PowerView - The Weird PowerBook SCSI External Video Card

[Keith]

I've seen this elusive peripheral referenced for years. There's a few pictures of the device and a video capture of it actually working online but I knew it was rare. I saw one pop up on Mercari for ~$40 and knew I needed to grab it.

Box:



Contents:



(Cat was not included)

Unfortunately, mine is missing the original 1.0 software floppy disk and the HDI-30 to SCSI-50 cable. The 1.0 software would not have worked on my PowerBook 160 and fortunately you can pick up the cable for $20 on our favorite auction site.

The Device:



Internals:

The PowerView will come apart by removing the two T-15 screws on the back. Three plastic clips on the inside of the front of the shell lock it in place.
Inside, there are clips on both sides of the metal box holding it to the shell. Releasing those will allow you to remove the metal box.



Two phillips head screws can be removed, and then the top shield can be removed. This is a lot harder than I was expecting as there are two clips that fit into the bottom shield, but then you have to flex the casing so that you can slide the top part off. I really wish I got a better photo of it.

However, then you're inside.

 

[Keith]

(10 Image Upload Limit, Continuing Post from Above)

Internals (Cont.)



Software Installation

For some reason, Radius decided that you need to have the original disk in order to use the Installer. Even after using DiskDup the installer would ask for me to put the original PowerView disk in. As far as I can tell, it's just a script. The 2.1 software on MacintoshRepository works great. All you have to do is copy RadiusWare, PowerView, and SCSIProbe to your Control Panels folder, and then copy the Color Extensions file to your System folder.

Connecting the PowerView

It's pretty self explanatory.



Using the PowerView

This is honestly pretty fun. I can't believe you're connecting it over what is usually just used for data transfer... I guess there was nothing stopping Radius from doing this, but it is a little ridiculous. Especially since I am connecting this to a passive-matrix 1-bit Mac.

All of these are 640x480 at 256 colors.



This is setting the secondary monitor as the main monitor

 

[landogriffin]

Awesome find!!!

Its on my bucket list to emulate this capability with the RaSCSI. I've started poking around with it, but didn't get very far. It was awesome to see a color display on my SE/30.

I've pulled together a few notes/links on it here: https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/wiki/PowerView---SuperView

 

[Keith]

Who doesn't like some color Monopoly on a black and white PowerBook?

Not good enough?

Ok ok ok.

How about black and white Monopoly AND color Monopoly on a black and white Mac?

Other Resolutions

Now, I don't have an Apple sRGB display to test this with, but I was able to run it at 832x624 at 256 colors... But it was incredibly slow. I can't imagine getting any actual work done on this back in the 90's but I guess it had it's use cases. Even with screwing with the contrast settings on the LCD, it was still light on my monitor. The photos just don't do it justice.

I absolutely love this thing. It's a very ridiculous little device and I am so glad to have been able to actually play around with one after all these years and I can't wait to play around with this some more. This is definitely a quirky little peripheral that comes out of an era of wacky ideas with surprisingly good executions. I cannot believe how plug-and-play this is for a SCSI device.

 

[YMAC]

I just found almost the same product in my deep storage, but it is made by SuperMac. The SuperView! I dug up this old post since it is almost the same product.
It is interesting it only has one SCSI port with the ID selector on the bottom, internal power supply and composite video out. The manual says that it supports NTSC and PAL. It looks like this was possibly never used.

 

[Trash80toG4]

Nice snag! Love that thing.

Not sure which one I have, SuperMac? But it's reported to be the same tech, if in a reintegrated/repackaged product. Radius bought SuperMac, simply rebranding the SuperMac's DSP card among other things IIRC.

Very nice to see both boards for comparison. Ill have to dig up the pic I have of a triple display PowerBook setup.

 

[retr01]

Its on my bucket list to emulate this capability with the RaSCSI. I've started poking around with it, but didn't get very far. It was awesome to see a color display on my SE/30.

I've pulled together a few notes/links on it here: https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/wiki/PowerView---SuperView

Hey @landogriffin, any update on this?

 

[retr01]

IEEE did an article on the Texas Instruments TMS34010 GPU found in the PowerView and SuperrView. See attached.

 

[rjkucia]

Hey @landogriffin, any update on this?

Here's the last I've heard about it: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/rascsi-development-thread.6868/post-459981

I haven't had a chance to test it, but it sounds like it just needs a developer willing to devote their time and knowledge to it. Will this be what finally makes me learn C++ for real this time, after years of resistance? Only time will tell...

 

[retr01]

Here's the last I've heard about it: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/rascsi-development-thread.6868/post-459981

Thanks! I replied to that thread and asked if there were any updates with some other questions.

