• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Powerbook 150 - screen is blank

insaneboy

Well-known member
I'm just giving up on the POS 150 I got, I'd still like to get one some day, a much nicer one though. for the IDE drive and 40MB RAM capacity. For now I'll stick with the 180.

 
Some progress!

Apple Developer technote for this machine contains block diagram and describes *some* of the hardware. Found here:

http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/#documentation/Hardware/hardware2.html

It tells us that "The Display is a 9.5-inch flat panel film super twist nematic (FSTN)

dual-scan liquid crystal display (LCD). It provides 640-by-480 2-bit per pixel resolution, is

capable of displaying 4 levels of gray, and has on-demand cold cathode fluorescent lamp

(CCFL) backlighting.

The video implementation on the PowerBook 150 is similar to the video on the

PowerBook Duo 230. The video RAM is a 128K x 8-bit device that stores the data required

to update and refresh the flat-panel video display. The VRAM for the PowerBook 150 is

mapped to locations $6000 0000 through $6080 0000, as it is on

the PowerBook Duo family. The display hardware supports 1-bit and 2-bit per-pixel

grayscale. The value for the PowerBook 150 panel ID is 4."

More importantly, I learned that the "GSC" chip stands for Grey Scale Controller and is actually a Chips and Technology Video Controller chip. In most cases, I think they used the 65525, but I will confirm from the hardware. If that is the case, I have the Application notes with pinouts for that chip, which will tell me the pinouts on the LCD ribbon...

 
Np joy!

I cannot find the app notes for the CHIPS & Technology F65210A. They got bought by Intel, later divested to Asiliant, after that, who knows. The parts are still around, but try to find the specs/notes!

Also no joy finding specs or pinouts for the Casio/ACER MD800TT10-C1...

If anyone else has these, please let me know!

 
Just getting back to this. I guess I will need to get the 'scope out of storage, and will definitely consider re-capping the display.

Just hope that it doesn't turn out to be the Grey-Scale chip. I guess the scope will tell us whether the signals are on the ribbon or not.

Still looking for specs on that GS Controller, if anyone has found them...

 
Top