Micron Xceed Original Price?

[MacSE/30]

I have an SE/30 w/ Turbo 040 & Lapis DisplayServer. I always wanted to try the Micron Xceed Gray-Scale, but always hesitated because it is not compatible w/ Xceed and 030 cards do not offer much speed IMHO. When I saw this card on ebay I thought I should give it a try and I was ready to spend ~350$ but this card was sold for stunning 565$! And it did not have the gray-scale adapter. Even w/ a replica card total price can go up to 650$ 8-o

What was the Xceed's original price anyway? :?:

There is so much demand for Gray-Scale SE/30 yet nobody answered my post about designing a grayscale adapter for standard DB-9 or DB-15 output of a SE/30 PDS video card?

 

[003]

Do you need the schematic for the gs adapter? I think I can find a copy of that if you need it. The lack of info here about the xceed grayscale setup is because of how rare and expensive it is.

 

[Charlieman]

Jeff Walther knows a lot about the Xceed card. Alas, he hasn't joined the "new" 68KMLA yet, but he is still active on AF.

 

[trag]

Jeff Walther knows a lot about the Xceed card. Alas, he hasn't joined the "new" 68KMLA yet, but he is still active on AF.

I don't know all that much about it. For example, I do not have one. I have been examining the available information and Apple's publications from the era with an eye to producing a modern alternative. But no one should hold their breath in anticipation. I am not very fast at such projects.

Also, I'm having a bit of preliminary design consternation. The interface to the SE/30 PDS slot seems to require about 97 signal lines. And, I'd like to have about 32 data lines to graphics RAM, and 20 address lines to graphics RAM, plus another ten or so lines to the monitor port(s). This makes about 160 signal lines and the largest, hand solderable FPGAs come up a little short of that.

I can probably work around it, but it would be really nice for the PDS slot interface to use different signal lines from the graphics RAM interface, because one runs at 16 MHz and the other could run at up to 200 MHz.

So, I'm looking at which FPGA developer kit to buy and none of them seems to quite fit the bill. Digilent's Operations Manager tells me they may have something a bit more fitting in late summer...

 

[trag]

On the topic of the grayscale adapter. I have not examined the schematic in any detail. Does anyone know how the thing works, in broad stroked description?

My uneducated guess is that it substitutes its own signal for the pixel drive (white dot, black dot, gray dot), not sure what that should be called, and somehow synchronizes with the existing screen timing (i.e. the timing for horizontal and vertical scan lines).

So, it would take the pixel "color" from the map in the video RAM on the Xceed board, but would deliver the relevant "pixels" in time with the scan timing already produced by the SE/30's analog board.

But that's a guess...

 

[wally]

The US patent number is 5,307,083 and it is most easily downloaded from http://www.pat2pdf.org/ [] ]'>

 

[MacSE/30]

I have all the schematics and patents of the Xceed Gray-Scale if anyone is interested I can send them.

By the way I bought a 9" 800 x 600 B&W SVGA monitor 20$ w/ shipping in my spare time I will replace the SE/30's monitor and connect it to my Lapis card with a Mac2VGA adapter.

A lot cheaper than buying an Xceed card w/o Gray-Scale adapter for $565.

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[Gary_W]

Cool, please be sure to keep us updated on this project!

Gary