MicroMac SE Prototypes Video Out Troubleshooting

[Elemenoh]

In 2016 I got a couple of MicroMac SE prototypes and haven't done anything with them since. I've started to dig into them and am trying to get them to display video on any external display. I don't own a generic Full Page Display which is what they were likely meant to connect to.

I'll use this thread to document my findings. If you have advice, please share.

MicroMac SE 'A'

• Has a heavily bodged Newlife accelerator
• Does not chime
• Does not have a video out connector connected to the header.

MicroMac SE 'B'

• Does not have an accelerator
• Does chime
• Does have a DB-9 connector attached to a 16-pin IDC header with pins 1,2,14,15 and 16 not connected.
• It doesn't display video on a mid-90s multi-sync CRT or an early 2000's LCD with a simple DB-9 to HD-15 adapter.
• No pins on the video connector show sync signals when probed, but the graphics card IC does show clock and other signaling

I probed unit 'B' with a scope and found all pins were either 0V or ~3.8V with no other signs of life. The graphics card main IC did show signs of life which I'll document here later.

DB-9 Pin	Connected to IDC pin	Probed Voltage
1	3	0V
2	3	0V
3	6	3.8V
4	8	0V
5	10	3.8V
6	13	3.8V
7	13	3.8V
8	11	3.8V
9	9	3.8V

Pin layout for the IDC header and DB-9 connector.

Card from unit B

Card from unit 'A'

Accelerator from unit 'A'

Additional photos of enclosures and boards

 

[jajan547]

Where did you find this?

 

[wottle]

So this basically turns your SE into an LC form factor?

 

[Elemenoh]

Where did you find this?

They were a toss-in when I bought a bunch of Macs from someone clearing out their garage in 2016.

So this basically turns your SE into an LC form factor?

Yeah they sold empty cases and full system bundles with a display per old ads.

 

[jajan547]

They were a toss-in when I bought a bunch of Macs from someone clearing out their garage in 2016.

Yeah they sold empty cases and full system bundles with a display per old ads.

View attachment 3970View attachment 3971

That’s so cool never seen one before.

 

[ScutBoy]

Watching with interest as I have one of these guys with the same video card with pass-through, and a MicroMac Performer to put on top.

OlePigeon and I both bought these from Hans at MicroMac 10(?) years ago, but never figured out the video.

 

[jajan547]

Anyone have a spare they wanna sell?

 

[Elemenoh]

Thanks to a tip from @Zane Kaminski I've made some progress.

I ended up taking out the logic board and running it from a SE with display so I could see what was going on. Installed the Lapis Dual Screen 2.E control panel. That control panel displayed a single option: 'Ehman Full Page Display' regardless if the card was installed or a display attached. I'm pretty sure that's the display that would have been bundled with the MicroMac SE at the time. I think the card is capable of half page too, but didn't see the option.

Anyway, it wouldn't sync with a mid 90s VGA CRT. It degaused for a sec but no video. The only other CRT I have handy is a Radius Color Pivot. I know that uses a weird pinout but tried anyway. It doesn't sync but does show garbage on the screen, so something is happening.

The main takeaway is that once the driver is installed, it drives the Xilinx XC2018-100 PC84C FPGA which in turn produces output at the display connector. Below are some photos of the wacky setup I've got going and scope shots of each pin once the driver was loaded.

Next I need to either find a driver that will send 640x480 at a typical refresh rate or a Full Page Display that syncs at 65-ish hz.

Lapis DualScreen 2.E control panel

Pin 1

Pin 2

Pin 3

Pin 4

Pin 5

Pin 6

Pin 7

Pin 8

Pin 9

Pin 8 (cyan) & 9 (yellow) together

 

[Elemenoh]

I've tried several of the Lapis (and Mobius) control panels posted to the archive sites in both System 6.0.8 and 7.1 and didn't achieve any better results.

The Lapis Dual Screen 2.E control panel drives the card to output 640 X 870. HSYNC is 60kHz on DB-9 Pin 8 and VSYNC is 65Hz on DB-9 pin 9. Neither monitor I have likes that and it's unclear to me which Full Page Displays sync at 65Hz other than the Ehman.

The Mobius Display control panel showed the following options but didn't drive the card to actually do anything: Mobius One Page SE, Mobius Two Page Display SE, Mobius One Page Classic and Mobius Two Page Classic display.

