Color CRT that fits in Macintosh SE FDHD?

[jmacz]

Very interesting! That article says he heated a 6mm thick acrylic sheet with a hot air gun and then laid it over the glass CRT (apparently to reshape the sheet into the form factor of the CRT) and later he trimmed off the excess.

I tried this for a 16" Macintosh Color Display and I got scratches / rub marks on the acrylic from the screen during forming. I ended up building a jig to bend the 5mm thick acrylic I was using. This was to put a 15" LCD panel inside the 16" Macintosh Color Display housing.

This reminds me. I need to open this monitor up at some point and replace the 15" Samsung LCD inside. It's acting up. I was going to replace it with one of my 15" NEC 52V LCD panels (1024x768 resolution). I've been driving this monitor with a SuperMac accelerated video card for a super crisp 1024x768 output.

The only issue with doing this LCD with acrylic in front hack is if you have OCD like me, it's super annoying putting things together without getting dust between the acrylic and the LCD panel. I don't have a clean room so it was clean, install, deinstall, clean, install, deinstall, until I finally got it as dust free as possible (after like a dozen attempts). Painful. No, doing it in a shower stall with hot water mist didn't help / wasn't easy. I have a home made laminar flow hood but not big enough for this monitor.

 

[JDW]

Intolerably slow to me is the 512K/512Ke.

You mentioned System 6 being associated with speed, which it absolutely is, but the 512K machines are made to use even older versions of System Software. System 3.2 & Finder 5.1 work rather well for the period-correct application software you would likely use on such machines. They are also lovely for their absolute silence, having no fan or fan noise at all. The greatest thing about the 512K machines is you can transform them into a 128K Mac at the flip of a switch. And, you can make them boot from a ROM DISK at lightning speed. I enjoy making long boot chimes for that setup too. Having an 800K drive is more practical, especially for the 512Ke, but the nostalgic purr of the 400K drives brings me right back to my first home computer in 1984. And while it is noisy, and I can avoid the noise with my FloppyEMU, I still find Apple's HD20 fun to use with my 512K machines.

 

[JDW]

...if you have OCD like me, it's super annoying putting things together without getting dust between the acrylic and the LCD panel.

I don't know if I have "OCD" but I do get "hot and bothered" (he he) by specs of dust behind glass, and I experienced that a lot when doing my iMac graphics card bake videos.

 

[Mk.558]

System 3.2 & Finder 5.1 work rather well for the period-correct application software you would likely use on such machines.

Oh of course. I've used System 6 on a 512Ke, and I wou...wouldn't recommend it. It's not slow, but it's not as fast as S3.3/F5.4, and you notice the memory is less than it was before.

Since you have a 128K, have you tried doing a 128Ke? I am curious about whether EasyShare would work on such a thing. If you need a disk to test, I can make an image for you to burn -- you're probably a busy man.

 

[JDW]

Yes, I have the ROM-inator (128K ROMs) in my Fat Mac Switcher equipped Mac512, but how is EasyShare used?

 

[Mk.558]

CMN - More Info

That is, assuming you have a 128K mac, not a 128K ROM mac. The 128K should have the 64K ROMs yes? Suppose you swapped in the 128K ROMs into a 128K Mac?

 

[JDW]

It's a 512K Mac with Kay Koba's Fat Mac Switcher and also his ROM-inator I. The short summaries of those 2 videos are:

1. Fat Mac Switcher: Allows selection of 512K or 128K RAM (while Mac is OFF).
2. ROM-inator I: Allows you to flash the stock 128K ROMs, 64K ROMs, or customized ROMs.

I currently use the ROM-inator I with 128K ROMs flashed so I can take better advantage of the 800K drive I have installed in that machine.

I also have a HyperDrive Mac512 doesn't have the ROM-inator or Fat Mac Switcher, but it has a fixed 512K RAM. Can't remember if it has the 64K ROMs, but I think it does. Even so, you are mentioning the need for a 64K ROM, 128K Mac.

My ROM-inator I Mac512 should allow that 64K ROM configuration. I just need to flash the 64K ROM. Three are certain "gotchas" though.