@@Codeaholic1 It's probably using dedicated counters/dividers and interrupts on the SoC to generate the timing rather than CPU instructions due to strict timing requirements of HDMI, so it probably could run on a slower CPU if it had the same counters.
The best way to look at it is, think of the video adapter as a magical black box. Doesnt matter it's compute capability, it's just there to facilitate video lol
hm. would be amazing to make third party after market cases for them too then. instead of it being a mac classic it'll look like one of those small performas. or. replacing the crt with a LCD
@@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862 Many options for that, with help I'd be willing to attempt something. Could make laser-cut, 3d-printed, extruded etcetera. Whilst I cannot produce the physical items I'm plenty capable of making the cad files
I'm curious how you're going to handle fitting the flat lcd panel in to the curved opening the crt went in to? Are you going to make the opening flat by removing plastic or add on an extension to take up the extra space between the opening and the panel?
@@Codeaholic1 , some case modding will need to be done for sure, maybe a 3D print something. Also depends if you could get a screen, maybe a laptop one, to be a form Factor that would fit the space.
@@benholroyd5221 I am (slowly) completing the next version of macflim (www.macflim.com) with sound and smaller files! Unfortunately, the encoder doesn't really support movies longer than a few minutes, so I'll settle for 80s music videos :-)
@@fredsretrocoding1421 Oh wow. I thought you were being sarcastic, (well more sarcastic). Impressive that you managed to get it running in a window, I'd have thought you'd have to bypass the os entirely to stand a chance.
@@benholroyd5221 I thought the same thing at the begining, but at the end, the windowed version is 4x less data. I align the window on a multiple of 8, so copybits doesn't have to rotate, and it goes well enough (I had other ideas, but they were not necessary). Won't work with the audio version, though, due to timing issues with sound and disk, so I 'll probably limit sound to full screen.
@@fredsretrocoding1421 surely don't need sound from multiple videos anyway. I am seriously impressed. I wouldn't even have tried this, and I have a habit of thinking " there must be a simpler way" and very quickly realising why X is like it is.
Heh, I just realized when he pulled the external output up that I used to think, back when I first used an original Mac, that the rounded corners were actually missing pixels on the built-in tubes and not just the way the Mac's desktop is drawn as a design choice :/
@@Spelter I'm fairly certain the corners are rounded because Jobs wanted them to be, not because of any technical reason (even indirectly). Look up the story about Steve Jobs and "roundrects", though that one specifically concerns QuickDraw I would be surprised if the rounded corners of the screen (which were on the Lisa as well) weren't born from a similar idea.
Inspired by you, I built my own 2 units of RGB2HDMI and successfully hooked it up to my own Mac Classic 1. I can intercept the HDMI signal to a cheapie USB stick capture device. I'm probably gonna set up a Mac plus in the same way, to reach compatibility with older games from 1984-1986. I set up a channel called '1Bit Fever Dreams' to show off my captured game sessions! Thanks Adrian!
Oh wow, how cool to see a pixel perfect capture of that mac on my Thinkpad. Brings back memories man. That's a really cool project, that RGB-to-HDMI pi-thing.
In theory yes, but the converter board has to sent it because HDMI is a bit different with sending aound than 3.5mm audiojacks. Basically, its digital not analog.
Saw this recently on Noel's channel as a screen replacement, and immediately thought of old Macs. Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought of that! Rock on sir!
This is really cool! I love the way the pixels look - it reminds me of running the Apple 30" Cinema Display, which uses dual link DVI to get it's 2560x1600 resolution, on a device that only supports single link DVI, so that you get the single link timing in the display of 1280x800 (not scaled) which looks nicely chunky 🙂
I'm loving this modern era where anyone can create brand new hardware stuff for old machines, whether it's designing and fabricating a completely new motherboard, connecting up modern console controllers, and now displaying retro output over HDMI. Brilliant!
Seeing the old Mac desktop full-screen in high quality is something special, even to me, who was never a Macintosh user. I hope you will use this converter on many retro systems in the future!
