Radius Color Pivot monitor not pivoting

[elemenoh]

I have a Radius Color Pivot monitor connected to a Quadra 950 with a Radius 8-24X card. The Quadra is running System 7.5 with RadiusWare 3.4 which contains Dynamic Desktop 1.42.

The monitor is recognized and displays okay. Dynamic Desktop recognizes both the built-in video at Slot 0 and the Radius PrecisionColor 8-24X card in Slot A. The Monitors control panel recognizes the monitor as "Portrait / Pivot".

When I rotate the monitor, it makes the degaussing ping, but the orientation on screen is not changed.

From what I read about this *Color* Pivot is that it doesn't require a special card to do its pivot magic. It's all supposed to be in software. So, for anyone who knows about these, what else should I try to get it working? Different version of RadiusWare?

 

[elemenoh]

I ended up getting a different DIP-switch VGA to Mac adaptor in case the 6-DIP version I had was no good.

I've tried nearly every conceivable combo, but am not getting great results.

If I set the adaptor to 2467 (15" TILT) I do get portrait video, but no options to change resolution and no change to the display when pivoting, even after reboot.

I tried flipping the switch on the back of the monitor from "Built-in Video" to "Pivot Interface" since I do have it plugged into a Radius card, but that didn't change anything.

Any other ideas? I've attached the manual for the adaptor in case someone has a recommended setting. I think I've tried all of the Mode 5 settings and all of the multi-sync settings already. Most lead to garbled or truncated video.

View attachment 10-dip-adaptor-manual1.pdf

View attachment 10-dip-adaptor-manual2.pdf

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

From what I vaguely recall, there's hi-low state indication on one of the lines. I think it was with BMOW that I was discussing making the equivalent of a mercury switch that uses a ball to signal orientation for some reason or other. Have you read through the Radius Q&A Archive?

 

[omidimo]

Did you try installing SoftPivot?

 

[elemenoh]

@omidimo Thanks! I installed it on both System 7.5 and 8 partitions. Now, it'll start booting in portrait and switch to landscape during boot, regardless of the physical orientation of the monitor. If I physically pivot the monitor the resolution doesn't change from landscape. I tried this on both the Radius card and built-in video and set the switch on the back of the monitor accordingly. Any other ideas?

Other notes:

The control panel is set to Color Pivot and 256 colors on built-in video.

There are no other resolution options in the Dynamic Desktop context menu or in the Monitors control panel.

I still have the DIP switch adaptor set to 15" TILT.

 

[omidimo]

SoftPivot 3.2.1 only had official support until System 7.5.1. If you can try booting off a disc in 7.1 and soft pivot to see if it works. You can ways get the dedicated nubus card too. 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

A dedicated Card is probably the best bet, but I'm curious as to why you're using a VGA adapter? If the connector on the built-in cable is HD-15 for VGA, you may have a PC version of the Pivot? I'd study the Q&A in depth, hopefully the Pivot isn't as complicated in terms of compatibility as the FPD series, but PC<->Mac versions may be almost as bad.

 

[omidimo]

My greyscale pivot has the HD15 port too, and it was a Mac product. It came with a HD15 to DB15 cable. 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Interesting, that would definitely retain the pivot state signal if a dedicated Radius cable. Try yours with a Standard HD15 to HD15 VGA cable and VGA adapter to see if it breaks the connection to duplicate LMNO's results.

edit: oopsie! Dedicated card is likely to exhibit the same resultss if the problem is in the HD15 cable/VGA adapter combo as I suspect. Methinks it may be a VGA Adapter switch setting issue. Adapter's are ON/OFF state DIP switches and the sense line for pivoting is a Hi-Low signal on a specific line IIRC. If that adapter setting is "off" it can't be pulled High. Dunno if it was one of the sense lines, really can't remember, but that would make sense.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Duh oh! pivot + mercury + switch  [:I]

 

[omidimo]

Looked at the manual, lists DB-9 and DB-15 cables as options for FDP & Pivot cards. I should dig out the monitor out of storage.  

 

[elemenoh]

I do have a Color Pivot Nubus card I can try. I did previously and had similar results, but that was before getting the new DIP switch adapter and SoftPivot software. Though, it seems the SoftPivot software is only needed if using built-in video.

I'm still unclear about the cable. Do I need some special cable or can I make the VGA+10DIP adapter work?

 

[elemenoh]

Update

I installed System 7.1 on another partition along with SoftPivot 3.2.1.

I connected the monitor to built-in video and got the same result. SoftPivot loads and changes the orientation to landscape regardless of the monitor's physical orientation. Pivoting after boot does nothing. Dynamic Desktop does not show other resolution options.

I installed the Color Pivot Nubus card, flipped the switch on the back of the monitor to "Pivot Interface" and rebooted. Same issue as above, except that the whole screen renders too high and the menu bar is cut off at the top.

So it has to be something up with the cable, right? I'm attaching a photo of the back of my monitor. You can see it's Model 0277 and has the HD15 female connection as well as the interface toggle switch.

Might it be possible to get this working with the DIP switch adaptor?

If not, will I need to make a custom cable? Would I need to follow this pinout? http://archive.retro.co.za/mirrors/68000/www.vintagemacworld.com/radius/0029.html

Thanks!





View attachment IMG_8319.mov

 

[omidimo]

The cable is the wild card here, custom cable based on the link is the way to go as its how the product worked. 

 

[elemenoh]

I found an original unopened 590-0029 on eBay for a not-terrible price so I went ahead and bought that. So one less skill to learn for now.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

When you found the link to the 590-0029 cable, did it say it was for the Pivot and if so, which model?

@bigmessowires report doesn't jibe with that pinout as far as I can tell.

Pivoting success! The on-the-fly pivoting feature doesn't work unless you have the Radius DynamicDesktop software installed. Once you've got that, grounding Pivot pins 4 & 10 will cause the display to rotate to portrait mode. Disconnecting ground will cause it to rotate back to landscape mode. The monitor never sees a change in resolution - the pivoting is all done in software.

One big drawback, though - it only works if you boot in landscape mode, and then switch to portrait mode. If you boot in portrait mode, the Mac thinks you've got a 512 x 384 12" display. It boots OK, but my LCD monitor won't display that resolution. There are some hints about this issue in this old Radius doc, but not much detail. Possibly real Pivot monitors always identify themselves as a landscape display at first, then change their sense code to indicate portrait mode only after the Mac has booted - but how would they know when that is?

With this information, it should be easy to build a video cable with a "pivot now" switch, but you'd have to make sure the switch was initially off whenever you booted up.

So to recap: connecting sense code pins 4 and 10 on the Pivot side will give you 832 x 624 landscape video. You need to boot with that sense code. After booting, grounding either pin (while still keeping them connected to each other as well) will pivot the display to portrait mode, but this is a software feature and the video signal remains 832 x 624. The pivoting to portrait mode only works if the Radius software is installed on your Mac.

Lines 4 & 10 of that pinout don't make much sense to me. If you buzz the connections on your VGA Adapter to find out which switches control pins 4 & 10, we might have a starting point for testing if the cable doesn't isn't the right part.

edit: found the link, hopefully that cable will solve everything. Very interested in finding out if the pinout checks out against the cable when you get it. Strange stuff. :blink:

 

[elemenoh]

The 590-0029 cable did the trick!!

Color Pivot glory!

I'll follow up with the pinout and share here in the next few days.

Thanks for the help!

 

[omidimo]

Excellent news! Glad it was just a cable and not a busted display. Enjoy the glory of pivoting. 

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Fabulous, so glad that did the trick! Thanks for posting the video, I'm not sure I've ever seen a Pivot in action before this.