Powerwave and assorted goodies

[beachycove]

Well, I got myself my first clone today: a Power Computing PowerWave, originally with a 604/132 inside but now with an early G3 upgrade, along with two sizable 50-pin scsis and a Rage Orion 128 installed. I absolutely loathe the peecee inspired/ inspirational design, but the internal extras are a definite plus.

Also, I picked up a b&w Apple portrait monitor WITH the unfindable cable; a 16" Apple Color Monitor; an external 4GB scsi; lots of cabling, including some of the BNC variety, which I rather badly needed but could not find easily available anywhere; a few aaui ethernet tranceivers; a copy of ClarisWorks3 on CD (the one version I didn't have media for, as it happens); and a few odds and ends, like a couple of phonenet terminators.

The nicest thing about it all is that the monitors are pristine; the portrait monitor especially is noteworthy in that it has no discernable yellowing at all, and I suspect that one in this condition is fairly rare. I had been going to pass it on to a friend of mine, now now I wonder!

Anyone know whether specific graphics cards are needed to run it? Mind you, I can easily find that out myself by plugging it in and firing it up....

Price was $40 to a local charity hospital fund. As my daughter was almost killed early this year and spent three months in hospital, I could hardly complain about that. (She's doing well, thank God, miraculously well, really - read all about it at: www.itheology.ca/hannah )

 

[QuadSix50]

My gosh! I'm glad that eveything turned out well, thank the Lord. Incidentally, there was a kid of one of the faculty members at one of the schools I work for that took a massive head injury from a high school football game he was in. It was all over the news as well. Lots of prayer is what brought him out of his coma IMO and he's doing well now, attending school again and getting back to life. Your daughter is truly blessed.

BTW, that's a nice find on the PowerComputing PowerWave. I used to have a Motorola StarMax 4000 until I gave it to my father. A guy from a LUG here in my area had it and offered it to me for free. I made good use of the sucker with Debian Sarge and Mac OS 9.1 at the time. If your PowerWave is anything like my StarMax, then you probably have PCI slots, meaning you could put any PCI video card that's compatible with the Mac in there. ATI and NVIDIA have some Mac-supported PCI cards that should be very inexpensive now. Heck, my old 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 card ran wonderfully on my StarMax, and the nice thing about that particular card is that you can flash it for either PC or Mac since it had enough space in the firmware for either. Unfortunately, this isn't the case for the ATI and NVIDIA PC-compatible PCI cards They only had enough space for the PC firmware which was smaller than the Mac firmware (the Mac ones had enough space for both, hence them costing more than the PC-only ones).

 

[beachycove]

Thank you. It's hard to believe, but there you have it. She came home from school today with an A in a science test, and she had two As in math during the previous two weeks, having just gone back to school full time for therapeutic reasons mostly, in order to see how she would cope physically before the end of the school year, in advance of the move to secondary in the Autumn. Well, she's coping. This is a child who the medics thought would scarcely function if she lived, and whose brain was "mangled" on the left and swelling out the side of her broken head back in September.

Anyway, all this was an inappropriate aside; as this forum is for other things, perhaps I shouldn't have put that url up there. I've gone a long time without mentioning it.

**

On my usual diversion from this whole business, therefore:

I discovered just now that the portrait monitor is greyscale (256), and like a gem. It also has, ahem, an Internal Fan! That's a first for me, though I have to say that I think it's a very good idea, given how my ColorSyncs have packed it in over the years.

Back in 1991, I really, REALLY wanted one of these portrait displays - as I pecked away on my Classic trying to write my first lectures up in Aberdeen. Mind you, I have to admit that it was a vast step up from the Epson PC/XT I still had at home, and that I had bought as a starving student. It was that Classic, and knowing that there were such things as ... Portrait Monitors! ... (of all things!) produced by Apple that - I suppose - got me hooked. And here I am, still obsessed.

The prospect of handing the monitor on to that friend is looking harder and harder!

