ultimate SE/30

You already perform the grayscale modification from which i posted the info on what to do?

Oh wow... is that the standard compact mac resolution on the internal 9"?

You have it made? Wow congrats.

Wow, I think I missed that earlier discussion, very nice! How did you connect the Pivot card to the internal CRT?

Sorry NO, have not made it yet.

And no, that is not the stock resolution on that picture of that CRT… that resolution is 640x480 - greyscale, the image is from a SE/30.

The IIsi video card to ==> CRT (Video board) is not figured out yet.

I just got my video cards today! SO LET THE MODDING BEGIN

Holy cow that is amazing. Looks like I'm gonna have to keep an eye out for such a card within a reasonable price range.

The amount of recent successful DIY projects/hacks/mods is amazing.

I remember the time I hacked the bottom off another SE/30 and increased another by that height. Sculpted and painted the bottom to another. Made a perfect bay for a CD drive install. Worked very well too! Kept the motherboard on the bottom, so some new cabling was required to get around the CD drive. I traumatized many Macs as a child...

Crap, now I want one of those cards.

Oh, on the ultimate SE/30 You forgot the soft-standby power modification!

edit: You know, come to think of it. I dont think I ever finished it.. CRAP. I knew i forgot about that. I know the OS hack was done to allow the VIA pin to be toggled on shutdown/powerup.

lol you should totally finish it.

you should buy one they are only $2.99

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Radius-Color-Pivot-IIsi-Video-Interface-Card-Apple-Mac-/151117999850?pt=US_Vintage_Computing_Parts_Accessories&hash=item232f55aeea

Yea I need to. I was going to try and modify the original Sony power supply that way I can maintain standby 5V, whilst the rest is switched. The simplest method is use a relay on the mains, and use the PRAM batt to power the standby circuit. But, naa...

I was going to use a small microcontroller attached to the power supply, the VIA, and ADB port that way when you pressed power it would fire up the machine. And when you hit shutdown, it cuts out the power supply.

I didnt realize how cheap those cards are. So i just purchased one. However I gotta figure out how to make that fit. Luckily it uses the standard euroDIN/nubus connectors, So any type of expansion board would work. Only problem is, How to make sure the card stays Primary instead of secondary all the time, even on a lost-PRAM bootup. What i might do is connect the two sources together via Mux, and switch the internal CRT from either source.

I guess the other option is remove the on-board DeclROM, so it just disables the internal all the time.

As far as getting it to "fit"

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GENERIC-96-PIN-MALE-EUROCARD-DIN-CONNECTORS-3-pcs-/171027189841?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27d203d051

I can pull the original right-angle Eurocard/Din connector off and replace it with a streight one. This will allow the card to lay flat.

Techknight is back in business!

As far as getting it to "fit"
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GENERIC-96-PIN-MALE-EUROCARD-DIN-CONNECTORS-3-pcs-/171027189841?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27d203d051

I can pull the original right-angle Eurocard/Din connector off and replace it with a streight one. This will allow the card to lay flat.

Click to expand...

Scratch that.. ROM simm will be in the way. grrr, maybe a riser board routed out in eagle with a couple of eurodins.

ok i got the video card to fit with the lid on.. and screws in…

i will have flip the heddar on the maccon card…

i will have flip/remove the db15 header on the video card

and i had to lop off a hunk of the pcb of the video card.

didn't look like there were any traces i think it was just dead space.

oh also no room for a floppy drive… but so what.. who needs a floppy?











the way it is, the card fits snuggly into the ledge of the case, right there.. almost like that is the reason for the ledge!

and because my 2.5" hd solution is thin.. will be able to fit under the video card no problem!

might not be kosher… but if it works… pretty cool!

