Mac Portable Video: Where to tap the source?

[Gorgonops]

edit: didn't understand much at all of what you were saying above, but this panel has a USB 2.0 input, does that help?

That's unfortunate.

The long and short of it, since I guess it wasn't totally clear, is you need to understand there's no pre-baked hardware/software solution for what you were asking to do here; if you want the Raspberry Pi to participate in the conversion from the Portable's LCD output to a more modern display you'll have to write the software to do it, regardless of what your hardware configuration is. IE, it doesn't matter if you get the bitstream from the Portable into the Pi over the GPIO pins, SPI, a USB dingus, whatever, you'll still have to write software to turn that bitstream into a scaled display output. It's not clear to me if you're factoring that into your idea of keeping the Portable's original guts. If you're not up to writing the software then getting the Portable to display on a newer LCD will have to turn into a complete hardware project, which will likely translate to an FPGA, or at least a few CPLDs and probably a RAM chip, to convert the STN output from the Portable into LVDS or TTL LCD signaling. (Or maybe HDMI/DVI or VGA? They're probably all about equally hard.)

Where USB came into it was I stumbled across that *very* cheap little USB 2.0-speed microcontroller dingus that seemingly has real potential for doing high-speed data acquisition along the lines of what you'd be needing for this project; what's really attractive about it is it has a decently size FiFo buffer, which could be immensely useful in compensating for the fact that Linux on the Pi doesn't count as a "real time" operating system and you get it basically for "free" instead of having to build it like you would if you tried using GPIO bitbanging or whatever. Again, this would be for getting bits *into* your Raspberry Pi, not directly to the monitor in any way. The USB port on that monitor seems to be for playing videos/displaying pictures using a built-in media player; basically it looks like it doubles as digital picture frame. Not in any way useful for interfacing it to either a Pi or a Mac Portable.

 

 

[Gorgonops]

I wonder if Apple was planning to do a projection screen? Seems a waste to put LCD outta the ass end of a Portable?

Probably. It would be "relatively trivial" to build a converter to get a composite or TTL signal for a projector out of it by slapping in 32k of dual-ported RAM to catch the LCD data and present it to a standard CTRC-style video generator. (IE, at the time it's something you could have fit in a box about the size of a deck of cards or two, depending on how much custom integration you did.)

BINGO!!!!!!

You know, I found that monitor on Amazon, and the reviews do not impress me. It sounds like they use a really sketchy scaler board meant for TV purposes that is bad at making the display fit on the panel (IE, a lot of people complain about overscan), and there also seems to be a problem that the monitor doesn't advertise the panel's native resolution in its EDID/VESA resolution list. (1280x800 is an "odd" size for a stand-alone monitor, and it sort of looks like they didn't bother reprogramming the resolution list in the controller board from the default list?)

Adafruit and several other hobby-oriented sites sell a similar panel with a scaler board in a stripped config. Here's the cheapest one I could dredge up, at $72. Don't know if they're any better when it comes to the overscan part; I find it kind of interesting that multiple of the sites selling it bring up how to force the proper resolution in case it's not detected correctly on a Raspberry Pi.

Heh! Realized last night that you've joked your way into a three mode LuggablePi. I've never run any kind of Mac emulator, so I'd not thought of it at all. Running games on that accelerated LuggablePi under Mac OS on an emulator in backlit color on a 4x(?) pixel playing field would be incredible experience. Is emulation video resolution flexible enough to do a non standard 1280 x 800 TPD format?

If you're running Basilisk II it'll happily use however many pixels you care to throw at it. Caring about integer scaling from 640x400 is *only* a concern that comes up if you're looking for a solution to blow up the real Portable motherboard's video out.

Honestly, if you were going to go all-in on making this a case hack instead of trying to keep the portable's original guts I'd probably say you should also ditch using a Raspberry Pi and cram a *serious* computer in there. Maybe an Intel NUC, or even a mini-ITX board? You've got tons of room to work with. Put something with enough grunt to run Sheepshaver with OS 9.0.4. Or, heck, cram a G4 Mac Mini into it, whatever floats your boat.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Mini-ITX  .  .  .    Right now there's a Beige G3 MoBo in there. We don' need no steenkiiing Pi! []

I knew the LuggablePi stuff was way beyond my ken, that's why I tossed these notions out into the wilds for someone else to mess around with if they'd like.

