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Dual monitors on PM 9600, which card?
- Thread starter thatsteve
- Start date
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
Well, if you're planning on a full house you've probably got particular uses in mind for all those cards. What's the application? That will help in recommending which card would suit your workstation.
Resolutions and performance for gaming and graphics are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Dunno, there are a lot of variables, first and foremost, what monitors are you using and at what resolution are you going to be driving them?
Resolutions and performance for gaming and graphics are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Dunno, there are a lot of variables, first and foremost, what monitors are you using and at what resolution are you going to be driving them?
mcdermd
Well-known member
This one should work:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/190952533880
The color, two-page display cable works on the Portrait. The mono-Portrait cable does not work on the color, two-page display.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/190952533880
The color, two-page display cable works on the Portrait. The mono-Portrait cable does not work on the color, two-page display.
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
I like the design a lot, but if it really bothers you, just turn it on its side. Run it off a Mac's MoBo video port under MacPortrait(?) to align the image appropriately and the Portrait Display will look a lot more normal to you. [Huzzah! The Portrait Display just arrived! What a strange looking monitor...
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If you go as modern as a Radeon dual-port card for this task I sort of suspect you're going to have issues driving that Portrait monitor. Any card that comes with VGA (instead of the old Apple 15 pin) monitor ports tends to have issues driving the old fixed-frequency monitors like the Portrait, the problem being that those monitors don't support the default "safe" video modes like 640x480x60hz and the monitor type detection mechanism for the old Apple monitors doesn't carry through VGA->Apple monitor adapters. You *may* be able to set it up manually or find an adapter "smart" enough to make it work but it'll likely be amusing.
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
IIRC, old radius PCI cards can do it all within the performance envelope of the target system, but they're not Dual-Head. :-/
Gentlemen, some developments...
OK, monitor arrived, but I had to source a cable. Managed to get one via a post I made to Usenet, for free too! It's an Apple cable, 13W3 to DB15, but the 13W3 end only has half the pins that seem standard, but the chap assured me that it is the correct cable for the portrait monitor I have. Here it is:
Now, I hooked it up to my LCIII to test the monitor and here's what I get:
What's the issue here? Can any of you guys diagnose this as fixable or terminal?
I've opened the case to see if there was anything I could adjust but I'm working blind here, no idea what I'm looking at...
Cheers!
S
OK, monitor arrived, but I had to source a cable. Managed to get one via a post I made to Usenet, for free too! It's an Apple cable, 13W3 to DB15, but the 13W3 end only has half the pins that seem standard, but the chap assured me that it is the correct cable for the portrait monitor I have. Here it is:
Now, I hooked it up to my LCIII to test the monitor and here's what I get:
What's the issue here? Can any of you guys diagnose this as fixable or terminal?
I've opened the case to see if there was anything I could adjust but I'm working blind here, no idea what I'm looking at...
Cheers!
S
That looks more to me like the LC is confused about what kind of monitor is attached to it than the monitor itself being broken.
Here's the pinout for the monitor end of the cable, and here's the pinout of the DA-15 end, make sure the sense lines are all carried through (a simple continuity test should do) and make sure the cable is making good contact. My theory is one might be broken, either in the cable or the monitor plug, thereby causing the LC to think it has something else attached.
(Looking at that Apple KB article the 15" Portrait needs sense 1 and 2 grounded, 0 floating. A broken Sense 2 would cause it to misidentify as an RGB 15", while a broken sense 1 would misread as a B&W two-page monitor. You could probably actually check this with a VOM yourself with the cable attached to the monitor. It's not clear to me looking at the apple article which pin should be the "sense ground"; going by the pinout of the monitor end you could noodle this out by figuring out to which pin on the DA-15 end pin 4 on the monitor end of the cable goes to. Wire up the cable and do a continuity test between whatever pin that is and pins 4, 7, and 10; 7 and 10 should be attached to that ground when the cable's plugged into the monitor, pin 4 floating.)
Here's the pinout for the monitor end of the cable, and here's the pinout of the DA-15 end, make sure the sense lines are all carried through (a simple continuity test should do) and make sure the cable is making good contact. My theory is one might be broken, either in the cable or the monitor plug, thereby causing the LC to think it has something else attached.
(Looking at that Apple KB article the 15" Portrait needs sense 1 and 2 grounded, 0 floating. A broken Sense 2 would cause it to misidentify as an RGB 15", while a broken sense 1 would misread as a B&W two-page monitor. You could probably actually check this with a VOM yourself with the cable attached to the monitor. It's not clear to me looking at the apple article which pin should be the "sense ground"; going by the pinout of the monitor end you could noodle this out by figuring out to which pin on the DA-15 end pin 4 on the monitor end of the cable goes to. Wire up the cable and do a continuity test between whatever pin that is and pins 4, 7, and 10; 7 and 10 should be attached to that ground when the cable's plugged into the monitor, pin 4 floating.)