Unfortunately that is a multilayer board. Looks like you wacked into the VCC and GND planes. You better hope it works

File that edge VERY carefully to a "V" profile until you can see the clean edges of each layer before firing it up! :O

Check out the flat stacking "wrong angle" adapter card hack.

its ok i bought 4.

i might smooth the edge with my dremel before i fire it up.

what makes you think VCC is there? looks like a bunch of dead pcb space to me.

unless you have the images of the pcb layers, it would be hard to tell what is there in the other layers

assuming its a 4 layer board.

looks like i am the first one to make it physically fit. Yay to me.

now i need to whip up pin to pin cable with an aui on the other end.

Chances are at least the ground plane was running around the board. Might still work though, fingers crossed! If there are ground problems though you might be in for all kinds of weird behaviour...and none of us like that kind of stuff

ill wrap some tinfoil around it it ill be fine haha

Just put the tinfoil in your shorts if you're going to fire that thing up after using a Dremel Tool on it, you may need the protection. :

Use a flat bastard metal file to carefully shape the cut side of the board to a wedge shaped edge. You should be able to clearly see the ends of all layers (be they signal traces or big slabs of power or ground planes) cleanly sheared off on the edge of the FRP substrate like the layers of sedimentation on a Paleological Dig.

THEN clean it up and fire it up.

99 percent of the time, the inner layers contain the ground and VCC routes. Thats usually rule of thumb, although not always. But I have been rebuilding boards long enough to know that this is the case.

ok i will but first i have to make the db 15 cable… so where is pin one… and they are in order 1-15? seems to easy.

ok i will but first i have to make the db 15 cable… so where is pin one… and they are in order 1-15? seems to easy.

Click to expand...

Yes they are, and they follow exactly pin-for-pin the DB15 layout of standard mac video.

So yeap, its that easy.

Trash:

If you file the edges as a V, I dont see why it wouldnt work. Just be careful, thats all Im sayin, although for 3 dollar video cards who cares, but 150 dollar ethernet cards, not so much. ;-)

BTW, Off topic: I wonder if LC PDS ethernet cards which are still plentiful, would work in an SE/30. Technically the PDS is the same. Well not the same pinning, but same architecture.

Trash: If you file the edges as a V, I dont see why it wouldnt work. Just be careful, thats all Im sayin, although for 3 dollar video cards who cares, but 150 dollar ethernet cards, not so much. ;-)

Click to expand...

Thanks, and yep, that was my point in the main thread, the Riser and VidCard costs will remain negligible until we can get this to work in the SE/30. At that point demand will likely go up, etc . . .

BTW, Off topic: I wonder if LC PDS ethernet cards which are still plentiful, would work in an SE/30. Technically the PDS is the same. Well not the same pinning, but same architecture.

Click to expand...

It wouldn't surprise me too much if you could make an adapter to dot it. A lot would depend upon the address the LC cards use and whether it's available in the SE/30 spec/ROM. We know that NuBus Cards can be implemented in a SecondWave expansion box for the SE/30 where Apple never intended it to be. So why not an LC 10bT PDS Card adapter for the SE/30?

I'd start by checking the available drivers from all the usual prospects before taking a look at the hardware . . . if I could, that is. :-/

Now my eyes went crosseyed, but it looks like the LC-PDS. The lower 96-pin portion of it can directly swap over to the SE/30. All the signals are the same, however the pinouts are ENTIRELY different so a remap PCB would be needed.

Only thing that i can see from a quick glance, is A28 to A30 arnt included in the lower PDS. Only the expanded PDS, whereas the SE/30 contains all address lines. Also the LC PDS contains a function code 3 (FC3) which the SE/30 doesnt have. But i dont think ethernet cards use this control pin. Also the LC only has /PDS.BG (bus grant), whereas the SE/30 has both a /PDS.BG and a /BG. No idea what impact this would have.

I believe that LC Ethernet cards, given a pinout-remap would directly swap over, They both map into Slotspace $E

looks like I'm partially done with the video cable.i would assume pin one is the one to the outside of the card? Where the loped off bit is… i took the dremel to it… its nice and smooth.. more of rounded then v.