Will the ATI Rage Pro BG3 output 1280x800 WXGA?

Pretty sure the only mod I'd need to do is filing back the bezel on the sides, EVERYTHING else can stay stock if I can fab a new LCD hinge system.

Gotta desolder the backplane connectors of the BG3 board, but that's no biggie. Hopefully one of my ADB Keyboard's controllers will be compatible with the Luggable's keyswitch matrix?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Nuts!  :mellow: From the BG3 DevNote:

Built-in Display Video
The built-in video circuitry in modular desktop and mini-tower configuration with the ATI 3D RAGE+DVD graphics controller supports pixel display sizes of 512 by 384, 640 by 480, 800 by 600, 832 by 624, 1024 by 768, 1152 by 870, 1280 by 960, 1280 by 1024, and 1600 by 1200.

The built-in video circuitry in modular desktop and mini-tower configurations with the ATI 3D RAGE PRO-PCI graphics controller supports pixel display sizes of 512 by 384, 640 by 480, 800 by 600, 832 by 624, 1024 by 768, 1152 by 870 1280 by 960, 1280 by 1024, 1600 by 1200, and 1920 by 1080.

Looking at a PCI VidCard or a new mobo donor candidate it seems.

I hope somebody with the chops goes the LuggablePi route. I really do, it's such a neat machine on its own and could be so much more fun with Pi fillings.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Not very hopeful about the PCI route, even the incredibly versatile HP_Mini can't drive that panel, it outputs:

1280x1024

1280x960

1280x768

1280x720

1280x600

Looks like the only other flavor of 1280 it misses would be 854! Could there possibly be a more ridiculous situation? Makes me think a PCI card for the BG3 wouldn't be a solution.

Oddly enough, I could be back to my original NuBus Architecture notions about a Luggable case hack from the pre-Pi era. Aery early NuBus VidCard is now the only way I'm 99.9% positive I can drive that 1280x800 LCD!

BG3 is heading back into its clear Plexi domicile and the Duo/DuoDock boards fit MUCH better! An IDE enabled 2300c and a second or third generation DuoDock board w/AAUI would be perfect as donors!

TLDR:

FWIW, I've got what's probably the first edition SuperMac Spectrum/24, which seems to have been released before video standards and RAMDACs were set in stone. Docs indicate it's capable of being programmed to output any resolution. With its standard oscillator it puts out a huge virtual desktop for panning around in a CAD drawing. Plug in CRT type timings (porches etc.) and its driver utility spits out the crystal value needed to do its thing. It's VRAM is 2MB, so it appears to be on the cusp of 8bit and 16bit output per my standard reference:


1280*1024


8-bit


1,25 MB


1280*1024


16-bit


2,5 MB



It's too bad all my research for playing around with this card to do idiotic things like 4K in B&W is in one of my several "Lost Threads."

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/17710-supermac-spectrum24-project/?hl=supermac

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Oh yeah! Loads of cubic leftover for that video conversion unencumbered Pi filling  .  .  .  []

.  .  .  and likely enough batteries to run the whole shebang untethered. Replacing the FDD with one of my spares for the PB100/Duos would let me carve out more cubic for that full length Nubus Card if necessary, carving into the battery bay allows a short card to be installed.

Thunder IV GX 1600 pumping out 1600x1200@24bit on one side and Portrait or 16" on the other off the PPC Duo/DuoDock rig (68k works too) puts Pi Video options to shame!

Everything gets installed inverted and all clips slots and hinge supports of the chassis remain untouched with the exception of where the RAM Card slips underneath the KBD! []

 

[Gorgonops]

General note:

Not very hopeful about the PCI route, even the incredibly versatile HP_Mini can't drive that panel, it outputs:...

