Mac IIsi: The Matter of Video

[Ranma-chan]

Hi guys! I posted in a vintage subreddit a few months ago about a Mac I got my hands on for cheap at a flea market, and was told to refer to y'all for more information on what I could do. The Mac in question was a good ol' Macintosh IIsi. It showed its age pretty well, it was yellowed everywhere and had copious amounts of dried tobacco tar in the fans and stuff; but a bit of liberal cleaning restored the beauty of a vintage Macintosh. It powers on and seems to work fine, but one of the biggest obstacles I've faced thus far is the problem of a proper display.

I had purchased a Mac-to-VGA video inverter on the internet and wasn't very surprised to find that it doesn't work at all, and finding an affordable Apple-compatible monitor is like pulling one's teeth.

Any advice to be given on this matter? I'd really like to revive this IIsi and see what's on the original 40MB SCSI hard drive.

Here is what the motherboard looked like after I took her home. I've torn it down to see if any of the capacitors were bulging or leaking, and fortunately, none were. The machine seems to happily turn on without exploding or smoking or catching fire or what have you, but I can't see what it's doing (and the IIsi's notorious speaker problems have rendered the poor thing mute. )

Anyway, I'd appreciate advice on what to do with it.

Also, for posterity: My reddit thread about it and the follow-up

 

[Compgeke]

It'll need a recap even if they aren't leaking yet, they're a ticking time bomb and might be bad despite not leaking. You're also going to want to pull the battery if you haven't, they're prone to leaking. Despite the speaker not working, do you get anything out the headphone jack?

If you can, try and track down something like a Dell 1704 or 1708 or SE198WFP or any Dell monitor for the most part. They're almost given away anymore and have no problems with Mac signals (even 1152x882 sync-on-green).

 

[Byrd]

Welcome Ranma-chan, I believe you need a monitor that supports sync-on-green to display video on a stock IIsi, this was available in most Apple Trinitron CRTs of the age, and some Dell LCDs support it too.  The other option is to source a Nubus daughtercard and install a video card that does output to vanilla VGA.

 

[Ranma-chan]

Compgeke: Your user name is familiar, you wouldn't happen to be a member of BetaArchive, would you?

Regarding recapping it, I imagine I will need to, but I'm not very experienced in that regard; I'll probably have to have somebody do it for me or learn how to do it on-the-fly. I already changed the clock battery with a brand new one from Batteries Plus; that was one of the first things I swapped on it.

I suppose I'll need to find one of the monitors you're mentioned, hopefully I can find it somewhere, like at a flea market!

Byrd: Thank you! And I gathered that much from a bit of Google-Fu; the problem is that I'm not sure what monitors outside the standard Apple CRT models support sync-on-green and the odd-ball Macintosh resolutions and refresh rates.

As for Nubus cards, how accessible would those be? I can't imagine they're easily found anymore in this day and age; and if they are, they're probably expensive; but I'll check that out!

 

[Elfen]

The IIsi is going t need to be recapped because the caps are leaking, even if it does not look like they are. If it is working right now you might be able to do it on your own if you take your time doing it.

The IIsi has a PDS Slot similar to the SE\30 but not similar or compatible to the LC series. There is a IIsi & SE\30 PDS Slot to Nubus adapter you can put in to use a Nubus card. Just need to find it.

If you have a Mac-to-VGA adapter with dip switches, you should set it t 640X480 or 640X400 with Horizontal and Vertical Sync On and Composite on Green On. There are other settings to play with but this should work with most CRT Monitors and a few older LCD Monitors.

And welcome to the forum, Ranma Chan!

 

[bibilit]

the caps are leaking

I agree, look at the board around C22 and C28, the board is pretty clean elsewhere, but around the capacitors, there is fluid collecting dust.

Concerning the speaker, you can pull it and clean the contacts to start with.

I have two IIsi's and both are working fine with MAC-to-VGA adapter and Dell LCD, but it is a trial and error method anyway.

 

[trag]

The old Viewsonic 14e and 15e CRT monitors also work with the IIsi and IIci built-in video. IIRC.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Love the IIsi, but the video subsystem is downright awful. It's called Vampire Video because the IIsi buffers DRAM on the MoBo as a horrid, performance sapping, viciously cost cutting substitute for a proper VRAM based frame buffer.

Snag a Radius Color Pivot II/IIsi before the supply dries up and prices rise.   [] ]'>  With it you'll get a usable 16" resolution along with better memory subsystem performance. When no monitor is connected to the built in video connector at startup none of the MoBo RAM is buffered for Vampire Video, the full complement remaining contiguous system memory.

There's still no standard 60Hz VGA output from the RCPII/IIsi though, so you'll need a good multi-sync display as you will/would with anemic built in video output.

.  .  .  and welcome!

 

[LOOM]

I got a Samsung 19" LCD Syncmaster 940BW from 2007 with a mac-to-vga dip switch adapter that works on the stock IIsi, so it will work with newer LCDs too.

 

[uniserver]

yeah the dell square 17" 19" LCD's on ebay also offer SOG, just need a DB15 to VGA adaptor

Cap the IIsi mb... Cap the IIsi psu as they need it..