Postby techknight » 20 Dec 2013, 22:34Just be careful, thats all Im sayin, although for 3 dollar video cards who cares, but 150 dollar ethernet cards, not so much. ;-)

Click to expand...

not to worry i have 3 IIsi's one of them is crap and wouldn't care if it set fire ill try it in there first.

ok got the cable done.

i guess whats left is to test this thing…..

ok good progress,

it works in the IIsi,

next up the se/30…



lol playing with my db15 2 vga adaptor gets some interesting results...

ok so cool the se/30 has the maccon + video card into it.

here is first boot up.. success!



wow the dual screen feature works!





ok so anyways… i put it all back together, for the final test… to show you it all fits like a glove with my PCB Trim job.

All the screws in and tight.



and of corse it still works fine after its all together!

here is one last shot of the rear with it all together…

next and final step… internal CRT GREY SCALE

BTW dougg3's ROM simm is installed.

that may or may not be helping the video card work.

It is running OS 7.5.5 booted from zip disk.

TA DA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :approve: Fabulous hack, uni. The only thing I might have done differently would be to desolder the connector pins and do the wire soldering right into the thru-holes.

If you do the "wrong angle" adaptation, is there any chance of having a second RCPII/IIsi fit across there for a side of external, big screen color? A lot will depend on which address interrupts are available on the SE/30.

Edit: it looks to me like you've only taken off about the same amount of PCB that you'd get from one PDS adapter offset unit. Is there room forward of the your installed card in the SE/30 for the front end of another, unmodified Pivot Card?

Now my eyes went crosseyed, but it looks like the LC-PDS. The lower 96-pin portion of it can directly swap over to the SE/30. All the signals are the same, however the pinouts are ENTIRELY different so a remap PCB would be needed.

Click to expand...

I can help in alleviating the Mk.I eyeball side effects of this process. After I get back from my Christmas road trip I can whomp up a pinout worksheet based upon the ones I did for the SuperMac riser card hacks.

Only thing that i can see from a quick glance, is A28 to A30 arnt included in the lower PDS. Only the expanded PDS, whereas the SE/30 contains all address lines. Also the LC PDS contains a function code 3 (FC3) which the SE/30 doesnt have. But i dont think ethernet cards use this control pin. Also the LC only has /PDS.BG (bus grant), whereas the SE/30 has both a /PDS.BG and a /BG. No idea what impact this would have.
I believe that LC Ethernet cards, given a pinout-remap would directly swap over, They both map into Slotspace $E

Click to expand...

Methinks you need to start your own thread for this project, I'm likin' it the more I think about it . . .

. . . even if it will adversely affect the value of my stash of IIsi/SE/30 NICs. I'm a sucker for a good hack. :

< . . . wonders what will happen to the value of his pile-o-LC NICs? :?: >

Nice job uniserver!

Hard to tell from the photo of the cut-off piece, but it looks like maybe the Pivot board is only 2 layers, not 4.

Nice job uniserver!
Hard to tell from the photo of the cut-off piece, but it looks like maybe the Pivot board is only 2 layers, not 4.

Click to expand...

Its 4. I can tell right away, As I can see 2 layers in the center. One of them is indubitably the ground plane, Whilst the other might be VCC.

Thanks.

I'm happy it fits!

I'm happy it works!

It's super cool.

Oh yea.. That it is Now I wanna see what I can fabricate up when I get mine.

Nice work Uni!

Just trying to make sure I understand this correctly:

The Radius card is driving the internal CRT and is set for 512x342 resolution and a refresh rate that works with the internal display. The card produces vsync, hsync etc signals which are passed into the analog board, which then takes care of vertical and horizontal deflection. The video output from the card goes to the video amp board (probably through the analog board).

So did you have to change the settings for the video card or did it just work?

