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Full Page Display signal on a non-FPD monitor?

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olePigeon

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Can anyone suggest a way to connect a computer with a 9-pin Full Page Display video card to a non-FPD monitor?

I have a Macintosh SE with a "zero slot" video card. Supposedly it's some sort of Full Page Lapis video card. I had originally thought it was a TTL type video with its 9 pins, but apparently it really is VGA. Just an early type of connector.

I read that I can break the video card or display by plugging it into a non-supported display, but I don't have a FPD (Radius, Apple, or otherwise), and wanted to make sure it worked.

Any ideas?
 
That I am aware of the easiest way to break the video card would be to mix TTL and analog signalling but if you are confident it outputs something related to VGA (and thus it's an analog signal) then there shouldn't be much to worry besides testing with a good multisync monitor in hopes it will handle one of the rates the card will try and output. You have a pinout of the connector by chance?
 
According to an old tech magazine it came in two versions: 15" full page display, or 14" half page display monochrome display. Later version had both. Hans, the guy who now owns MicroMac, said it is VGA and will do 640x1200. Come to think of it, my problem could be that the LCDs I plugged it into can't handle the frequency (they're 60hz, this thing could be... who knows what).

I think my best bet is to find a multisync CRT that can hand 1600x1200, and give it a go on that.
 
I never trust LCD's with old computers simply because most of the time they do not support oddball rates that older multisync monitors will at least attempt to sync with.
 
I assume this is the same Pizza-Mac there was a thread about on that other forum? Did you ever manage to get a pinout of the connector? From the Googling I did on that card it looked as if the VGA connector attached to a different header on the video board than the 9-pin "full page" connector. Even if the signals on that connector are "VGA compatible" in terms of sync and voltage you're still basically shooting in the dark without a pinout.

(There is *sort of* a standard for "9 pin VGA", in the sense that quite a few pre-VGA analog monitors and video cards followed the same wire assignments as IBM's PGC video adapter, but by all means that's not certain. Said uncertainity is of course compounded by the fact that your card probably only outputs a single luminance signal, not seperate Red-Green-Blue signals. I *think* Mono VGA monitors used the "blue" line, but that's just my bad memory talking.)
 
Yeah, same one. I was hoping someone here might have some ideas. I don't have any way of testing the pins, unfortunately.
 
If you have an oscilliscope you might be able to make an educated guess, assuming the system is actually outputting video when it's powered on. No luck finding a user's manual, anything?
 
I don't have an oscilloscope, though my local electronics auction place seems to sell them all the time. I might haul it down to WeirdStuff, plug it into one of their CRTs... assuming even a 9-pin to 15-pin adapter will work.

9-pin. Just so strange.
 
Some early vga monitors had a 9 pin connector with 9-15 pin lead attached. My 28 dot pitch vga monitor certainly did. Still have the lead.
 
Getting a bit OT but for the sake of explaining why a db-9 connector:

I've found an example of a 9 pins pinout:

Pin Name Dir Description
1 RED OUT Red Video
2 GREEN OUT Green Video
3 BLUE OUT Blue Video
4 HSYNC OUT Horizontal Sync
5 VSYNC OUT Vertical Sync
6 RGND - Red Ground
7 GGND - Green Ground
8 BGND - Blue Ground
9 SGND - Sync Ground

That was enough for analog rgb at the time.

The 15 pin connector carry the same thing on the first 3 pins and pins 6,7 and 8. The HSYNC (pin 4) is now on pin 13, VSYNC is on pin 14, SGND is moved to the 10th pin and the 9 isn't wired to anything on the 15 pin connector or is carrying +5v.


Pin Name Dir Description
1 RED --> Red Video (75 ohm, 0.7 V p-p)
2 GREEN --> Green Video (75 ohm, 0.7 V p-p)
3 BLUE --> Blue Video (75 ohm, 0.7 V p-p)
4 RES RESERVED
5 GND --- Ground
6 RGND --- Red Ground
7 GGND --- Green Ground
8 BGND --- Blue Ground
9 KEY - Key (No pin) / Optional +5V output from graphics card
10 SGND --- Sync Ground
11 ID0 <-- Monitor ID Bit 0 (optional)
12 SDA <-- I2C bidirectional data line
13 HSYNC or CSYNC --> Horizontal Sync (or Composite Sync)
14 VSYNC --> Vertical Sync which works also as data clock
15 SCL <-- I2C data clock in DDC2, Monitor ID3 in DDC1
 
A lot of old Multisync monitors had a nine pin connector, so, yes, not that weird in and of itself. Remember, these monitors often predated the introduction of VGA which didn't debut until April 1987; heck, the Macintosh II, which used similar resolution analog monitors *slightly* beat VGA to market and the IBM PGC was introduced all the way back in 1984. The issue is that the 9 pin connector was never really *standardized*; in any given case it might be carrying TTL, analog, or ELC signals and the pin arrangement might be completely different between manufacturers. (I believe *most* companies used the PGC pinout when carrying analog video but you can't really bet on that being true in any particular instance.)

Again the thing that bothers me is from the pictures of the board I saw (assuming I'm remembering correctly) is it looked like the 9 pin monitor connector used for the full-page monitor on that video board plugged into a different pin-header than the VGA pinout connector. (If they're both carrying analog VGA-compatible video why would you have two different pin-headers instead of just using the same header with differently-plugged pigtails?) This page has the pinout of a Radius "TPD" (which I assume is "Two page display") that shows a Mac 15 pin connector on one end terminating in a simple BNC connector on the other end; I wonder if the output from that 9 pin connector only comes out on two pins (a single pin with combined sync/luminance and a ground return) and is less "VGA" and more like a high frequency composite output. *If* that's the case it's probably not the end of the world, but you'll have to figure out the pinout and... maybe you'd have some luck with a multisync monitor that supports sync-on-green by feeding the signal into the green pin?

(Edit: Digging *way* back into my memory I think I saw one of those full-page-displays at a thrift store once, and while I could well be just post-facto editing the mental image it may well have had a BNC connector on the back. I remember looking at it for a while and wondering if there were any way I might be able to hook it to my 486 before moving on....

And edit again... found a picture of the back panel of a Radius FPD and that's a 9 pin connecter. But still... grrr. Someone *somewhere* must know what the pinout and signal of that is, it's worth a try at least to assume the plug on that card is compatible with it.)
 
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Darn it. So when I was the recycler, I decided to get some parts to make my own cable. Got home, took the cable off the video card so I could see how it was wired... I don't think that's VGA. Pins 1 and 2 are connected to each other, and so are pins 8 and 9. :confused: So I don't think my new adapter is going to work.

Unless they're wired in a different order? This is weird.

Any ideas?

01.jpg
02.jpg
 
Just so happens I got a CGA/EGA/YUV to VGA adapter board in the mail today. If this does look like CGA, I'll give my adapter a whirl.
 
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