If you're happy to have the RGB2HDMI external, you could sneak a ribbon cable out through the kensington lock slot. You'd probably want a more secure connector for the wires internally, otherwise it would be super easy to yank the cable loose. Not to mention it would be a lot easier than having to figure out which pin on the cable connects to which wire coming from the analogue board every time. I definitely found the integer scaling much better than the interpolate 4:3 soft option. You can really see the difference in the diagonal lines of the arrows on the scroll bars, it's definitely blurring the edges/corners of the pixels together. Anyway, great job! Always good to have another tool to show off these machines in your videos!
It's so nice that the retro computer YT channels are like a big ring of buddies, helping each other and promoting each other's content. I just recognized David's game in the background at 4:00. A viewer of The8Bit Guy is probably a viewer of one or more of LGR, TechMoan, Adrian's Digital Basement and it's not like they are taking view counts from each other, in fact, they watch each others' content too.
If my Mac Classic hadn't *literally melted* from a battery explosion in a humid basement 8 years ago I'd be all over this, it's so cool to be able to give old priceless experiences a new lease of life with something as simple and as bog standard now as a Pi
Yay, the return of the Lansdowne Road jersey 🇮🇪 . I love all the enhancements we’re getting for our old machines thanks to projects like this. Exciting stuff
I've been toying with a diy colour classic (or 575) inspired machine from the ground up, but video is something I've been a bit apprehensive about. This might be just the ticket. Thanks Adrian!
Very cool! That RGB2HDMI project just keeps being more awesome. I remember looking into getting the video out of a mac classic I spent far too long on restoring years and years ago and gave up due to nothing being able to process the signal properly. I did learn a ton about macs, scsi, disk imaging and so on during that project though so it was good fun :) Another project you might be interested in if you haven't seen it already is the USB Wombat from BMOW, where you can use a modern USB keyboard/mouse on a classic ADB machine, or the other way around!
honestly this is awesome, like you could build a custom psu/analog board and build a completely lcd version of this. great for preserving these old machines.
True, but there would be the problem with getting into the menu, he would need to either capture keyboard commands somehow or drill holes for new buttons and solder then onto the board. But yes, it would be possible, but some would say it's not a real old machine
@@Spelter ofc yeah, but if the lcd software is hardwired to work in a certain way there shouldn't be any issue. the thing with these old pcs is that eventually they're all gonna die, so i think it's great that we can preserve the experience of using this hardware as closely as possible to the original. emulators already do wonders, but with fpgas and the m68k family still being relevant, i see a future hardware clones at the very least possible.
There was really something fascinating about those black and white monochrome high resolution displays back in the day. And the Apple ping. I’d literally go from store to store playing around with these as a kid for entertainment.
Can you elaborate what you meant about the pixel aspect ratio not being 1x1? All Macs had square pixels. The 512x342 is the B/W screen pixel dimensions, 512x384 was for the Color Classic's 10" screen and the 12" color display (vs. the 640x480 13" screen). Those screens were just about the size of two menu bars taller, meaning you could fit more stuff on them.
I remember being at the local Apple dealer when the Mac came out (I was there for the Lisa debut as well) and being very excited when I measured things and figured out that it was using square pixels (the Lisa had rectangular pixels). P.S. The Mac's screen was has a wider aspect ratio than a standard 4:3 display -- Mac's were widescreen before wide-screen was a thing.
@@fred_derf Ah yes, the color displays (512x384 and 640x480) were standard TV 4:3, but that obviously makes 512x342 a bit shorter than 4:3. Though none of these are 1:1 (that would be square).
Great job ! Just discovered this video, and this channel. As I'm beginning to restore old Macs, I'm very interested in such possibilities like this one, or BulSCSI, RaSCSI,... Thanks for this !
I remember seeing ads back in the day for gadgets that would let you connect an external monitor to the classic (128k) Macintosh that came out almost immediately after the system came out. It's great to see the concept go from unobtanium, to available again.
Interesting! I wonder what kinds of monitors it worked with since the Mac video timing isn't following any normal standard (like NTSC, PAL, etc.) I watched some Apple keynotes where they had Mac video output on a large projected screen -- and I wondered how they made that possible.