Where did you get that list of resolutions? Is that what the system displayed as options when connected to an external monitor you have lying around? Unless you manually override the list (how to do so depends on what OS you're running) you're only going to be allowed to choose the resolutions that your monitor advertises itself capable of. 1280x800 is a "weird" size that doesn't appear in most monitor's standard lists. (And it may also be absent in the video card ROM's fallback list of VESA standard modes, which date back to the 1990's, that are there for instances in which the VESA information cannot be read from the monitor. If detection is working properly the monitor's advertisement should take precedent.)

I would say with 99.44% certainty that the video card in almost any computer made after the mid-90's could *technically* support the resolution, they all have programmable clock generators now. For OS X a utility like SwitchresX would do the needful if VESA detection doesn't work.

 

[Gorgonops]

... to expand a little bit on the above, Wikipedia's page on EDID has a lot of information that helps explain why monitors with "weird" resolutions are a problem when you bump up against certain edge cases.

To use a really cruddy analogy, the EDID information the monitor sends to the computer is kind of like a really complicated breakfast menu that lists every ingredient the restaurant has in the kitchen while *also* offering a set menu of combo platters. The trick when it comes to the combo platters is they're only listed by number, and the menu just lists *which* numbers the restaurant offers; in this world all restaurants use the same numbers for the same platters so matter where you go "13" always means "ham and eggs". The reason 1280x800 is "tricky" is because that resolution doesn't have a combo meal number; 1280x768 and 960 do, but not 800. So in order for the customer to be able to order 1280x800 the monitor has to have the correct information in the "extended" area of the menu for the customer to be able to work out that, yes, that's something they can have.

Assuming the particular 1280x800 panel/scaler combination in the monitor you're trying to use does everything right in generating the extended EDID information and your computer's video card/driver interprets it correctly it should be able to support it without hacking. (If it's modern enough to understand extended EDID.) The concern I mostly have about the monitor you were looking at on Ebay is the Amazon review suggests that it *doesn't* do EDID correctly, which is unfortunately apparently pretty common with those off-brand LCD/Scaler combinations.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Dunno if HP_Mini's resolution choices came up before the hamstrung XP3 for NetBooks died unrecoverably or after I got it up and running under ubuntu.

Those resolution choices were listed without the VGA Adapter plugged into its expansion slot. Pretty sure it was under ubuntu, sounds like a feature MS would have avoided like the plague.

Mini will do 3K WUXGA 's 2048x1536@32bit as the max res listed. I took it to Best Buy and we hooked it up to a 52"(?) HDTV at some ungodly pixel count or other. That opened quite a few eyes!

Is that bare display you linked the same panel as the monitor I linked? I'm wondering if the overscanning problems might be due to the panel's controller not quite knowing how to handle CRT type signal's porch timings? If that's the case, my Spectrum/24shouldn't pose a problem for it.

Eyeballed fitment again and the extra width of the Duo board will disturb a bit more of the chassis than I first thought, but removing the connector for the useless modem and a little filing of the clips at the back as retainers for the PCB ought to do the trick!

The Spectrum/24 just puts out one single resolution it's clocked and programmed to do other than one crystal spec'd to do "multiple scan" VGA as I understand it. The VGA scaler should "just work" givet input at its native res, no?

Have you got the formula to solve for the VRAM requirement for doing 1280x800@16bit? Can't locate mine, If it's under 2MB that would be perfect!  []

 

[Gorgonops]

Is that bare display you linked the same panel as the monitor I linked? I'm wondering if the overscanning problems might be due to the panel's controller not quite knowing how to handle CRT type signal's porch timings? If that's the case, my Spectrum/24shouldn't pose a problem for it.

