Macintosh IIci. Using VGA adapter.

[snake88usa]

OK so my VGA adapter arrived today. The generic one with the switches. Well I have a Acer wide screen LCD that I want to use with the Macintosh IIci. I would like to know what to switch on and off on the adapter. I set it for VGA with 640x480 and got no signal.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Does the IIci even support VGA? Curious, seems doubtful as it was introduced in 1998 with the very first built-in Video implementation for the Mac. The VGA spec was released in 1987 while the IIci was in development.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I have a Acer wide screen LCD . . .

That's likely problem #1, it's probably 60Hz Sync only, you'll definitely need to source a Mac-Tolerant MuliSync at some point in your collecting. It looks like the IIci would be reason #1 for that necessity.

. . . I set it for VGA with 640x480 and got no signal.

Try setting it for 512x384 (12" RGB) as that's the only 60Hz resolution available on the IIci. IIci Portrait output is proprietary Apple Monitor specific at 67Hz as is 640x480 for "High Res RGB" at Apple's much vaunted (proprietary/compatibility hostile) "flicker free" 75Hz refresh rate.

All info from the ENHANCE Liberty and MacLiberty Adapter Matrix. LEM & EveryMac got squat, didn't think to check Gamba, it's probably on that chart as well . . .

edit:

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/cpumonmatrix.html

. . . nope, no sync rate info, Scan dump time!

 

[olePigeon]

You might be able to find a cheap NEC MultiSync LCD somewhere.  Those supports frequencies from 58Hz to 90Hz.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Are the Dell UltraSharps rebranded NEC displays? ISTR something along those lines.

 

[snake88usa]

Also I have another question. The IIci has a video card of some sort. I also plugged into that too. I'll have to check that later. Will any avg CRT work too?

 

[olePigeon]

CRT would be the easiest.

 

[trag]

Does the IIci even support VGA? Curious, seems doubtful as it was introduced in 1998 with the very first built-in Video implementation for the Mac. The VGA spec was released in 1987 while the IIci was in development.

It works with some VGA monitors. For example, the old Viewsonic 14e and 15e CRT models from the early-mid 90s.

It will not, however, work with the Apple Basic Color Display which was a .39 pitch shadow mask, VGA monitor with a Mac to VGA adapter attached. It works fine with the original 14" trinitron and the Apple Color Plus Display (14", .28 (.26?) shadow mask).

 

[Elfen]

I have an LC connected to a Gateway EV700 17in monitor. The issue is to get the adapter set to 600X480, and have H-Sync, V-Sync and Composite signals on - with what ever switches set that. Since I have that set on the LC, I can use it on another LC I just fixed (it needs a floppy drive, the one it has is not reading disks), the IIfx with its 24bit card, and on my Power5300ce through its Monitor Out-Jack.

All adapters are different, that I know. It is just getting the setting right until it turns on the monitor. That is if the monitor can accept Mac signals. If it VGA at its minimum, it should be able too. The hard part is to get it to work on other settings - then you need to play with the switches once again and hope you get it right.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Also I have another question. The IIci has a video card of some sort.

Which VidCard? Brand, Declaration ROM sticker info, PCB ©date? Another Mac for testing?

Hopefully it's not chicken/egg time:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/9157-peripherals-links-project-rev-30/&do=findComment&comment=96711

Will any avg CRT work too?

Set your adapter up for 640x480 VGA and see. That's usually the least common denominator for any NuBus VidCard manufactured in the VERY late 80s/early 90s with the notable exception anything from inside the Infinite Loopiness.

I cannot stress this enough, EVERY Mac collector needs to source a MultiSync CRT for testing purposes before they all make their way into the dumpster in the sky, 17" is a good compromise for size, preferably made by anyone BUT Apple.

 

[Gorgonops]

Don't those really old Mac video cards do sync-on-green instead of standard separate sync? Unless the LCD you're working with is *really* picky that's probably the problem.

 

[wilykat]

Mac Centris 610 do have sync on green and requires the Basic Color Monitor extension to disable it to use video on non-Mac displays as well as Apple's kooky VGA wanna-be Basic Color Monitor (only does 640x480, nothing else)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

ALL LCDs are *really* picky, some are fairly polite at times and some are * just * plain * nasty about it.

 

[insaneboy]

I used an LG 15" LCD on a IIci  also Powerbook 165, 180, Sun SparcStation 5, BeBox, DEC Multia...  

For the IIci just used an adaptor I had sitting about...   think Uniserver has that now(sent him a bunch of misc bits), he also has that IIci as well. heh. 

 

[olePigeon]

I have 2 LCDs that I won't need in a few days, assuming my replacement display is in working order.  They both work on my IIci with both the onboard and Radius display.

