Apple Macintosh 16" Color Display + Modifications

[jmacz]

In January I picked up an Apple Macintosh 16" Color Display from a junkyard. It powered up and displayed an image but there were a lot of gremlins causing issues ranging from strange artifacts on the screen, very visible noise, unexplained behavior. I ended up tearing it apart and recapping it. That fixed all the issues except for one, sharpness. It was ok but not great. I tried all the pots inside the monitor but it only helped to a certain point. Eventually, it was clear it was the tube/age. I dealt with it but the tube kept deteriorating where the sharpness finally was unusable. RIP. So I decided to have some fun.

Meet my 16" Color Display:



Woah... that's not 832x624.

And what's going on here -->



and here -->



Yeah... I gutted the monitor and put in a Samsung 512N LCD inside. Why take a small LCD and put it inside a desk space hogging CRT case? Dunno. Did it for fun. The display is crisp and running at 1024x768 with no fuzziness. I didn't want to deal with fuzzy scaling so I invested in some SuperMac Spectrum video cards capable of running 24bit at 1024x768 at 60/75Hz, and this Samsung 512N is native 1024x768 at both 60/75Hz.

First I gutted the monitor:



Reused the power plugs, the front power switch and LED. But everything else is gone inside. Next step was the front glass.



It's 1/8" thick acrylic plexi-glass. I made a jig to carefully bend the plexi-glass evenly (using a heat gun) to match the contour of the display front. Then fixed it in place with epoxy. Then 3d printed a mount for the LCD bezel controls. Also printed buttons for it and drilled holes into the side of the monitor case for the buttons.



Then 3d printed some new mounts for the panel itself. I was going to machine the mount out of aluminum but the plastic prototype I 3d printed worked really well so just went with that.



The VGA cable just extends out of the back of the case. For the power, I wanted the power button to work so I reused the exterior power plug and then inside, I wired it into the existing switch and used one end of a power cable to allow me to easily plug it into the LCD panel. The monitor LED I reused and tied it into the existing panel LED on the control panel.

Works great and looks 95% clean. Given the panel is flat and the monitor is horizontally curved, I had to make black "barn door" shields out of mylar so that there's no gaps between the panel and the edges of the glass. I say 95% because you can barely make out the edges of these shields but it's not bad.

So now I have a huge 16" monitor with an LCD inside. Yes, it takes up more room on the desk, but hey it looks cool

 

[shadedream]

Very clean, when I first looked at it I didn't notice it was an LCD right away. With how bright some of these modern LED LCDs can get, I've wondered if a piece of curved smoked poly over the front would make the effect a little nicer (with the brightness up a bit to compensate).

 

[Hopfenholz]

That is fantastic. Great work and the 16" display is such a nice piece of design. The only thing is I might have been tempted to put a really hi res panel in there, but I suppose 1024x768 is pretty high res for the classic mac OS!

 

[joshc]

I approve of this. Well done indeed.

 

[Daniël]

Nice job on the plexiglass! This would probably be the endgame for my CRTs, if and when they fail beyond repair (be it a worn out tube, unavailable and crucial part, etc.). I love CRTs and their display output, but the matching aesthetics to my retro computers is perhaps more important to me.

 

[jmacz]

Very clean, when I first looked at it I didn't notice it was an LCD right away. With how bright some of these modern LED LCDs can get, I've wondered if a piece of curved smoked poly over the front would make the effect a little nicer (with the brightness up a bit to compensate).

Hmm, maybe. Now that it's all together, I kinda don't want to take it apart to find out since I don't have access to a clean room, it took many attempts to get it together without visible dust inside. So not going to do that again for a while.

That is fantastic. Great work and the 16" display is such a nice piece of design. The only thing is I might have been tempted to put a really hi res panel in there, but I suppose 1024x768 is pretty high res for the classic mac OS!

Yeah, the thought crossed my mind as well. But I think 1024x768 was a good compromise in terms of a resolution many cards support + high enough resolution + native 1:1 pixels without scaling. I don't think I could have fit anything larger than a 15 or 16" panel in there. I think most 1280x1024 LCDs are 17 and above?

 

[micheledipaola]

I love LCD conversions of CRTs. I have components sitting in my garage to convert my Apple IIgs CRT (which takes a step more, with a PI zero doing HDMI conversion of RGB signals...) but I definitely need more time... and maybe a competent eye close to me, when I will open the CRT to discharge the caps before fiddling in there. All in all, I find this kind of conversions fantastic, new life inside old guts, maybe even higher resolution... everything is WOW.

How long did it take you to go through the whole process @jmacz ? and could you tell me more about how you managed to bend the plexiglass?
Again, fantastic work!

 

[Slaine]

Hmmm, sorely tempting. I might try recapping mine first though to see if it helps it out. My biggest issue is brightness and may be down to the age of the tube etc.

 

[jmacz]

How long did it take you to go through the whole process @jmacz ? and could you tell me more about how you managed to bend the plexiglass?
Again, fantastic work!

It wasn't very difficult to do. Most of it was measuring the panel, measuring where the stock CRT mounts, and then designing the proper mounting brackets to allow me to place the LCD panel in there using the stock mounting holes in the front frame. I then 3D printed those mounting brackets. Unfortunately each panel brand/model will require a different mount as I didn't create a universal mount.

Regarding the plexiglass, that was definitely an interesting process. And it's not 100% perfect because it's "hand" bent. My goal was to ensure there wasn't any abnormal curves/dents in the plexiglass and that it was one bend... because any mini bends would be very distracting. So what I did was use two large pieces of plywood connected by a hinge, and then idea was to fold the plywood causing the plexiglass to bend and while in that position, heat the plexiglass using a heat gun and then let it cool. Did that a few millimeters at a time until I got the desired curve. Obviously bent only in the horizontal direction.

I don't have pictures but hope this diagram gives you a rough idea:


The orange pieces are the plywood, the blue is the plexiglass, the black dot is the hinge, and the red blocks are additional small pieces of wood I nailed to the plywood to keep the plexiglass from sliding and instead bend when the board is folded.

Crude. But worked.