@@adriansdigitalbasement As I recall they were for CGA monitors, I will do some research and see what I can find. I did find this link at a forum where back in 2014 people were discussing the feasibility of it, and apparently there was a repair book for classic macintoshes that explained a bit how the video output worked, and the possibility of using a TTL monitor. I'll just put the link here: 68kmla.org/forums/topic/23661-external-compact-mac-crt/?do=findComment&comment=246156
This will be fabulous for people like RMC with his museum, he could add this to older machines so that whatever someone is playing on a machine in the museum could also be show on a big screen. PS - If you'd like one of the c0pperdragon boards for Amiga, I've built a handful and would be happy to send you one.
Quote: "the crt is very bright, very strong". Of course it is. Our friend Adrian has been at it. So it should be working like a dream. Hehe 😋 Thanks for the handy vid Adrian. 👍
Thumbs way up! I’ve been trying to get my old dual 800k floppy SE to come back life ( original owner - me). Haven’t got it to boot yet, but it’s great to know that I can get a video signal out of it if my analog board is dead!
How amazing is this! The video capture looks like something I've seen emulated on my monitor, but it's being run from a real classic Mac! I've been following similar rgb2hdmi projects in the Amiga scene, but seeing it here on a Mac gives me an idea. It's probably beyond my skill level (I've done basic recapping etc), but I have a Color Classic II whose CRT is really bad and looks like it's on steadily for the past 20 years. In the right hands, a project like this could be used with a new internal LCD on the Color Classic II much like Noel did with his Amstrad CPC. The only problem I would have is, it would ruin the originality and aesthetics of the machine. The trinitron crt Apple used on the color classics have a distinct, flat curve to them. The LCD would have a wonderful picture, but look completely out of place in the housing I think?
I've been planning to do this! Great to see it - the documentation for the RGB2HDMI project is *appauling* - why are there three different dongles? it says for different computers - so much of the documentation is focused on adapting for specific systems vs specific signals. Thank you so much!
OMH i just remember playing that game with my nephew 30 years ago!!!! (I was 12 or little over). Thanks to this video! Amazing flashback, from the very depths of my brain
It would be great if you can get one of these RGB to HDMI Raspi hats as a blank PCB and build it from scratch. As I understand, it self programs the CPLD when you assemble the hat yourself and power up for the first time. This is a great project and being totally open source, it is a huge contribution the the retro community. It really deserves to have an in depth build + review video from all of the best retro channels, and none that I follow has done it yet. IMHO, you should be the one to do it. I will be building a "Superfo" Harlequin 128 v4A board from scratch very soon. It is the last version of the "Harlequin" series ZX Spectrum 128K clones which uses all off-the-shelf 74HC logic IC's to re-create the long time obsolete custom ULA. The board natively outputs RGB and I am planning to use this RGB to HDMI project with it. I know I would be grateful if I saw a build video before I attempt to build mine, I am sure there will be tons of other retro-heads like me who would appreciate such a video. There is some fine pitch SMD soldering involved but with correct flux and iron tip, it is really much easier than one anticipates. Please do this. :-)
I used a custom wire adaptor and resistors to get a "VGA" signal out of the mac classic i had to make sure the motherboard was outputting video to the CRT. Mind you this only worked because the Eizo multi scan monitor I have supports 24KHz even tho the mac classic is 22.5khz, it threw a warning but still displayed it enough to verify the mac was working
I did a test capture from my LCIII using minimum System 7.5 about a year ago. I used a DB15 to VGA adapter out to a powered VGA splitter from DTech. One side goes out to my flat panel VGA monitor (so I can see the native output) the other side goes to a Star Tech VGA2HDMI box. It’s like a headless VGA monitor and supports a lot of resolutions. The HDMI of that goes to an El Gato game capture HD The old one, I don’t need to capture old Mac video at 60fps. The El Gato goes into my MacBook Air. The video is on my channel with links to the tools in the doodley-doo. Not quite as cool as this but I can’t solder. My setup is quite similar to what LGR uses except for the splitter. And he has (at least he did) an AverMedia capture system. Nice job.