I haven't had a chance to test it, but it sounds like it just needs a developer willing to devote their time and knowledge to it. Will this be what finally makes me learn C++ for real this time, after years of resistance? Only time will tell...

IMHO, C isn't that hard. It is just another high-level language. It is the setting up and implementation that can get hard. I am unsure what is needed to set up this project's C or C++ program, though.

 

[rjkucia]

IMHO, C isn't that hard. It is just another high-level language.

Oh I'm totally fine with C, I just never bothered to use C++, and at this point I've gotten so used to garbage collection and not dealing with pointers I haven't had the motivation to learn it.

 

[landogriffin]

Hey @landogriffin, any update on this?

I'm a slacker :-\

I've had too many projects going in parallel and just haven't got back to this. The original prototype was done before another dev did a big re-architecting of the PiSCSI code, so that definitely took the wind out of my sails.

I promise I haven't forgotten about it though! If any other developer wants to work on it, I'd be glad to answer questions and point you in the right direction.

One interesting note of the TMS Gfx processor - The PowerView doesn't use ANY of its capabilities. The Mac does all of the video rendering in RAM, then copies the frame buffer over SCSI. They could have made the performance SOOO much better if they had actually used the Graphics chip as it was intended.

 

[rjkucia]

I'm a slacker :-\

I've had too many projects going in parallel and just haven't got back to this. The original prototype was done before another dev did a big re-architecting of the PiSCSI code, so that definitely took the wind out of my sails.

I promise I haven't forgotten about it though! If any other developer wants to work on it, I'd be glad to answer questions and point you in the right direction.

One interesting note of the TMS Gfx processor - The PowerView doesn't use ANY of its capabilities. The Mac does all of the video rendering in RAM, then copies the frame buffer over SCSI. They could have made the performance SOOO much better if they had actually used the Graphics chip as it was intended.

Have you considered what it would take to turn the Pi in to such a processor? I'm ignorant of how graphics fully works on a Mac, but it could work like something that accepts QuickDraw commands and then draws based on that, right? From what I understand that's how NuBus cards work? It'd probably involve a lot less data being sent over SCSI.

 

[landogriffin]

I just found almost the same product in my deep storage, but it is made by SuperMac. The SuperView! I dug up this old post since it is almost the same product.
It is interesting it only has one SCSI port with the ID selector on the bottom, internal power supply and composite video out. The manual says that it supports NTSC and PAL. It looks like this was possibly never used.

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Have you tried the driver on other Mac types? The PowerView driver I used will only work with a small subset of Macs (officially), like the Classic, SE and a couple PowerBook variants. You can make it work by faking out the Gesault (with WishIWere) on other systems (like the LC 475).

 

[landogriffin]

Have you considered what it would take to turn the Pi in to such a processor? I'm ignorant of how graphics fully works on a Mac, but it could work like something that accepts QuickDraw commands and then draws based on that, right? From what I understand that's how NuBus cards work? It'd probably involve a lot less data being sent over SCSI.

If thought about it. The Pi side shouldn't be too bad. IIRC, MAME has an emulator for that TI chip already. The hard part (IMO) would be the MacOS driver side of it. It would be a lot less data sent over the SCSI bus!

The MacOS driver is smart enough to only send the chunks of the framebuffer that change. So, if you're just moving a mouse around, its pretty responsive. But, if you're playing a game where alot of the screen is being redrawn, that'll be slow.

 

[retr01]

If thought about it. The Pi side shouldn't be too bad. IIRC, MAME has an emulator for that TI chip already. The hard part (IMO) would be the MacOS driver side of it. It would be a lot less data sent over the SCSI bus!

Yeah.

The MacOS driver is smart enough to only send the chunks of the framebuffer that change. So, if you're just moving a mouse around, its pretty responsive. But, if you're playing a game where alot of the screen is being redrawn, that'll be slow.

There are some delays, and then there are the frames per second (FPS) to get over to the monitor. For 800x600 at 256 colors, maybe just four frames per second? Hmmm.

There was a brief discussion about this at the Atari camp last year.

I am wondering how to increase the FPS. The SE/30 is capable of using the color QuickDraw, so the thing is to get redraws reasonably fast and good response times and FPS.

 

[retr01]

For the SE and other compact Macs incapable of color QuickDraw, could this project be more effective than standard TTL black and white video output, such as using the PowerR TTL adapter combined with RGB2HDMI, when extending rather than mirroring?

 

[BFEXTU]

@YMAC -- if you use the SuperView, it would be a good idea to make sure you have a full backup of any SCSI drives attached to the system. I think it used to have a rogue bug where it could corrupt SCSI drives. I don't know if that bug was ever found/fixed, or if the PowerView had similar issues. Anyway -- better safe than sorry.