Seeking beta testers for Mac Sync-inator VGA sync converter

[Arbee]

Pinout here for the ///: https://apple3.org/Documents/Technotes/TA30822.html

It's worded confusingly, but I believe it's RGBI (the 4 pins are R/G/B and intensity).

 

[Arbee]

https://www.esocop.org/docs/UsingAppleIIRGBonAnalog.pdf gives the Apple II card pinouts, and also better explains that it is indeed RGBI.

 

[dcr]

I don't understand the post office. Shipped from California, at this rate the beta hardware sent to Sweden will arrive before hardware sent to Indiana. pokes at mailbox with stick

IMHO, the post office (and UPS and FedEx) are all worse now than they were 20-30 years ago.

I wonder if it's because, back when they started to become computerized, the people that did the sorting and delivering all knew their stuff and that, nowadays, people are too dependent on computers and assume whatever the computer spits out is right.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Looks like the TTL RGB plug is the same except for some reason Apple flipped the red and green channel. There are quite a few CGA to analog DACs out there already. ggLABS makes one and necroware has plans online for a GAL based version: https://github.com/necroware/mce-adapter . The difference is, PC CGA always used separate sync and adds a bit of green to the yellow color to give you "brown".

 

[mg.man]

If you end up needing more beta testers, I'd be interested. I have a bag of Mac-to-VGA adapters, a couple older VGA monitors and more than a few Macs

^^^ what @dcr said. In addition to a similar collection, I also have a few - what I believe to be - "TTL" video cards that have 9 pin (mono) outputs. Have you thought about ingesting that sort of input and regurgitating "VGA"? Obviously, you'd need to map 9 pin to 15, and some (most?) of those cards probably output some fixed / odd-ball resolution. Just a thought tho.....

 

[Phipli]

I don't understand the post office. Shipped from California, at this rate the beta hardware sent to Sweden will arrive before hardware sent to Indiana. pokes at mailbox with stick

@NJRoadfan or @Arbee do you know where I could find the complete pinout for those TTL-level Apple II / Apple III cards? Is it RGB or RGBI (eight colors plus intensity)? It's almost surely out of scope for the Sync-inator, but maybe combined with another passive level shifter...

The US Postal system is visibly much slower and more expensive than similar systems in the rest of the world. I've had things ship from the UK to Australia with the cheapest post, faster than something has crossed the US to  get to the export customs, then it sit's there for a week.

The other thing is price. I can ship a small box to the US for about £3... the other direction seems to be several times more. It's quite strange, usually we pay more for just about everything.

On the plus side, I suspect your postal system hasn't wrongly convicted 700 of its own staff for theft, instead of admitting the accounting software had known bugs. Swings and roundabouts.

 

[Phipli]

^^^ what @dcr said. In addition to a similar collection, I also have a few - what I believe to be - "TTL" video cards that have 9 pin (mono) outputs. Have you thought about ingesting that sort of input and regurgitating "VGA"? Obviously, you'd need to map 9 pin to 15, and some (most?) of those cards probably output some fixed / odd-ball resolution. Just a thought tho.....

A lot of those weird cards are ECL, and not easy to convert. The TTL stuff is a walk in the park compared to ECL.

 

[mg.man]

I also have a few - what I believe to be - "TTL" video cards that have 9 pin (mono) outputs.

I suppose I could send the cards your way? I have at least one card + 9pin output connector that came out of a Mac Plus - I believe it was used with a large external monitor for displaying engineering drawings. The Plus was ex-Western Electric UK.

I beliece there were loads of other "compact Mac" video cards -- that outputted TTL video?

 

[mg.man]

A lot of those weird cards are ECL

Ah, yeah, I recall seeing that mentioned too... sounds like a great challenge!

 

[Phipli]

I suppose I could send the cards your way? I have at least one card + 9pin output connector that came out of a Mac Plus - I believe it was used with a large external monitor for displaying engineering drawings. The Plus was ex-Western Electric UK.

I beliece there were loads of other "compact Mac" video cards -- that outputted TTL video?

I'm not sure... Are we getting sidetracked? @bigmessowires is trying to test his Macintosh to VGA adapter with fancy sync features...

There is a lot of talk here about things that weren't in the product specification - TTL/9 pin, 8 bit computers and all sorts.

