Whooooo it worked, I've got it up and running! Thank you so much for all your effort and documentation! One problem, the colours aren't very well tuned right now (green is blown out as hell), plus the geometry is a bit wonky. Would you be able to share or explain the code you used to grade your screen? I can write the code to the duino, but I'm having trouble parsing how to change the hex codes so I can improve the colours, geometry and contrast.
That's great to hear! This is one project I really have to revisit because so much is left to do! Fortunately for me, I never needed to adjust the settings, things just look great from the start so I don't have code for that. However, one person did need to adjust and graciously shared some information on that. At the moment I don't have access to my eMac to experiment alongside you but you could try using parts of the code used in the iMac G3 arduino code using eMac addresses. Here is the link to the wiki with a table that includes addresses and ranges for the different settings like contrast, brightness ect.. en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_modify_an_eMac_to_use_as_an_external_monitor An here is the iMac G3 code. github.com/qbancoffee/imac_g3_ivad_board_init Do you want to send commands with python from a raspberry pi? try this. github.com/qbancoffee/imac_g3_osd_cli Eventually I want to do to the eMac what I did for the iMac G3. I'm glad to see that things are moving along for you!
I've been doing this project and hit a roadblock on the CRT not displaying anything. I'm using a slightly modified version of your code on an arduino nano to send the I2C signals to the CRT. I'm using the 5v supply of the analog board to power both the arudino and the CRT for pins 4 and 10 and also the ground for the arudino. I'm not 100% certain that the I2C information is going through to the CRT but when I change the wires around, it gets caught in the while loop of the read function, so I'm sure at least something is happening. On the VGA side, I have wires connected to the eMac connector to a board that splits out the DB15 pins. As far as I know, each pin is wired up correctly, with the V sync and H sync wired correctly too. The only wires not connected are for the DDE signal, which the CRT can't really use anyways. I also have a computer with a 1280x960 72Hz signal using GTF timing (which to my knowledge uses the correct front porch and sync lengths) coming out of a VGA cable. The only thing that I feel might cause nothing to show up is that fact that when the arduino and CRT are both being powered, the 5v line drops down to around 4.55 volts. There is a 12 volt supply coming from the analog board but I'm not sure how well over time the arduino would fair using that. Any input on what you think could be happening would be helpful and I can give you a lot more information if needed. Thanks for your time ☻
Nevermind I got it to work. I guess the two wires for the DDE were needed lol. But I still have some trial and error to make the screen look better. Thanks for all the hard work discovering and describing how it works!
Hey I just had a question. Is there a resource for wiring the cables from the neck to DC10 connector? I was just a little confused as there are two brown wires and a few other blacks ones that I can’t see where they end up on the connector in your video. Any help would appreciated. Thanks so much again!
@@anjary69 I don't have a really clear diagram but I do have a wiki book that goes into some detail. en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_modify_an_eMac_to_use_as_an_external_monitor
Very cool! I happened to pick up a Mac LC not too long ago, got the computer itself working and replaced the HD with an SD card, put an Ethernet card in it. The monitor that came with it is another story. Caps leaked everywhere (which is what happened to every other Apple monitor I see on YT), but replacing caps wasn't enough. Found a bad horizontal scan transistor and I'm waiting for that to come from Digikey. I'm also working on my own upgrades to my CoCo2, I will post on Discord once that is ready. Nice to see another video from you!
Awesome video 👌 I’ve learnt a decent amount since the last time I asked, but I have one burning question about the 5V source connected to the two yellow wires. How many amps or watts in total would it be supplying? I’m thinking about leaving the logic board in and powering the CRT externally, so I wouldn’t have access to that 5V pinout in particular 🤔
I'm not sure how much current it's capable of providing but if you are planning on leaving the logic board installed, it till probably use a good amount of the current. What are you planning to power with the 5V pin? An SBC like a raspberry pi? I didn't have much success doing that. What I had to do was use the 12V out to power a DC to DC converter specifically designed to power a raspberry pi 3. All of this was without the logic board installed. Are you going to splice in some sort of switch to share the VGA signal?
