Sick SE/30, Video, Xceed, SSD, 50mhz+fpu, 128meg, Dougg3, Artmix PSU ---

[uniserver]

if the person who this belongs to wants to say something. That is just fine, or if they want to remain anonymous that is fine too

its almost done… just needs a retrobright.

https://www.facebook.com/Powerusin.MacMac/videos/1070684556283824/

https://www.facebook.com/Powerusin.MacMac/videos/1070684556283824/

 

[Macdrone]

That is the grail right there.  Cant pack anymore into that SE/30 than that to make it cool.

 

[ScutBoy]

Very cool! Looks like it might be a tight fit to get the bucket back on

 

[Apache Thunder]

Nice. I always wondered how the Xceed video add-on worked. So it comes with it's own special neckboard for the CRT and replaces the one that was originally driven by the analog board? (or does the existing one just plug into the logic board of the video card instead?) Either way that's pretty cool. If I ever win the lottery, I might try and acquire such a beast.

 

[unity]

Yeah, but no ethernet so TOTALLY useless....

 

[uniserver]

acutely he has SCSI ethernet so its great.

And i am converting the cpu to a socket so if he gets the cpu socket upgrade then we will use the ARTmix card, exceed card + MacCon witch is all here right now.

This man is serious and will do what ever it takes to have the best se/30.

 

[Paralel]

See if you can convince him to test how many shades of gray the monitor actually displays once the monitor has been properly adjusted and calibrated. I've wondered for a long time if it can indeed display 256 shades of gray or not.

 

[unity]

It can display as many as you want. Its not a limitation of the CRT, its a limitation of the computers graphic abilities.

 

[Apache Thunder]

It probably can. There's nothing physically limiting the CRT itself from displaying as many greys as a normal B&W TV for that matter. It's mainly a limitation of the analog board/logic board of the original Mac. (that and an intentional design choice by Apple for the old Compacts. The original Mac couldn't handle more hen 2-bit video, so they stuck with that aesthetic with the SE/30 since it would save money I guess)

I think the only big difference between the CRTs in compact macs and that of similar TVs was the much darker screen appearance. (probably to ensure properly display of black pixels?)

I noticed the yoke connector is still attached to the analog board which means that the Xceed probably can't use higher refresh rates as that's still governed by the analog board.

I kinda wished they managed to fit a color CRT into a compact mac similar in design to the SE/30. The Color Classic is fine and dandy, but it's significant departer in appearence then that of the older compacts. If they simply made it a slightly larger version of the SE/30 (to accommodate the longer CRT length of a color tube I guess. ) then it would have been much more desirable to use in my opinion.

As it stands the Color Classic looks like a smaller version of a Performa/LC all-in-one design and that must makes me want to skip it in favor of getting an actual Peforma/LC all-in-one.

 

[Gorgonops]

If the DAC in the card driving the CRT has 8 bits of resolution then, yes, it displays 256 shades of gray. (The new "neckboard" adopts the monitor to accept an analog signal instead of the simple digital on/off of the original circuitry.) One *could* argue, I suppose, that a simple 0v->MAX DAC setup might not produce 256 *useful* greys.

(The human eye responds non-linearly to brightness changes; a simple 256 step DAC with equally spaced divisions can give you "too many" dark and bright-white-ish grays that your eye really can't tell apart while leaving a few too few slots for subtle differences in the area of maximum sensitivity. More modern video systems employ various strategies for using gamma correction to put more steps where they're useful, but you can still sometimes perceive grayscale banding today.)

 

[uniserver]

ill be honest it looks beautiful and, it almost looks like color.   

 

[Apache Thunder]

How well does the SE/30 handle video? I wonder if you could play QuickTime videos on it and how much better they would look with the Xceed installed. I'd imagine frame rate might be a bit bad because of the age of the machine, but still would be something interesting to try. I thought about trying on my SE, but found Color QuickDraw was required. The SE/30 has Color QuickDraw I hear despite not having a color display.