 

[Blessed Cheesemaker]

Back in 1991, I really, REALLY wanted one of these portrait displays - as I pecked away on my Classic trying to write my first lectures up in Aberdeen. Mind you, I have to admit that it was a vast step up from the Epson PC/XT I still had at home, and that I had bought as a starving student. It was that Classic, and knowing that there were such things as ... Portrait Monitors! ... (of all things!) produced by Apple that - I suppose - got me hooked. And here I am, still obsessed.
The prospect of handing the monitor on to that friend is looking harder and harder!

Boy, I remember always wanting one of those as well...in fact, I just obtained an LCD mount that enables me to rotate the screen, and I use my PowerMac G4 (and my PeeCee at work) in portrait mode. It really makes much more sense (I spend 99% of my time reading/writing at the computer, and 0% watching movies). Seeing a whole page on the screen just makes so much more sense...

I would at least "try" it before passing it on } ...and if you like it, well, why not hang on to it? Using portrait monitors appears to be an acquired taste (otherwise more people would use them).

 

[Quadraman]

I still need at least one clone.

 

[equill]

There are at least two distinct models, Italian-assembled (later) and Japanese-assembled, but both with 13W3 input ports. The layout of ports on the rear differs slightly between them. Mine were made in June 199x (the rubber stamp has faded) and April 1989 respectively. I use the older one mostly—despite that the newer was almost brand-new when I got it a couple of years ago—because its display is almost perfectly rectangular, whereas the newer one needs some tweaking of the bias magnets to get the top line horizontal again.

The original video card was the Apple Workstation Portrait Video card, with a 13W3 output port and capable of only 16 greys at most, so I use a Radius card that can give 256 greys instead. I use it with a IIci/50MHz (DayStar), which makes for a snappy as well as full-page Mac.

Both DB-15M/13W3M and 13W3M/13W3M video cables can still be picked up, even if neither is common. 13W3 was in use for many Sun products.

de

 

[beachycove]

The original video card was the Apple Workstation Portrait Video card, with a 13W3 output port and capable of only 16 greys at most, so I use a Radius card that can give 256 greys instead. I use it with a IIci/50MHz (DayStar), which makes for a snappy as well as full-page Mac.
de

It worked last night on my Q605, so evidently support was built into later models. Would it run on any high(ish) end Radius or SuperMac card?

 

[equill]

It worked last night on my Q605, so evidently support was built into later models. Would it run on any high(ish) end Radius or SuperMac card?

I haven't tried a SuperMac card, but the Radius that I use is the PrecisionColor 24X. Radius' booklet gives also the 8XJ and 24XK, but not the 24XP, as suitable for the Apple Portrait Display and their own Full Page Display (both 640 x 870).

de

 

[Bunsen]

If you're unfeasibly lucky, there might be the near-mythical PCI/Nubus riser in there ...

 

[Quadraman]

The original video card was the Apple Workstation Portrait Video card, with a 13W3 output port and capable of only 16 greys at most, so I use a Radius card that can give 256 greys instead. I use it with a IIci/50MHz (DayStar), which makes for a snappy as well as full-page Mac.
Both DB-15M/13W3M and 13W3M/13W3M video cables can still be picked up, even if neither is common. 13W3 was in use for many Sun products.

I didn't know Macs ever used 13W3 ports. I knew that the NeXT and Sun machines used them. You can also get 13W3--->VGA HD15 adapters and use a standard PC monitor.

 

[Kami]

The Macs didn't use the 13W3 connector. The 13w3 connector was on the portrait and 2 page displays.

 

[equill]

The Macs didn't use the 13W3 connector. The 13w3 connector was on the portrait and 2 page displays.

True that the 13W3 port was not 'built-in' in the usual sense. Not true in that the made-for-Apple Portrait display card, and the Portrait Display itself, had 13W3 ports, as was clearly written above.

... The original video card was the Apple Workstation Portrait Video card, with a 13W3 output port and ...

de