Lapis 10006 Rev #2 came with SE/30

[fabian]

I bought a "broken" SE/30. The owner said it booted but didn't display anything. When I got it i opened it up and found a PDS video card in it.

It says Lapis Technologies, it has a 9-pin d-sub output, but I don't know anything else about it. Does anyone have any information?

I am also trying to figure out what kind of monitor I can run with it.

I have found some posts on the same card but Rev #3, nothing on Rev #2 that I have, but I guess they are basically similar.



I suspect that drivers and software for this card is installed on the computer, does anyone have any idea of where I could find this, or is it not worth saving?

I have the possibility to get one of the two following monitors:

Ikegami DM-2010AD

https://ikegami-kosodate.com/dm/products/dm2010ad.html

https://ikegami-kosodate.com/dm/products/pdf/dm2010ad_spec.pdf

Hitachi CM2112MU

Similar to this
https://www.primabazar.cz/pc-konzole/crt-monitor-21-hitachi-196240.html

Would any of these work on my SE/30, would any of them work with this graphics gard?

 

[Dog Cow]

I found one of those too in a broken SE/30 that I bought 2 years ago and fixed. It showed up in the Monitors Control Panel as a second (larger) screen (and the arrow pointer will move off the edge of the built-in screen and into this screen), but I don't have a monitor to actually connect to the PDS card.

 

[fabian]

I'm now looking for a monitor that would work for it. Do you also have a Rev #2?

 

[apm]

It's probably a TTL video card. With a scope, you could figure out the pinout of the connector and the scan frequencies. The design probably has a lot of similarities to this Portable video card that @stepleton and I reverse engineered:



Building an adapter from TTL to VGA is doable. It just involves some resistors and optionally a voltage regulator (which will clean up noise or brightness changes if the +5V line varies). There's a design for the Portable card on the GitHub repo: https://github.com/apmcpherson/VideoMacPacHack. You'd have to work out the pinouts with a scope. Also, if it's for a portrait display then it'll be hard to get a decent display on a standard 4:3 screen for obvious reasons. 

Edit: it would be interesting to see a dump of the ROM!

 

[fabian]

Sounds like fun! I'm gonna need some Googling before I completely understand. Looking at your project, this seems to be a lot easier to figure out!

Edit: it would be interesting to see a dump of the ROM!

I'd be happy to do that. How can I do a dump of the ROM?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Portable and SE aren't Slot Manager systems, so they need drivers to load for making use of VidCards or just about anything else.

SE/30 is Slot Manager architecture (NuBus/PDS) so the Apple spec calls for drivers to be present in that Declaration ROM you'll be trying to read. @trag mentioned something about video cards using a particular brand of FPGA which requires a driver to jump start its operation though. Don't recall if it was XILINX or not, but hoping to learn more about that if it is and he jumps in here.

edit: back from a github read. It's sounding to me like XILINX is indeed the problematic hardware?

 

[trag]

. @trag mentioned something about video cards using a particular brand of FPGA which requires a driver to jump start its operation though. Don't recall if it was XILINX or not, but hoping to learn more about that if it is and he jumps in here.

It wasn't so much the particular brand of FPGA as that some video cards used this style of FPGA programming.   FPGAs can get their configuration from a  Flash or EEPROM that they read automagically, or can be configured through a JTAG or similar interface.    So, normally, one might see a video card with an FPGA and an associated storage device to supply the FPGA program.   FPGAs are volatile.  They don't stay programmed when the power is off.

But some video cards loaded the FPGA at boot time, through a driver (extension/control panel) so the FPGA code was not stored anywhere on the video card.  It was in the driver for the video card. 

I guess this save cost on larger storage devices, and programming the storage device during assembly.   Or maybe they figured that since there were going to be updates anyway, why store the configuration on the card.

The cards I've seen use this scheme have all used Xilinx FPGAs, but that doesn't mean this scheme couldn't be used with a different brand.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Thanks for the info. As a startup/onlu display, it sounds like the Mac would POST checking the DeclROM and you'd see its splash screen, but no  :huh: or  :smiley: and extensions loading only after the FPGA driver loaded? Never heard the FPGAs were volatile, I thougt they worked more like EEPROM. Thanks, sounds like basing a new build VidCard around FPGA flexibility for non-standard resolutions might be useful?

 

[Bolle]

Well... you’re not completely wrong there.

Modern FPGAs have the EEPROM (or flash) to hold the configuration bitstream built right in while older models needed an external source for the bitstream.

Most of the time the bitstream gets loaded into internal SRAM cells that are scattered all about the insides of the FPGA to hold information about routing and logic functions right where they are needed.

On a power cycle that information obviously is lost and needs to be reprogrammed.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Building an adapter from TTL to VGA is doable. It just involves some resistors and optionally a voltage regulator (which will clean up noise or brightness changes if the +5V line varies). There's a design for the Portable card on the GitHub repo: https://github.com/apmcpherson/VideoMacPacHack. You'd have to work out the pinouts with a scope. Also, if it's for a portrait display then it'll be hard to get a decent display on a standard 4:3 screen for obvious reasons.

Found Lapis cards for the SE and NuBus a few years back that you might find interesting:



Mine's a 1989 Lapis DisplayServer for the SE with DE-9 and DA-15 connectors on the breakout board.

Scutboy has a 1990 rev of the DisplayServer, the breakout board having DE-9 and HD-15 connectors.

@fabian did your setup come with the breakout board, sounds like not? Maybe something gleaned from the SE breakout board layout might help?
 

 

[fabian]

@fabian did your setup come with the breakout board, sounds like not? Maybe something gleaned from the SE breakout board layout might help?

Yes, it came with a DE-9 breakout board.

 

[cheesestraws]

Yes, it came with a DE-9 breakout board. 

There was a semi-standard RGB DE-9 pinout, and cheap adapters for that are still available.  I doubt you would get any result, but before doing anything dramatic it might be worth just trying one with a reasonably forgiving screen, especially if you can borrow one.  Turbo-cheap ones cost less than 5 GBP over here.

 

[Dog Cow]

I'm now looking for a monitor that would work for it. Do you also have a Rev #2?

I had my SE/30 open a few days ago and remembered to look at the card. It's similar, but some areas are different from your card. The Monitors Control Panel said that mine is a dual-page 1024x768 display card. It's black and white only.

 

[fabian]

I have a 19" monochrome monitor that has been used with a mac. It has only one bnc input. Is there a db9 to bnc cable for this?

 

[aminor]

I've got a Lapis color card 10009 Rev 2 in my SE/30.

When I last used the machine the colour card drove an external VGA monitor at (I think) up to 1024 x 768.  I recall playing Prince of Persia, Lemmings, and Might and Magic III in colour.  Heady days!

As Trash80toHP_Mini said earlier, the cards required drivers.  I recall mine not being 32-bit mode compatible meaning that when I switched on 32-bit memory addressing, or ran Mode32, the machine would not boot.  

If I can get my SE/30 back up and running (new battery, re-cap etc) I might be able to retrieve the driver off the HDD.  It may or may not work with your card, but given the rarity or these things I wouldn't get rid of it.