The other Lapis Control panels would say the following in System 7.1 with 4MB RAM. I've tried ColorServer PDS-17, DisplayServerII-DPD and DisplayServerPDS/30 since those were the ones that seemed most likely to have a shot of driving the card.

"The control panel "XXXXX" cannot be used now. There may not be enough memory available, or the control panel may be damaged"

I think I'm out of luck until I can track down another driver or a display that can deal with Dual Screen 2.E's resolution and refresh rate.

Any other ideas for things I should try until then?

 

[ScutBoy]

Specs on the Apple Portrait Display say Freq range of 47-63HZ, and vert Rate 75Hz and Horiz Rate 68.85 Khz. Resolution is 640x870

I had a Radius FPD card in an SE/30 and plugged my Portrait Display into it, and it worked, but there was a little shimmer to it.

Radius FPD specs say 68.750 Khz horizontal and 67.139 "non-interlaced" refresh rate. I'm guessing the difference was enough to show up visually. Resolution on the Radius is 640x864.

I'm only throwing out these numbers to give a general sense of what those two monitors did. I expec that any other full-page monitor was also in the neighborhood of these.

I have this same Lapis card and still have my Apple Portrait. If I can locate these same drivers, I can try them out on an SE with the Apple monitor and see what happens. I don't know if I have the right cables/adapters to go from the Lapis to the Apple monitor, though...

 

[ScutBoy]

Can't find specs on the Ehman monitor to compare. Google search just turns up my asks about this from a long time ago

 

[Elemenoh]

@ScutBoy Thanks for the info. I found this ad for Ehman monitors in the December 1990 MacWorld which claims they had higher refresh rates than Apple or Radius, but don't specify what those rates are. Curious.

 

[Elemenoh]

An early 1991 ad for their two page display says 70Hz, but I haven't been able to find something similar for their Full Page Display.

 

[Elemenoh]

I found the specs for the Ehman Full Page Display in the February 1991 issue of MacUser. It says 640x480 75Hz Vertical Scan and 68.85kHz Horizontal scan. That doesn't line up with what I measured on the card.

Would out of spec caps have an impact on HSYNC/VSYNC on a display card?

 

[Elemenoh]

I messaged the person who created this Twitter thread showing a card with the same FPGA working with a VGA display. They recommended using the LapisColor / ProColorServer 8•16 LC driver available here with System 7.5. I set up a clean install of 7.5 and added that extension, but get the error

The control panel "Monitors" cannot be used with this Macintosh.

7.5.3 displays the same error.

This is a SE logic board with 800K floppy ROMs and 4MB RAM. I tried using Wish I Were 2 to set the machine type to Macintosh SE to be sure and then to Macintosh SE/30 but neither made a difference. The card was installed and a VGA monitor attached at the time.

Should the control panel launch on this model? Any requirements I might not be meeting?

In the mean time, I buzzed out the two IDC headers to confirm the 16-pin header is for TTL and the 10-pin header is for ECL at @Zane Kaminski 's suggestion. Here are the results:

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Are you supposed to be able to use the Monitors control panel on 7.5 an SE? I can't remember; haven't used one in a while.

 

[Zane Kaminski]

Yeah look here on a stock SE. Can’t use the Monitors control panel and it’s not even included in even the full install for just SE. So if there is a control panel for a display driver, it’s probably a 3rd party one.

 

[Elemenoh]

Yeah look here on a stock SE. Can’t use the Monitors control panel and it’s not even included in even the full install for just SE. So if there is a control panel for a display driver, it’s probably a 3rd party one.
View attachment 4057

Thanks for letting me know. I'll follow up with the person from that twitter thread. Perhaps they got mixed up about what driver they used. There are a LOT of drivers for the various Lapis cards.

 

[Elemenoh]

Does anyone here have experience with the RGBtoHDMI? From the description, it sounds like it might help even if I need to make a new sync profile for it.

 

[LeadedSolder]

Does anyone here have experience with the RGBtoHDMI? From the description, it sounds like it might help even if I need to make a new sync profile for it.

I set up a configuration for the NEC PC-6601SR (4-bit digital RGBI) and it worked really well, although I still need to figure out how to make a palette. If you already have the gear (pis and the cpld are in short supply these days) it would be my first stop for anything like this from now on.

Making the adapter cable was kind of annoying since I couldn't find an IDC head narrow enough to fit inside the board sandwich.