I worded it a bit weird, my basic knowledge being sketchy and all. I was asking how much current pinouts 4 & 10 draw in total when powering on the CRT 🤔 As I was thinking of leaving the logic board in I won’t have access to the 5V pinout you use in the video, so I was thinking of powering it through an external supply along with the arduino. I won’t be turning the computer on, just the CRT. Basically I was thinking a cable coming from the RAM access door, ending in a box with all the guts, power port & a VGA connection so I can plug in my PC or any VGA outputting device quickly and easily 🤔 I’m hoping I can leave all original components in while being able to use the CRT by itself as a monitor for other stuff, if that makes sense.
Rocky, can you do LCD controller board programming? I can supply the data sheet for the PowerBook 1400c LCD, also (and yes I asked about this over two years ago) I'll need your help with troubleshooting an interface between a Raspberry Pi 5, and VGA inputs, into a Macintosh Color Classic. Everything I put through has washed out colors, to the point of being black and white? I'll post this video soon.
Hi Billy! I don't have experience programming LCD controllers but let me take a look at the controller specs to see if anything comes to mind. I remember that problem with the PI and the washed out colors, I'll chime back after I watch the video. Good to see you're back!
Hello, do you still have the original motherboard for this eMac and do you still need it by any chance? I'm looking for replacement eMac motherboards for at least two of my eMacs that have dead motherboards. The analog boards and CRTs are still completely fine though.
Hi! Sorry to hear about your dead analog boards! Unfortunately I no longer have the logic board for that specific eMac. I bought one on Mercari a while back to eventually reverse engineer some more stuff so I still need that one. Have you looked on Mercari? www.mercari.com/us/item/m72619123430/?ref=search_results
Thanks very much for the iMac and eMac videos and your fantastic write up on the GitHub pages. I see a lot of references to your wikihow page around the internet but that is dead so I assume the GitHub information just supercedes it? I would love to combine your iMac single-raspberry PI solution into an eMac solution and simply use the Mac power button/supply to power it all. Does the analog board trickle 5v give enough power to the raspberry PI? I'm haven't disassembled my eMac yet to determine if it has that down converter board like on the iMac that you have made a daughter board for the iMac yet.
Whooooo it worked, I've got it up and running! Thank you so much for all your effort and documentation!
One problem, the colours aren't very well tuned right now (green is blown out as hell), plus the geometry is a bit wonky. Would you be able to share or explain the code you used to grade your screen? I can write the code to the duino, but I'm having trouble parsing how to change the hex codes so I can improve the colours, geometry and contrast.
That's great to hear! This is one project I really have to revisit because so much is left to do! Fortunately for me, I never needed to adjust the settings, things just look great from the start so I don't have code for that. However, one person did need to adjust and graciously shared some information on that. At the moment I don't have access to my eMac to experiment alongside you but you could try using parts of the code used in the iMac G3 arduino code using eMac addresses.
Here is the link to the wiki with a table that includes addresses and ranges for the different settings like contrast, brightness ect..
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_modify_an_eMac_to_use_as_an_external_monitor
An here is the iMac G3 code.
github.com/qbancoffee/imac_g3_ivad_board_init
Do you want to send commands with python from a raspberry pi? try this.
github.com/qbancoffee/imac_g3_osd_cli
Eventually I want to do to the eMac what I did for the iMac G3. I'm glad to see that things are moving along for you!
Thanks for the video! I recently unpacked an old eMac to convert to a monitor for my Coco2. I needed motivation to start this project.
I hope you share that project, I would love to see it!
Do you still have the motherboard for the eMac, and do you plan to keep it? If not I'd be interested
I've been doing this project and hit a roadblock on the CRT not displaying anything. I'm using a slightly modified version of your code on an arduino nano to send the I2C signals to the CRT. I'm using the 5v supply of the analog board to power both the arudino and the CRT for pins 4 and 10 and also the ground for the arudino. I'm not 100% certain that the I2C information is going through to the CRT but when I change the wires around, it gets caught in the while loop of the read function, so I'm sure at least something is happening. On the VGA side, I have wires connected to the eMac connector to a board that splits out the DB15 pins. As far as I know, each pin is wired up correctly, with the V sync and H sync wired correctly too. The only wires not connected are for the DDE signal, which the CRT can't really use anyways. I also have a computer with a 1280x960 72Hz signal using GTF timing (which to my knowledge uses the correct front porch and sync lengths) coming out of a VGA cable. The only thing that I feel might cause nothing to show up is that fact that when the arduino and CRT are both being powered, the 5v line drops down to around 4.55 volts. There is a 12 volt supply coming from the analog board but I'm not sure how well over time the arduino would fair using that. Any input on what you think could be happening would be helpful and I can give you a lot more information if needed. Thanks for your time ☻
Nevermind I got it to work. I guess the two wires for the DDE were needed lol. But I still have some trial and error to make the screen look better. Thanks for all the hard work discovering and describing how it works!