I doubt it's the same "guts" (meaning "driver board") because the bare unit I linked to comes with a "generic" driver board (IE, I've seen lots of panel/driver packages with different LCDs that use driver boards suspiciously identical to the one it comes with) that doesn't have the media player or other features that the Eyoyo does. (And the ports are laid out in a different order, etc.) It *could* be the same LCD panel, I suppose. Here's the Amazon review page for the Eyoyo, and if you search the reviews you'll find several people left detailed explanations of the overscan problem. The long and short of it seems to be that the Eyoyo is set up more to be a TV than a computer monitor, where pixel-perfect registration matters less. Some people seem to have been able to find secret recipes to compensate, but without having ever touched the unit I can't say if the monitor will work well for you. Apparently your plan now is to use analog VGA instead of HDMI; at least one review claimed it did a better job autosizing that properly, but I'm sure your mileage will vary.

(I also can't say if the scaler on the bare bundle will do better for VGA than the one built into the Eyoyo. All there is I can find about that concentrates on getting it to work over HDMI with Raspberry Pi's, and they all say that it works fine other than sometimes you have to manually tell it you want the maximum resolution instead of one of the standard ones.)

2MB of RAM is 2,097,152 bytes. A flat 1280x800@16 bit framebuffer would be 2,048,000 bytes so... yeah, in theory it just *barely* fits. (It's about as many pixels as the old 1152x864/870/900 resolutions that were popular back in the day because they were just barely under one "Megapixel" and therefore fit neatly into framebuffers that were an even power-of-two in size. Many early Sun workstations/X11 terminals used 1152x900@1 bit because that fit into 128k of RAM with less than 2k to spare.) If the card can actually be programmed to spit that out @60hz with reasonable timings then presumably your spectrum card will work. Again, though, pretty much any VGA card that uses a programmable clock generator will work too. I think I sort of lost the plot at this point; you're proposing now stuffing the contents of a Duo dock into a gutted Portable and using the Nubus card to drive the monitor? If you're going as old-school as a Duo for your old guts maybe the better part of valor would be to go with an 1024x768 panel/scaler. They're easy to find in a range of sizes you can probably fit into roughly the same area and you skip the "weird/non-4:3 video mode" compatibility problems with older hardware.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Nah, it's that screen or another like it if I'm going to spend the money. The almost perfect fit into the unmodified bezel and high resolution are the only reasons I'm even considering doing a 'simple case hack." however complicated that might be in practice. It all rests on experimenting with the Video Card.

If you and the other admins can resurrect my Spectrum/24 thread I'd greatly appreciate it. I was going for any modern wide screen format output from a pre-1990(?) NuBus VidCard on 68K. IIRC 720p was the sweet spot. I'd really like to get it going on the new 1920x1200 LCD even if I have to do it at 4-bit grayscale to have it look good running the Quicksilver's display with a IIfx if I can pull it off.. []

In this thread I just wanted to try to get the ball rolling for folks of the Pi generation to have some fun tricking out a portable that's mostly kept "stock." In the other thread I suggested doing something like an 11.6" panel in a protoprinted bezel with a trackpad to lose the ball sockets in the lid. That's the case hack thread. []

p.s. the SIMMspender thread's resurrection would help a lot too. I think those two fairly practical projects would be good to keep me grounded while, alleviating some of the the PB100/Performer insanity.

p.p.s. Could you post the resolution/color depth/VRAM formula?

 

[Gorgonops]

p.p.s. Could you post the resolution/color depth/VRAM formula?

(Width * Height * color depth) / 8 = number of bytes needed for video mode

Divide the result by 1024 to get an answer in kilobytes (or by 2^20th for megabytes), and then compare to the amount of RAM on your video card to see which is greater.

Note that this assumes that your video card is capable of using its memory in a perfectly linear and compact framebuffer; I think that's true with most Mac cards but it may be an invalid assumption elsewhere. Also note that:

1: Many newer video cards use a 32 bit memory array for 24 bit color, so adjust appropriately.

2: Bets may be off if it's a card that has elaborate 2D/3D acceleration features that require some of the card's RAM to be used as scratch space, scroll buffer, or texture memory.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Don't think SuperMac was doing anything so complicated around 1990. Neat VidCard, gotta give it some long deserved TLC.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I'm reassembling and buttoning the unscathed Hackable Luggable safely inside its case pending future developments. I'll be researching that panel for my stalled OrangePi Laptop build along with others for PowerBook applications.

