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MICRON XCEED GREYSCALE ON EBAY!!

just.in.time

Well-known member
Yeah, the price is a little outside of what I'm comfortable investing into my SE/30, but wow is it a nice piece of tech...

 

Anonymous Freak

Well-known member
Someone else is selling the 48 MB RAM upgrade card for the Duo 2300c for $6500! Okay, people, vintage computers are "worth money," but not *THAT* much!  Considering someone else is selling the 40 MB module for $170, I'd say that's a hell of a premium for an extra 8 MB...

Now I need to find my 2300c, it has the 48 MB card in it, I COULD BE RICH, RICH, RICH I TELL YOU!

 

just.in.time

Well-known member
I'm semi seriously considering the xceed card for me SE/30. However, I keep thinking that if I want greyscale, I can always just use my color classic and set it to greyscale.

I agree though, some things are definitely worth a pretty penny, but $6k+ for a ram card is definitely pushing the limits way out. Haha it better be certified for use in space at that price.

 

tjjq44

Well-known member
$1250!!! This guy is like a little boy dreaming lol. Nobody will buy such a thing for such a price :)

In addition, I'm pretty sure one day someone will design an Xceed clone as Bmow did with its floppy/hd20 emu, and since it's hidden inside the mac it won't depreciate the whole thing value compared to an original one ;)

 
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kreats

Well-known member
RAM cards can be manufactured - xceed cards cannot (unless you get those docs from the ebay auction). I'd say card+greyscale would have a minimum price of $700 these days. So while $1200 is a stretch - years of waiting for the next one has it's own cost.

The only thing that would be in it's favour is that if you regard it as an antique that won't go out of fashion, you can probably sell it for at least as much as you paid later on. Perhaps even at a profit.

Making the years of use you get out of it free. Can't say that much for most computer parts - they halve in value in 6 months.

 
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just.in.time

Well-known member
That's why I'm torn.  I have no idea when the next one will become available.  That, and I would have to take my ethernet card out for this card to work.

 

techknight

Well-known member
With a little effort, its not that hard to make a video card. Honestly. Sure it takes more dedicated time and resources than 99.9% (including myself) want to put into this hobby, but it can be done. 

video cards of this era are just framebuffers with a DeclRom that allows a driver to load in the appropriate location to allow the card to work, since its an internal grayscale card that doesnt use an external monitor, it would take entirely over the internal video hardware. In those days, all the drawing and rendering, instructions, etc were all done on the CPU and just sent to the frame buffer. Either in internal RAM, or a DeclROM telling it otherwise. The video hardware itself was nothing more than a DAC with dedicated frame buffer memory. 

the DeclROM has to contain at the very minimum a low level driver that sets up the screen buffer and hooks the OS to use it, otherwise the screen would stay black and nothing would happen until a software driver loaded. 

They make dedicated embedded GPUs these days, so it would even be easier to make it work and being able to support more features than originally by moving all the drawing and rendering from the CPU over to the GPU effectively making it an "Accelerator". but again. Driver.... 

I think there is a designing hardware, or an inside macintosh book that has an example of a video card declROM and how it works. 

 
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kreats

Well-known member
Sure - but all parts and labor it'd probably cost $400 to make profitably (yoke board, main board and wiring harnesses, driver development, assembly, testing, packaging, etc, etc) - and hence wouldn't be made.

Easier to make a clone of artmix's boards.. he gets $200 for a board with 1 pal on it!

 
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tjjq44

Well-known member
I already own a SE/30 with a video card inside, the card works well for driving external monitors (640*480 up to 256 colors) but lacks the internal greyscale feature (As far as I remember I only paid $50 for the mac and the card). Many years ago I was looking on Xceed with greyscale adapter (and they were far cheaper, about $200, in that time)... Sure with the micron Xceed you can "internal greyscale" but what really for since color capable software are designed for at least 512*384, never for 512*342 resolution? And when using this mode, external monitor has to be set to B&W!!! It's a cool gadget but you'll quickly get bored since except for shaded windows or pictures slide shows maybe, it's quite useless...

 

kreats

Well-known member
External monitor isn't the draw of the card.. you may as well use a more powerful mac.

It's just the technical wizardry of having greyscale on a mac that wasn't designed for it. Coupled with the multi slot upgrades it's really quite impressive.

Useful? No, not really. But neither is a Thunder IV graphics card - and they cost a lot too.

Browsing the web on a se/30 probably the main utility of it. Though you'll have to restrict yourself to a subset of older pages.

 
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tjjq44

Well-known member
I agree with that, but even if I can consider people who spend more than $1000 for a real and rare apple product (Lisa, mac 128k...), I doubt these card will get more value in time (and they don't actually mark as much anyway!), especially if someone one day makes a "clone"... But there are wealthy people all over the world and spending $1250 is for them as spending $12.50 for me lol :D

To my mind there's good chance that this item get listed further and further, unless the seller accepts a lower offer? ;)

 
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kreats

Well-known member
Well that's the funny thing.. mac128k is even more useless. I owned one as my main computer back in the day and the floppy disk swapping drives you mad. It is a "prestige" paperweight that you can't upgrade and can barely use.

Lisa however is more unique and I agree there.

Many people also talk about the IBM 5150 until they actually try the thing.. you can count the delay before characters echo to the screen after typing.

Everything is available in emulation - it does not destroy the market for the original most times (although I expect the new Neo Geo rom cart to do exactly that).

Functional art is the most apt description. Like a vintage car perhaps. Not many drive their model T around though...

 
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techknight

Well-known member
Sure the Mac 128K is practically useless, But I think its the whole "cult" of actually owning it and what it did and meant back then that makes it valuable to people. I guess that goes with knickknacks, or any other type of collectible that sits and collects dust. 

 

kreats

Well-known member
Well "historical" and "classic" are two different things. 128k is historical (but really is just a crippled 512k), se/30 is a classic. If I could only have one computer, I'd rather have the pimped out se/30.

It's probably worth about $2000 atm wth all cards anyway (030/040,xceed greyscale,ethernet,iisi adaptor/twinspark,etc).

Owning one actually shows you know a fair bit about macs too.

 
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Marco030

New member
Well, there may be an xceed card on ebay soon. I was thinking of bringing the se/30 I bought new in 88 or 89 to the thrift store but decided to check its value first. An se/30 not a lot of value But different story for the Xceed card and greyscale adapter for the internal screen that I also bought and installed back when.

I have received a private offer but thinking it's probably worth more than the offer. I would sell it with the mac to avoid potential damage removing the card and adapter. The mac still works. It has wordperfect 2.1 (wont load because it cant find a preference file) and macvision. Wish i still had the digitizer and 14 bw apple monitor i bought when i hot the Xceed card.

 
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