Perhaps that's... for another day? Would it help bigmessowires to test for the intended purpose for now, and perhaps another thread to consider other possibilities for other machines... I mean... TTL/ECL/TTL RGB and TTL RGBI... I've seen at least three other adapters mentioned that are physically and electrically different to the one we have here. It sounds like the design is usable on a IIgs by happy coincidence (at own risk given I think I understand that you could potentially do something nasty with the switches?) But... Perhaps testing on 15 pin apple RGB video outputs is what would help most for now?

 

[mg.man]

Just thinking out loud - didn't know that was a crime. I have lots of "15 pin" stuff and am happy to help with the primary effort.

 

[Phipli]

Just thinking out loud - didn't know that was a crime. I have lots of "15 pin" stuff and am happy to help with the primary effort.

I didn't mean to criticise, it's it's just the stuff being discussed is most likely another product, just hoping that is understood so the testing / expectations are realistic.

It can also be a bit rough on the designer when there are more comments on what your design should do, rather than can do... Speaking from experience.

 

[mg.man]

It can also be a bit rough on the designer when there are more comments on what your design should do

Understood, but there was NO implication his nifty device should do anything other than what it's designed for. Why not let the designer comment / shoot this down rather that deciding for him? FWIW, I think his stuff is AWESOME!! Love my FloppyEMUs!!!

 

[Phipli]

Understood, but there was NO implication his nifty device should do anything other than what it's designed for. Why not let the designer comment / shoot this down rather that deciding for him? FWIW, I think his stuff is AWESOME!! Love my FloppyEMUs!!!

Sorry @mg.man I didn't mean to cause offence.

 

[bigmessowires]

I looked at the pinout for those 8-bit Apple TTL adapters and it's definitely out of scope for what the Sync-inator is intended to do, sorry. It's a physical adapter for DB15 to DE15 with an optional composite sync splitter, that much is in common. But an Apple TTL adapter would also need a different pin mapping for the I-intensity channel at a minimum, plus some analog circuit for mixing TTL-level RGBI down to 0.7v analog level RGB. But you could certainly imagine a different device (the TTL-inator??) that does the job, and that shares a lot of the same foundation as the Sync-inator. I'm not sure there would be very much demand for such a thing though.

 

[LaPorta]

Been fooling around with mine…what a cool device! Question: if both CSYNC and H/VSYNC LEDs are lit, what does that mean?

 

[LaPorta]

It actually does enable my Apple Studio Display 15” to work on my IIfx with RasterOps Paint Board Li NuBus card! Wont work with my ColorCard/24, however…not sure why just yet. The Studio Display does display some odd lines depending on the resolution. Sometimes it happens with the Dell display I have hooked up with the usual adapter to the Li, as with the sync-in-ator: is this maybe a card issue?

 

[LaPorta]

Well, after adjusting the monitor tracking, it works! The colors aren’t great, but I think that is because this monitor doesn’t have any ability to color adjust natively: software must do it via ColorSync. This must be why it states that it needs 7.5 and up in the manual.

Still…a great first success! I cannot get the monitor to work on the SuperMac card, even with the SIA set to 640x480, 67 Hz, the native output of the card.

 

[bigmessowires]

Question: if both CSYNC and H/VSYNC LEDs are lit, what does that mean?

It means that the Mac or video card is outputting composite sync, hsync, and vsync. This is normal for most "newer" Macs and cards from the early 90s onwards. If you have the Sync-inator configured for automatic selection of the sync mode, in this case it'll choose pass-through mode and send hsync/vsync to the monitor without any fancy processing.

What kind of sync outputs does your RasterOps Paint Board Li and your ColorCard/24 have? Which LEDs are lit? I'm guessing only the csync LED?

The Studio Display does display some odd lines depending on the resolution. Sometimes it happens with the Dell display I have hooked up with the usual adapter to the Li, as with the sync-in-ator: is this maybe a card issue?

What kind of lines? I looked at your photos but didn't see anything odd. If it's also happening with your normal VGA adapter then it's obviously not related to the Sync-inator, but I'd still be curious.

Does your last post mean that you got the ColorCard/24 working? I'm a little confused since you said it works, but then said you can't get it to work at its native resolution....

The Sync-inator doesn't touch the RGB color signals at all, so it shouldn't have any effect on color quality unless there's something strange happening that I don't know about.

 

[bigmessowires]

Another tester is seeing some strange horizontal jittering at the top of his screen with a Mac IIsi on an old 15" Dell LCD, when using sync mode 8 (csync splitting). It's like the menu bar is randomly jumping left and right by 1-2 pixels. I never saw a behavior like that in any of my testing, so I'm not sure if it's the Sync-inator or something else. Please let me know if you see anything similar.