I simply adore, how greatly technologies advanced over 30 years or so, and the fact, that raspberry pi convertor has over 500 times more ram, than the macintosh
I've owned a Mac Plus and an SE for several years. Their resolution was 512 x 342. I've never seen a classic Mac going to 384. My friend's SE/30 also was 512 x 342. Every Mac with a 9" CRT was 512 x 342. Unless I'm mistaken, the Color Classic was the first to do 512 x 384.
Indeed, the original Mac resolution is not actually 4:3, and it was too stretched vertically after he put it to interpolated (but he called it correct because he always adjusts his CRTs to fit 4:3). How it first looked is pixel accurate.
"Why would you want to do this?" ... is something no one in the Retro world should ever ask. ;-) Great vid!! Also, too bad the Pi in the Classic project didn't work. That would have been fun too. ;-)
Yeah the reverse would be amazing -- another enthusiast was working on it too but we just ran into issues with the DPI limitations on the Pi. Not sure if it's a software or hardware issue.
The RGB2HDMI already fully supports the C128 digital output -- just plug it in and set it to CGA and you're all set. Unfortunately the C128 analog video (for 40 col mode) isn't supported at this time.
Having the ability to capture it would be cool! I finally got my hands on a C64, and would love to be able to actually stream some classic games for friends to watch.
You could use multiple converters, like video into an usb video converter. The sound could be a problem, but it would be a cool thing when you solve that. Never saw an external sound device for the commodore.
Very cool. Would love to see a video on running a classic Mac mainboard without the analog board, just using the RGB2HDMI and an ATX PSU. That should be a nice setup for testing MBs. I hope somebody will produce and sell a bigger batch of these....
I like the idea of replacing dangerous CRTs with nice friendly 5v LCD screens. Another nasty bugger, was 8 inch floppy drive. Those ran on mains voltage. All electronics from back then remind me of movies, where some lady spills milk and gets electrocuted by a blender.
I distinctly remember playing Crystal Quest on a Mac II with a 13” Apple Trinitron monitor. That and Solarian II were some of my favorite general games of the era (the others would be all flight simulators).
If I'm not mistaken, many of the old compact Mac motherboards were actually capable of sending color. I don't know about the Classic, but the Classic II motherboard was basically an LC II (which was color) and I think the SE /30 motherboard supported color as well, even though the CRT was black and white.
Adrian, have you looked into NitrOS-9? It looks like a really cool project. This is a quote about the project. "NitrOS-9 is a real-time, process-based, multitasking, multi-user, Unix-like operating system for Tandy CoCo, Dragon, and several other Motorola MC6809-based computers. The original OS-9 was created in 1979. NitrOS-9 is the modern equivalent of that OS, and includes advanced features like support for up to 2 MB RAM and 4 GB Hard drive partitions. It is still being developed, and support is available in many mailing lists and forums."
I believe that the way that they got early Mac video was a combination of special hardware in the Mac to get it’s video signal out of the case; and then a very large (5 to 10 unit 19” rack mount, depending on exactly when built and what model it was) bit of very expensive hardware called a ‘scan converter’. You could configure them to convert from just about anything to anything; and they also handled the interlaced video flicker issue.
