SE/30 - With colour screen?

[phreakindee]

I have a few Macintosh games laying around and got to looking at their system requirements... many have lists of supported systems for colour and black & white. On several games (SimAnt, Lemmings come to mind), the SE/30 is listed as a colour system. I thought the SE/30 was a b&w monitor, the last and fastest of the b&w display classics in fact?

 

[~tl]

The SE/30 is B&W -- though it can be made grayscale with a somewhat rare, 3rd party, upgrade. I guess the system requirements are wrong [)] ]'>

 

[tomlee59]

It might also be the case that the games merely require color QuickDraw support to operate. The SE/30 satisfies that requirement, despite having a monochrome screen.

 

[wally]

See http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/info/hdwr/se30-monitor-options.txt for several ways to add external color monitors.

 

[JDW]

Of course, in this day and age, it only makes sense to add a flat panel color display to your SE/30. Not sure of the connection caveats though, as I've never tried it. But smaller, low-rez LCDs are not that expensive anymore. They may be rather hard to find in the US, but they are commonly found here in Japan.

I still think a nifty color screen upgrade would be to put an LCD inside the SE/30. It's a major hack and not for the purist among us. But I am mainly speaking about a screen swap versus a brain swap. The logic board and all the electronics would be stock (with the exception of a video card that would be needed and possibly a secondary PSU to drive the LCD. Since some people have replaced the guts of a compact Mac with a Mac Mini and LCD, I would think that it should be possible to retain the internals of the SE/30 while simply swapping the CRT technology for color LCD. And it would be especially fund if the resolution was switchable, with one choice being the native resolution of the 9" CRT, perhaps with a secondary choice being 640x480.

 

[Scott Baret]

JDW, do you have any links to sites offering 640 x 480 LCD monitors? I'm thinking of getting one for my Quadra 700.

 

[JDW]

Scott, to buy a lot of these older LCDs, you really need to visit a local electronics shopping area here in Japan. Some of the sellers don't even know what the internet is!

But here are some Japanese web page links:

http://www.nextro.com/nextro/english/i30.html

http://ameblo.jp/macmini/entry-10008816062.html

http://www.gaudi.ne.jp/kit/lcd_list.html

http://www.technocrest.co.jp/LCD/lcdkit.html

 

[TylerEss]

Everybody else said it in much more detail, but the real short of it is that the (stock) SE/30, PowerBook 140, and PowerBook 170 are color macs that just happen to only display 1-bit color (or, as you and I would call it, black-and-white).

 

[trag]

JDW, do you have any links to sites offering 640 x 480 LCD monitors? I'm thinking of getting one for my Quadra 700.

Ebay seller UMO88 was selling lots of ten or twelve 640 X 480 LCD displays a while back. They were going for about $200 - $300. I was kind of shooting for about $10 each so I never bought one. I think they were 6" screens but they actually looked about the right size to fit in the SE/30. I"ve tried holding up some of the "9") LCD panels and they usually seem a little large to fit in the SE/30 case.

However, these were displays, not whole monitors. One would still need electronics to drive the LCD dispaly.

Ebay/business, industrial & test/electronic components is often a good place to search for this kind of stuff.

 

[JDW]

Ebay seller UMO88 was selling lots of ten or twelve 640 X 480 LCD displays a while back. They were going for about $200 - $300.

I've been posting about EBAY rip-offs in another thread . This too is a rip-off. For I can purchase a 17" hi-rez, brand new LCD from DELL Japan, with analog and digital connects for that price.

I personally wouldn't pay more than $50 for a 640x480 display of any size.

 

[Bunsen]

Uh, I assume he means $200-$300 per lot of ten-twelve screens, not per screen.

And whether you consider it a ripoff or not, for some reason small LCDs do cost more than 15-17" ones. I guess the mass production of the "standard" sizes drives the price down.

It still annoys the crap out of me.

 

[Mac128]

And whether you consider it a ripoff or not, for some reason small LCDs do cost more than 15-17" ones. I guess the mass production of the "standard" sizes drives the price down.

Simple economics, supply & demand.

 

[JDW]

Simple economics, supply & demand.

Ｗith respect to these specialty LCDs, I will agree (I misread about the $200 price being for EACH screen). But considering the ample supply of Mac 128k's sold on EBAY every single day, I find a selling price of $2499 for the "collector's system" mentioned in the other thread a bit hard to accept. I wonder who is going to "demand" that system at that price. Then again, with EBAY prices being what they are, I wouldn't put it past someone to pay that!

 

[trag]

Uh, I assume he means $200-$300 per lot of ten-twelve screens, not per screen.

Yes. Sorry. My language was somewhat ambiguous. The lots of 10 or 12 (don't remember which) were going for a total price of $200 - $300, sometimes under $200. They sold a bunch of lots like that. So the unit price was about $20 each, which was still higher than I wanted to pay.

 

[Bunsen]

Where these colour or monochrome? Bare panels or VGA/AV monitors?

 

[JDW]

Trag, I would pay $20 for a nice 640x480 LCD that is active matrix and of the right dimensions. I surely would! That's especially true if it had VGA or another common interface connection built into it.

 

[trag]

Where these colour or monochrome? Bare panels or VGA/AV monitors?

They were color 640 X 480. They were bare panels with the backlight driving circuit.

I do not know if they were active or passive, but is anyone making passive any more?

 

[trag]

Trag, I would pay $20 for a nice 640x480 LCD that is active matrix and of the right dimensions. I surely would! That's especially true if it had VGA or another common interface connection built into it.

Ahh, I found my old snipeswipe entry. The auctions are older than I thought, old enough to be expired from Ebay. The screens were TFT and the part number was NEC NL6448AC20-06.

I would pay $20 for one of them. In fact, later they sold some singleton lots on which I bid, but which went for $36 - $50+ each. However, for alot of ten, I really didn't want to put more than $120 - $130 (with shipping) into it, because I don't know when I would ever get around to using them.

Ah, here's a singleton lot which is still viewable on Ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260236911921

 

[JDW]

The 640x470 TFT went for $45, trag. I think that's a fair price for what you get. Thanks for sharing.