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SEx86

raoulduke

Well-known member
I have a spare SE/30 case I was going to sell cheap or part out, but I think I'd rather do a casemod project for my old machine that I at this point only use to write 5 1/4" floppies.

Can anyone recommend a 9" 4:3 lcd screen/inverter - cheap?  [is that the aspect ratio...?]

In the alternative, I have an Acer Aspire One 150 I'm never going to use again whose screen is sorta big enough.  Anyone know of an inverter for that guy?  Cursory search on eBay didn't turn anything up.

 
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raoulduke

Well-known member
sorry... i didn't mean exclusively vga... showing my (not very advanced) age a bit.

[Yeah obv. that's the screen size (even though it's also the aspect ratio) because it's just a CRT (/TV) monitor; so that's the slot size.  A little hard to find 9", no?]

Ipad screen: Is it going to cost something like this? http://dp2retina.rozsnyo.com/...  Because if so I may actually just look through thrift shop old TVs that already have controller boards.  Actually per that... generic Android tablet?

 

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
Just get a non-Retina (iPad 1 / 2) 1024x768.  They're on ebay with VGA/DVI/AV controller boards for ~US$120 give or take.  And the nice thing about XGA is that 512x342 is a 1:4 pixel mapping.

Here are your bezel diagonals for an SE/30.  If you want me to check the exact width & height just holla.

Without slicing up the plastics: 8-11/16 inch / ~8.7" / 221mm

Mac SE bezel diagonal inner.jpg

With slicing: 10-3/16 inch / ~10.2" / 258mm

Mac SE bezel diagonal outer.jpg

Looks like an 8" would fit fine without case mutilation, and leave a little black "CRT overscan" border for authenticity.  If that sounds like your kind of style, you can probably get one + driver board for under a $100.  But last I checked they topped out at 800x600 (at least the affordable ones), and it wasn't that much extra to go with the iPad XGA. 

At 9.7" that would fit nicely if you don't mind shaving the bezel back some.  About a third* of the bezel would still be there, maybe a half in the middle of each side because of the curvature and the rounded corners.

If you wanted to go all the way to the outer edges of the case you could probably go to something like 11"-12" but IMO that would look hecking weird.

* bezel diagonal = 10.2 - 8.7   = 1.5"
  shaved bezel   = 10.2 - 9.7   = 0.5"
                                = 1/3rd of bezel

 

 
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Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
Say I never noticed before that the bezel slope at the bottom of the CRT opening is quite a bit taller than at the top.

 

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
Acer Aspire One 150 / screen / Anyone know of an inverter for that guy?
Presume you mean driver board?  The trick would be to open it up and find the exact LCD model used and then ebay-search that.  Or ebay-search a replacement LCD and use the model number off that ... though there's every chance they used >1 LCD in their production run.  You need to get a driver that matches the exact one in your possession.

What's the diagonal?

/googles/ oh, widescreen.  Eww.

Ebay that, buy a 4:3

 
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Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
Eh, not necessarily.  Other people have made up the difference with a bit of black craftboard or foam and it looked okay.

 

Bunsen

Admin-Witchfinder-General
Previous attempts at this:

24th Anniversary Macintosh - 512k with greyscale 9" VGA CRT
Macintosh SE/x - Classic / Classic II with 9" LCD.  I really dislike the bezel treatment here.  IMO black infill around the screen would have looked better.
Minitosh - black Mac Plus, CRT, Mac Mini
Macminitosh - SE / SE/30 with 8.4" LCD behind the cut-off front face of the original CRT.  As you can see it's quite dark behind the CRT glass, but it sure looks authentic otherwise. Built by superpantoufle.
Mac Plus Core2 Color - images lost.
Mac Mini in SE/30 - with VGA CRT.  Page in Japanese and English.
Mac PC - 10.4" LCD in SE / SE/30.  Horrible lopsided hack job on the bezel, but gives you an idea what it might look like if it was done properly.


And just for fun
Pod Hifi Mini - a pair of speakerbox Macs

You might find something useful in the thread Hack-friendly displays.

 
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raoulduke

Well-known member
haha. except for the bezel on the front that's well done. in this case i really just wanted to find a way to compact my 2nd machine which i use for floppy and scsi (though i got a powrmac scsi card with windows 7 and 50pins for my main rig); and simultaneously i have no use for my AOA150; and according to the inverter board people I found their board allows a 4:3 setting. so (when I get my ... stuff... together on this) it'd be about $30 to see how well I could jury rig something into an SE case...

so .. i mean those examples (all, bunsen and gorgonops) are better than i'm gonna do (again except the bezel on that one); i was actually thinking of putting the floppy (because the one i use now is full height - it takes up 2x 3.5" bays) out the back... i haven't really measured, maybe i could just lengthen the front slot. let me actually take a picture of the machine i'm talking about because i actually don't think it'll physically fit into the space. I think the motherboard will fit.  But it may burn itself up...

 
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CC_333

Well-known member
Well, I can forgive it, since in 2002, SE/30s were a dime a dozen relatively speaking, and weren't worth as much as collectibles. It's quite ingenious, actually.

Although, truth be told, I've seen *much* better cosmetic work that manages to more-or-less preserve the basic aesthetics of the machine being modded.

c

 
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