I'm loving this one  .  .  .

Raspberry Pi HDMI DVI VGA LCD Controller Board+ B101UAN02.1 1920x1200 LED Screen

.  .  .  especially for its DVI input flexibility on top of its being my favorite resolution for a general purpose display. I'd love to see it playing mini me next to the 24" Main display. :lol:

 

[Gorgonops]

That 1920x1200 display is indeed very sexy. There's a lot to like about that size, not least among them is it's the highest resolution that single-link DVI/pre-4k HDMI can handle. Only downside really is that 1920x1200 is sort of pushing it when it comes to the number of pixels a Raspberry Pi-sort of computer can reasonably handle. You probably really do want something capable of better UI scaling if you're dealing with that many pixels in such a small area.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Maybe one of the other Pi flavors or a higher level SBC? Waiting for the next version of any of several options may fix that limitation. []

The smaller the better, fitting some kind of PiPanel's guts into a PowerBook's FDD bay may be the only available option at some point. LCDs are bubbling apart in droves, or so it seems. Even if we perfect film removal/replacement techniques, the LCD boards themselves will have failures that caps won't fix ere long.

A CPLD/whatever based LCD frame grabber and PiPanel LCD interface in 3.5" FDD PCB format with whatever the next rev of the header interface for SBC mounting comes along will be the new impossible dream somewhere down the line. []

 

[trag]

The Outbound Laptop Model 125 had many similarities to the Portable, including a weird "digital" video out port (and a 640 X 400 display).   Outbound either planned or actually sold a few display adapters for it.   Probably like finding a Unicorn to get your hands on one, if they ever shipped.  Might be an interesting research avenue in the old mags.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

If you're looking for one of those megabucks replacement LCD, I understand your interest in this thread. YOWCH!

 

[Gorgonops]

The Outbound Laptop Model 125 had many similarities to the Portable, including a weird "digital" video out port (and a 640 X 400 display).   Outbound either planned or actually sold a few display adapters for it.   Probably like finding a Unicorn to get your hands on one, if they ever shipped.  Might be an interesting research avenue in the old mags.

Apple apparently promised to produce a display adapter for the Portable in the early literature but later cancelled it. Here's a link to their KB article listing off some third party alternatives. It looks like the only thing that actually connected to the external port was a Datashow projector display, which would itself just be another LCD panel. (It was one of those extinct species of computer projectors that consisted of an LCD without the back panel that you'd lay on top of an overhead projector. The Indy Presenter was a surprisingly common later example that doubled as a regular LCD monitor... for an SGI Indy or similar.) The other two things they list are an internal slotted video card and a SCSI-connected device.

Again, in principle it seems like it wouldn't be *too* hard to build one using dual-ported VRAM, but it'd strictly be limited to mirroring the 640x400 resolution of the internal display. 640x400 is a "weird" resolution that would look "letterboxed" on a normal monitor if you wanted to retain square pixels.
 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Macintosh Portable: External Video Adapter Canceled (6/96)






Whatever happened to the promised Macintosh Portable video adapter?




In September of 1989, when Apple introduced the Macintosh Portable, Apple
announced they intended to ship a video adapter which would let users take
advantage of external displays.

Since that time, a variety of developers have introduced products which

provide the external video functionality customers require. For that
reason, Apple decided not to offer a video adapter.

Customers in need of external video support have a wide range of products
to choose from, including:
Sayett Technology's DataShow, an overhead viewplate that connects
directly to the Portable's Video Out port

Aura System's ScuzzyGraph II, which enables customers to use the
Macintosh Portable with a color monitor

Generation Systems' Portable Publisher, which lets Portable users take
advantage of the Apple High Resolution Monochrome Monitor, Portrait
Display, and Two-Page Display.
 
 
The above is a sample of the products and capabilities currently available
to Macintosh Portable customers, and we anticipate other third-party video
product announcements.

 
Archived here now! You never know when those bat rastards will deep six the next piddling amount data that represents years worth of documentation to save a few pennies. Thanks, G.