 

[wilykat]

ALL LCDs are *really* picky, some are fairly polite at times and some are * just * plain * nasty about it.

QFT

Even LCD TV are picky for some reason.  I had to return LCD TV twice because it didn't work with Nintendo 64.  The first one only displayed red/yellow/green/black via composite but was normal with DVD player and same composite input.   Second one kept spitting no signal, didn't matter which input or if I hired a witch doctor the only thing that worked was Blu-ray player and HDMI or over the air digital TV signal.   The third one worked with most of my older game consoles and didn't give me trouble except with Atari 2600.  (to be fair, Atari 2600 weren't NTSC spec and used lazy 240i and not properly output all 525 lines including blanking)

I've kept a few good CRT monitors just for the older game systems and for my Commodore 128D.

 

[trag]

ALL LCDs are *really* picky, some are fairly polite at times and some are * just * plain * nasty about it.

The IBM T85A and T85D are extremely courteous and polite. However, they were manufactured back in 2001, approximately. Still, they are/were nice 1280 X 1024 LCD panels.

These folks claim to still have brand new ones for sale:

http://www.chicagocomputersupply.com/ibm18tftt8fl.html

1024 x 768 / 60 Hz

832 x 624 / 75 Hz

800 x 600 / 75 Hz

800 x 600 / 72 Hz

800 x 600 / 60 Hz

800 x 600 / 56 Hz

640 x 480 / 75 Hz

640 x 480 / 72 Hz

640 x 480 / 66 Hz

640 x 480 / 60 Hz

720 x 400 / 70 Hz

640 x 350 / 70 Hz

1280 x 1024 / 76 Hz

1280 x 1024 / 75 Hz

1280 x 1024 / 72 Hz

1280 x 1024 / 60 Hz

1152 x 870 / 75 Hz

1024 x 768 / 75 Hz

1024 x 768 / 70 Hz

http://www.cnet.com/products/ibm-t85a-lcd-monitor-18-1-series/specs/

 

[Gorgonops]

To second that: perhaps somewhat ironically older LCD monitors seem to be nicer about oddball video modes than current ones, undoubtedly because when they started appearing in droves back in the early 'aughts there was still a "considerably greater than non-zero" chance that someone might want to hook one up to a computer that didn't necessarily base its decisions about what video mode it output on the list of supported resolutions announced over the VESA DDC channel. These days the manufacturers seem to make the assumption that your client is going to be polite and not try colouring outside the lines.

A specific use case I'll mention that actually doesn't even involve VGA: Apple's DVI Cinema Displays are pretty much the worst case when it comes to backwards compatibility. If you hook one up to a PC video card made before around late 2005-ish there's a good chance you won't see anything until your Windowing system loads because cards prior to that weren't smart enough to use the DDC information to pick a "supported by the monitor" video mode for DOS/BIOS messages. (They made the assumption that any connected monitor should be able to support legacy VGA text/graphics modes, which wasn't a bad assumption at the time.) I know this because when I originally received a 2006 Mac Pro with a pair of 23" Cinema displays as a company workstation I was initially annoyed enough with trying to move my workflow over to OS X and the difficulty of getting Linux on it that I considered swapping the machine for a big Dell workstation, but the nVidia cards in said workstation were useless with the Cinema monitors (which I wanted to keep)... or at least would leave you blind until X11 loaded. It did turn out that the ATI card in my little OptiPlex 280 SFF *was* smart enough to display its BIOS messages on said monitors so I actually used it for another month or so until Apple released a firmware update for the Mac Pro that had actually *working* legacy BIOS emulation allowing me to boot Linux without the gotchyas that came with using the EFI loader.

Granted I don't really blame Apple for not caring about whether their monitors worked on a PC. That's not how they roll.

 

[QuicksilverMac2001]

I have a Macintosh IIci that I needed a monitor for and I found the Samsung SyncMaster 731N works because it supports all the different methods of sync (H/V sync, composite sync, & sync on green even) as the ancient Apple CRT it was designed to go with, and it supports 640x480 at 67Hz, so with the Enhance Liberty VGA to Mac Adapter (didn't want to play a guessing game of "will this cheaper adapter work" with a Macintosh IIci that I needed running ASAP for the minimum amount of money spent), and I would hope that since the monitor I recommended is so compatible that you may not need an adapter as fancy as the one I am using, I just didn't want any risk of hassle so I bought the over endowed adapter just in case the Samsung monitor died and I had to use something less compassionate.

It seems weird to see a Macintosh IIci drive a flat screen LCD monitor on built-in video, but it's so satisfying at the same time.