@@moqwer0929 You're welcome! sorry for the late reply but I youtube comments aren't intuitive for me so I miss them sometimes.
Thank you so much for posting this breakdown
You're welcome!
Thanks for showing this process and being so clear! I definitely feel like I can do this now! Haha
You're welcome!
Hey I just had a question. Is there a resource for wiring the cables from the neck to DC10 connector? I was just a little confused as there are two brown wires and a few other blacks ones that I can’t see where they end up on the connector in your video. Any help would appreciated. Thanks so much again!
@@anjary69 I don't have a really clear diagram but I do have a wiki book that goes into some detail. en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_modify_an_eMac_to_use_as_an_external_monitor
Very cool! I happened to pick up a Mac LC not too long ago, got the computer itself working and replaced the HD with an SD card, put an Ethernet card in it. The monitor that came with it is another story. Caps leaked everywhere (which is what happened to every other Apple monitor I see on YT), but replacing caps wasn't enough. Found a bad horizontal scan transistor and I'm waiting for that to come from Digikey. I'm also working on my own upgrades to my CoCo2, I will post on Discord once that is ready. Nice to see another video from you!
When it rains it pours! I can't wait to see your CC2 upgrades. Thanks!
Awesome video 👌
I’ve learnt a decent amount since the last time I asked, but I have one burning question about the 5V source connected to the two yellow wires. How many amps or watts in total would it be supplying? I’m thinking about leaving the logic board in and powering the CRT externally, so I wouldn’t have access to that 5V pinout in particular 🤔
I'm not sure how much current it's capable of providing but if you are planning on leaving the logic board installed, it till probably use a good amount of the current. What are you planning to power with the 5V pin? An SBC like a raspberry pi? I didn't have much success doing that. What I had to do was use the 12V out to power a DC to DC converter specifically designed to power a raspberry pi 3. All of this was without the logic board installed. Are you going to splice in some sort of switch to share the VGA signal?
I worded it a bit weird, my basic knowledge being sketchy and all. I was asking how much current pinouts 4 & 10 draw in total when powering on the CRT 🤔
As I was thinking of leaving the logic board in I won’t have access to the 5V pinout you use in the video, so I was thinking of powering it through an external supply along with the arduino. I won’t be turning the computer on, just the CRT. Basically I was thinking a cable coming from the RAM access door, ending in a box with all the guts, power port & a VGA connection so I can plug in my PC or any VGA outputting device quickly and easily 🤔
I’m hoping I can leave all original components in while being able to use the CRT by itself as a monitor for other stuff, if that makes sense.
Rocky, can you do LCD controller board programming? I can supply the data sheet for the PowerBook 1400c LCD, also (and yes I asked about this over two years ago) I'll need your help with troubleshooting an interface between a Raspberry Pi 5, and VGA inputs, into a Macintosh Color Classic. Everything I put through has washed out colors, to the point of being black and white? I'll post this video soon.
Hi Billy! I don't have experience programming LCD controllers but let me take a look at the controller specs to see if anything comes to mind. I remember that problem with the PI and the washed out colors, I'll chime back after I watch the video. Good to see you're back!
Hello, do you still have the original motherboard for this eMac and do you still need it by any chance? I'm looking for replacement eMac motherboards for at least two of my eMacs that have dead motherboards. The analog boards and CRTs are still completely fine though.
Hi! Sorry to hear about your dead analog boards! Unfortunately I no longer have the logic board for that specific eMac. I bought one on Mercari a while back to eventually reverse engineer some more stuff so I still need that one. Have you looked on Mercari? www.mercari.com/us/item/m72619123430/?ref=search_results
👋
Thanks very much for the iMac and eMac videos and your fantastic write up on the GitHub pages. I see a lot of references to your wikihow page around the internet but that is dead so I assume the GitHub information just supercedes it? I would love to combine your iMac single-raspberry PI solution into an eMac solution and simply use the Mac power button/supply to power it all. Does the analog board trickle 5v give enough power to the raspberry PI? I'm haven't disassembled my eMac yet to determine if it has that down converter board like on the iMac that you have made a daughter board for the iMac yet.