And if the above is right, I would assume that all that is required for a grey scale mod is a new video amp board that will have a transistor set up to work in it's linear region (IIRC the video board on compacts are set up with a transistor as a switch so it can only do on/off or white/black). In other words something like circuit on the Micron greyscale patent that can be found on the internet?

Does that sound right?

hey genie, for now its mega simplistic.

basically this IIsi video card, had to be modified in order for it to fit in the case.

So i loped a controversial hunk off the card.

It just so happen to not kill anything.

The only other thing I did, is the video card didn't come with any Cable or db-15 video connector.

so i had to solder that IDC cable to the card header and then to a de-soldered db-15 from a killed LC that i had laying around

from GUAM , the bare main board sat in a shed, the guys home was right on the beach too needless to say this LC board had rot worse then anything i have ever seen

Anyways, so after i loped the hunk off the video card, and made that video cable. I popped the Video card onto the Maccon network card, because there was no physical way the video card was going to fit directly onto the PDS of the SE/30.

Had to remove the HD/floppy cage as well.

then all i had to do after that was turn the computer on and see what happens. and with out installing any software just running 7.5.5, oh and with dougg3's IIsi Rom simm installed.

The video card just works. The dual screen feature just works. The internal CRT automatically became Display#2. and the out put to my LCD screen became Display #1

as to the Grey scale… i have no idea of those in's and out's, you are saying we will need to add more transistors in order to display more then one bit, would it be 4bit's for 256 grey scale?? Maybe that is something techknight over looked?

if you would like to work on the greyscale project i could send you one of these iisi pivot cards with that kbd and mouse you also need.

I would think once we come up with a grey scale solution i would say it should be worth at least 500 bucks.

I mean that is half the price of the Micron Xceed solution that is being sold currently.

So you didn't have to mess with connectors on the analog / logic board?

Ok I think I get it now...so the internal 9" is still driven by conventional logic board / analog board combo as normal (display #2) and the Radius vid card drives external LCD (display #1).

If that's true than I guess we're nowhere nearer a grey-scale mod then before unless we get video signals from display #1 into the existing analog /video board and configure them so they'll work with the internal electronics (is there any way you can fiddle with resolutions in the control panel?).

as to the Grey scale… i have no idea of those in's and out's, you are saying we will need to add more transistors in order to display more then one bit, would it be 4bit's for 256 grey scale??

Click to expand...

IIRC for grey-scale you need to drive the electron gun with different voltages, the B/W compacts have just two settings, off for black and max voltage for white. The signals are created by the video card and amplified by the video board. The transistor is like a switch that turns the beam on or off (and provides the voltage required by the electron gun). If you want grey-scale, you will need to generate a range of voltages. You need a different configuration of transistor so the output is a voltage somewhere between zero and max.

Hmm what do the expert's think?

PS: does anyone still have the "activate all resolutions" shareware system expansion that lets you change the resolution on the fly for any resolution that is supported by the video card?

So you didn't have to mess with connectors on the analog / logic board?

Click to expand...

that is correct, i didn't touch a thing on the Mainboard or A/B…

we're nowhere nearer a grey-scale mod

Click to expand...

yeah you are also correct on this one to… right now the greyscale videoboard hack is all hot air until someone

fires up their iron and makes it happen.

And that is why i am glad you are showing interest in this because, I KNOW you are a go get er.

It would be fantastic if you wanted to have a go at this!

I don't think this would have helped in this case, but I came across this bugger on eBay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Stratos-SE-30-Dual-Slot-PDS-Accelerator-adapter-All-New-condition-/301049908020?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4617f90b34

yes i bet that would help out in-fact, i have known about that item though. 200.00 way to steep!

the video cards are a few bucks and my electronics nippers are free… that super mac expandop, for a couple bucks could be used if one didn't have a mac con ethernet card.

and with the savings you could buy a floppy emu and just run the IDC out of the front through floppy slot… and there is still room for 2.5" sca to 50 pin hd solution… or SD2SCSI device.