If only a TV tuner for the SE/30 was a thing. I have the crazy dream that if I ever get loads of money, I'd buy a 3D printer and 3D print a replica of the SE/30 case around a portable B&W TV. I have one with a 5 inch display and would be cute if it was in a mini SE/30 case.

Although the particular TV I have is kinda cheap and crappy. I'd probably find a better one with composite inputs and doesn't have black level issues if I had the money to get serious with this.

The portable TV I have is an old Spectra branded one from 2002. They obviously cut corners with it as any scene with large amount of bright white on screen causes screen distortion and black levels to plummet.

So obviously this particular TV would not serve me well as a replica mini SE/30.

Though I wonder if 9inch B&W TVs exist that have CRTs that will fit in a SE/30 case. Would be a perhaps non destructive mod I could think of doing to a dead SE/30 unlike the nuts who want to make aquariums out of them.

At least with that mod, you could hook up a PC with TV output capability and run vMac on the thing.

 

[techknight]

Yea, your eyes are like your ears. You hear and see logarithmic. not linear. 

 

[Paralel]

My point was never about the CRT, but whether the upgrade does indeed deliver the 256 shade of gray they promise or not. For example, the 540c LCD does not even come close to providing 64 shades of gray, its more like 25.

Seems like it would be worthwhile to stick one of those new SVGA 9" grayscale tubes from ebay in there, you'd probably get a better picture than using the standard tube that apple sticks in there since an SVGA tube would have a better dot pitch, etc... not to mention all the use and abuse the original tube has seen after all these years.

 

[Gorgonops]

Uhm... monochrome CRTs don't have shadow masks so "dot pitch" is a non-sequitur. (And LCD panels produce grayscales in a completely different manner than CRTs.) The tubes in those nine inch mono VGA monitors are functionally identical to the one that shipped in a toaster Mac, and in fact there was a thread a while back where someone discovered the tube in a particular model that was all over eBay could actually be used as a compatible replacement. The only reason to swap the tube would be if the original had a bad case of phosphor burn (a distinct possibility, granted), but even then burn-in isn't going to affect the "number of grays" displayed, it's just going to contribute to an uneven brightness across the total picture.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Yeah agreed. I don't think it would make sense for a monochrome CRT to use a shadow mask. That's something color CRT's use and dot pitch is only relevant to those. There has to be separate phosphor for each color, so that's why you have a limit on how many you can have and still keep them separate. Hence the dot pitch.

I don't have exact knowledge of how monochrome CRTs work. I believe they just spray phosphor onto a screen inside the CRT and the cathode only needs to really scan across with varying degrees of intensity to produce different shades of grey. How much detail you can have is mainly dependent on how well you can focus the electron beam striking the phosphors. That's my over simplified view on how it works.

Monochrome CRTs are a much simpler design then color ones so resolution is mostly governed by the electronics driving the CRT and not so much the CRT itself. Barring possible voltage limitations of the CRT itself, I'd imagine if you had capable logic driving the CRT, you could probably drive much higher resolutions on a compact mac CRT then what the original hardware provided. You're not limited to a dot pitch like the color CRTs.

Also, you happen to know what the specific monitor it was that could be used as a CRT donor for a compact mac? Might be something I could consider later as my Macintosh SE does have burn in. (I wouldn't say it's really bad, but it's noticeable. Only thing I really see is the faint outline of the desktop. Slightly more prominent is burn in of the menu bar.

If it ends up being cheaper then buying a replacement CRT that came from a compact mac, that's what I'll probably go with if I'm sure I'm getting the right thing.

 

[MJ313]

it almost looks like color.   

hrmrmmmmrrrrrr reality distortion field hrrrrmmrmrrrr   :-/

 

[joethezombie]

vm-9af I do believe. There's a thread on here somewhere about it.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Nevermind on the monitor. I think I found what you meant:

New 9" SVGA monochrome monitors $70 %5BeBay%5D

Cheapest ones I've seen are $65. There's still a original CRT for a SE/30 on eBay for about $10 cheaper then that and others in that price range might show up. So currently a more expensive solution until CRTs become really scarce.

Hell I've seen a few Macintosh SE's pop up on ebay at a lower price then those monitors.