 

[nickpunt]

Three weird questions I'm curious about:
1. Possiblilty of LVDS/eDP support to use another type of panel?
2. Possibility of shoving a slight larger screen (e.g. 10.5", 1600x1200) and cropping it to 8.4" size (1280x960 aka 640x480 pixel doubled)? I think physically it'd fit, so more a question of what kind of scaler logic would be necessary to take in the video output and enable that crop factor on screen. I have a very specific panel in mind from a tablet I worked on that would be a cool new spin on the classic mac experience, but this is also essentially asking a question about the high res iPad panels since I believe they're eDP and would need pixel doubling & some crop factor if inserted in.
3. Similar idea, possibility of inserting some kit that would apply CRT shaders between the card and the screen? This is more just a fun step I'd love to see happen in this project!

Thanks

 

[zigzagjoe]

Three weird questions I'm curious about:
1. Possiblilty of LVDS/eDP support to use another type of panel?
2. Possibility of shoving a slight larger screen (e.g. 10.5", 1600x1200) and cropping it to 8.4" size (1280x960 aka 640x480 pixel doubled)? I think physically it'd fit, so more a question of what kind of scaler logic would be necessary to take in the video output and enable that crop factor on screen. I have a very specific panel in mind from a tablet I worked on that would be a cool new spin on the classic mac experience, but this is also essentially asking a question about the high res iPad panels since I believe they're eDP and would need pixel doubling & some crop factor if inserted in.
3. Similar idea, possibility of inserting some kit that would apply CRT shaders between the card and the screen? This is more just a fun step I'd love to see happen in this project!

Thanks

This would require a FPGA with enough built in SRAM to capture the incoming parallel RGB signal and store a couple of frames and transform and reclock as required, and then output through appropriate driver circuitry. There may be scaler chips that can do parts of this but overall it'd be a significant change/increase in complexity. No plans to work on this.

Where would the gain be with the cropped screen though? if it's pixel doubled, then what's the improvement vs a native 640x480 panel at the same resolution? It would be IPS, I suppose, but that wouldn't be a huge gain over the current panel as despite being a TN it's a very nice example.

I'd flirted with the idea of using a FPGA dev board as a way to go from parallel RGB to HDMI and enable something like 640x360 pixel doubled to 1280x720, or maybe 960x540 to 1080P, but no plans to execute there either. Going from parallel RGB to HDMI is straightforward if scaling isn't required, but I don't think most HDMI sinks would do anything useful with the resolutions I'd be able to output natively.

Here's the LCD interface connector as seen from the sink side: Molex 541325097
If the LCD is present, a signal with VGA timings and 25.175mhz clock will be output, unless the user has selected a higher resolution external-only video mode.

 

[nickpunt]

Thanks for the info! The screen I'm thinking about is from the Daylight tablet I worked on which is a 10.5" paper-like grayscale 60hz screen. Marrying that to a b&w compact Mac would be awesome. Kinda hard to tell in the video but it looks pretty cool running mini vMac and is unlike other screen techs.

The iPad displays are interesting from pixel density perspective, since you could switch resolution without much artifacting. And semi-related I'm also excited about seeing OLEDs and EL displays running in compact Macs as they have a bit more CRT-ness to them. But this is getting off-topic, I don't want to hijack the thread

 

[zigzagjoe]

Thanks for the info! The screen I'm thinking about is from the Daylight tablet I worked on which is a 10.5" paper-like grayscale 60hz screen. Marrying that to a b&w compact Mac would be awesome. Kinda hard to tell in the video but it looks pretty cool running mini vMac and is unlike other screen techs.

The iPad displays are interesting from pixel density perspective, since you could switch resolution without much artifacting. And semi-related I'm also excited about seeing OLEDs and EL displays running in compact Macs as they have a bit more CRT-ness to them. But this is getting off-topic, I don't want to hijack the thread

Oh, that is neat. I have a side project where I wanted to come up with a new screen for a Mac Classic... I loved the idea of a true monochrome reflective display but they basically don't exist these days. A graphics VFD would be amazing also but I couldn't find one of sufficient resolution.

Realistically for the iPad displays it'd be simplest to just use one with a scaler board that accepts VGA and accept the quality hit, though I think any resolution above 640x480 is going to be of dubious use on a small screen with classic mac OS.

 

[jmacz]

Where would the gain be with the cropped screen though? if it's pixel doubled, then what's the improvement vs a native 640x480 panel at the same resolution? It would be IPS, I suppose, but that wouldn't be a huge gain over the current panel as despite being a TN it's a very nice example.

Just want to +1 this note from @zigzagjoe. The panel he selected although not IPS is very very good. The viewing angles are amazing and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is.

 

[nickpunt]

Oh a VFD would be ideal! ELs are also quite hard to find unfortunately. Agree 640 is the upper limit on 9" size, I was thinking more being able to switch between 512x342 -> 640x480 based on different games/etc, but maybe the realistic use of that is minimal. Your LCD looks great!

New screen tech is tough, I saw the process it took to get going firsthand. Main issue is just $ as MOQs are way too much for hobbyists. Repurposing whats out there seems like the only viable path.

 

[CC_333]

Repurposing whats out there seems like the only viable path.

Agreed. Especially with these tariffs (and the effective trade embargo they've created), repurposing and upcycling what we already have is going to become even more important because anything else will be unobtanium and extremely expensive.

Maybe I'm catastrophising a bit, but with all our problems with waste, it still makes sense, and what we take for granted as common now won't be at some point in the future.

Thanks for the info! The screen I'm thinking about is from the Daylight tablet I worked on which is a 10.5" paper-like grayscale 60hz screen. Marrying that to a b&w compact Mac would be awesome. Kinda hard to tell in the video but it looks pretty cool running mini vMac and is unlike other screen techs.

That looks very nice! It has a kind of passive matrix LCD-like look, but without the ghosting and other problems.

c