Thanks for that, although testing like that is a little outside of my skillset...
So the monitor doesn't look terminal? Is that a consensus view? I'll keep looking for cables/adapters.
More questions. I want to have this running hooked to my 9600 as a second monitor. That is possible, right? My 9600 has 7.6.1, 8.6 and 9.2.2 on various partitions, is it possible to extend the desktop across two monitors in each OS? Will having the portrait hooked up force both screens to grayscale or will I be able to have the multi-scan 14 in colour? I still don't have a video card with dual outputs, but is that a better solution than using 2 video cards anyway?
Ta!
So the monitor doesn't look terminal? Is that a consensus view? I'll keep looking for cables/adapters.
More questions. I want to have this running hooked to my 9600 as a second monitor. That is possible, right? My 9600 has 7.6.1, 8.6 and 9.2.2 on various partitions, is it possible to extend the desktop across two monitors in each OS? Will having the portrait hooked up force both screens to grayscale or will I be able to have the multi-scan 14 in colour? I still don't have a video card with dual outputs, but is that a better solution than using 2 video cards anyway?
Ta!
If you have a VOM (or a disassembled flashlight, some tape, and a few bits of wire) you can probe the cable/sense lines and see if they match up the way they're supposed to; that's certainly a lot safer than poking around inside a monitor with the top off.Thanks for that, although testing like that is a little outside of my skillset...
Personally I'd recommend using two video cards with native Apple DE-15 plugs. I strongly suspect you're going to have issues trying to use these old monitors through VGA adaptors. (I don't know of any dual-monitor cards that have DE-15 plugs and will work properly with monitors like the Portrait that use the oldskool sense-line arrangement without some substantial fiddling, but I don't know a lot about PCI Macs of that era. The only OS 9-compatible dual-head cards I know of are a few GeForce and ATI Radeon Mac Edition cards that have VGA and DVI ports.)
well, we have some progress... I can now confirm that the cable works! However, my portrait display now doesn't...
I thought I'd have another go at seeing what I can adjust inside the case, so removed the case and top shield and hooked the monitor up to my 9600. On booting the computer, the display was garbled as upthread. There's a bunch of adjustable components dotted around so I got a long screwdriver and started adjusting to see what'd happen! None made any difference until I hit this one (circled and arrowed):
And when I say "hit" I mean hit! As soon as I made contact with the component, the screen snapped into perfect, crisp resolution. I marvelled over it for a minute or two before shutting everything down, putting the case back on and hooking up again. Upon booting now... garbled mess again. Ho hum. I took everything apart again, hooked back up, booted and had a proper adjust of that component. A couple of times I got what looked like a magnified portion of the desktop, but even that wouldn't stay. And then the screen went black, exactly as it looks when there's no signal going to it (computer off or no cable hooked up). Hmmm, I thought, let's have another adjust. And then this happened to that component:
Whoops!
So, can anybody tell me whether I've killed this off for good? What might have been the fault? Seems very strange that it was great as soon as I put the slightest pressure on the component, I'm thnking must be a poor solder joint, although that all looks fine to my (untrained) eye...
What should I do?
I thought I'd have another go at seeing what I can adjust inside the case, so removed the case and top shield and hooked the monitor up to my 9600. On booting the computer, the display was garbled as upthread. There's a bunch of adjustable components dotted around so I got a long screwdriver and started adjusting to see what'd happen! None made any difference until I hit this one (circled and arrowed):
And when I say "hit" I mean hit! As soon as I made contact with the component, the screen snapped into perfect, crisp resolution. I marvelled over it for a minute or two before shutting everything down, putting the case back on and hooking up again. Upon booting now... garbled mess again. Ho hum. I took everything apart again, hooked back up, booted and had a proper adjust of that component. A couple of times I got what looked like a magnified portion of the desktop, but even that wouldn't stay. And then the screen went black, exactly as it looks when there's no signal going to it (computer off or no cable hooked up). Hmmm, I thought, let's have another adjust. And then this happened to that component:
Whoops!
So, can anybody tell me whether I've killed this off for good? What might have been the fault? Seems very strange that it was great as soon as I put the slightest pressure on the component, I'm thnking must be a poor solder joint, although that all looks fine to my (untrained) eye...
What should I do?