Does it understand Apple //c lcd panel weird digital video output? I'm working on my own project for that, but I'd love to see how well it might work :)
I believe supporting anything beyond NTSC composite video from the //c video port is going to require some additional logic to derive the video signal. I don't know if the cpld on the rgb2hdmi could do this or not. apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/faqs/Csa2MONITOR.html#022 Re: Adrian, excited to see it
@@adriansdigitalbasement I have one of Plamen's //c VGA adaptors, but sadly that outputs 720x480, which looks nice on a crt, but horrible on an LCD because of the integer scaling issue - I've been working on getting a PiPico to convert directly from //c digital lcd output to LVDS signals to directly drive an LCD panel - I love the idea of the system you've been using, but for my own satisfaction I'm keen to build a '100% digital, minimum overhead' LCD interface - going to HDMI, using the PiZero SoC HDMI circuitry and then back to whatever the panel uses natively feels like 'cheating', hence wanting to try it on a much more basic microcontroller, at a more fundamental level. Yes, it's a silly idea. Looking forward to seeing how well your setup handles //c video, especially artifact colour vs sharpness - If i am successfull with my experiments I'll send you a kit and you can do a head-to-head comparison, if you like :) Thanks for providing such an entertaining channel, it's always nice to watch your enthusiasm for trying new things, and repairing old ones :)
Yeah the github link above is the work I did with Ian to get the IIc fully supported via the DB15 port. Ian even recently added the mixed mode decoding so in the lower 4 lines doesn't get artifact color applied to it. It works flawlessly now and scales perfectly in pixel perfect HDMI. All the VGA adapters that exist are junky in comparison and that video I'm making will compare them, showing off how superior the RGB2HDMI is at this. :-)
The second aspect ratio you use starting at 20:59 seems like it's stretched vertically. Maybe it's my eyes playing tricks on me, but I don't think so, since the desktop pattern at 21:40 is supposed to be square, but it's definitely taller thank it is wide. I saw elsewhere in the menu that the HDMI output was 1024x768. A 2:1 scaling of 512x342 would be 1024x684, but if it's full-screen, that means it's being stretched to 768 px, or by 12%. This is still really cool though, that it works even this well! I'm not sure about this aspect (heh) of the classic Mac CRTs, but I _thought_ they just turned down the Vsize a little so that circles and squares would look correct. I.e. pixels are square, even though the aspect ratio is 1.5 instead of 1.33.
Yeah, this is just one of those things - he adjusts the V size to fill the screen on his classic Macs so he’s used to those skinny rectangular buttons and adjusted the adapter to match. The circle cursor in that game at the end is oval too. Another thing Adrian always does out of spec with CRTs is adjusts it so the infrablack bar in the SMPTE test pattern is black, which makes the black be 5% grey and the 5% grey become 10% grey. I’m assuming they’re both just habitual by now, however they originally came about (misreading/misremembering spec?)
I went to a very early iphone programming talk by apple, and the way they projected the iphone screen at that time was just by putting it under a document camera. wouldn't be surprised if the old Macintosh keynote just had a regular video camera pointed at the screen.
2:25 - I've mentioned before - external displays did exist for this form factor Mac - it connected via the SCSI port, expensive, but it worked! (Oh almost forgot the Mac SE 30 had a a few riser cards upgrades - there was a knockout on the back for the video output port (It was normally used for ethernet ports), I still have my Radius card & monitor!)
15:45 actually, you will see that pattern if the tube was already warm (e.g., you did a full shutdown, and then immediately turned it back on) Good memories from my Macintosh SE days.
The first time I even used a mac was in the early 90's and I was amazed it was black and white, my friends sister was doing some animation course in university and she had an all in one mac...it was kind of shocking when I had an Acorn Archimedes that was in full colour and in my mind better... I loved that little computer though!
This is very cool. I’d like to see an SE/30 capture in color. iIRC, the SE/30 was capable of RGB output to a color monitor. It might need something extra, I believe there was an expansion board that plugged into the slot on the logic board with a VGA socket.
The extra pixel you're seeing along the right hand side of the cursor, is just part of what happens when the desktop background is 'grey' on those monochrome macs - the checkerboard effect. If the background is black, it isn't as obvious.
Adrian, to get a video out on an original Macintosh Apple had a little board that plugged in between the digital and analog board. It gives a composite out, but like the Lisa’s video out it’s at NTSC frequencies.
Interesting -- that begs the question how did it do it if the resolution and scan rate is wrong? Maybe they had a custom modified Mac to run at NTSC frequencies somehow
@@adriansdigitalbasement I think they either modified the projector to use the scanning frequency of the Mac, or the projector was multisync. Some Lisa documentation talks about using a specific Electrohome monitor or Conrac projector with a 22.7 KHz scan rate. (One of the few chips on the Lisa motherboard is something that integrates the H sync, V sync, and video into a composite signal, which goes to a jack on the back of the machine) I got one of the Mac video out boards in a lot of stuff from a Lisa engineer - I’ll have to make a video showing it. I’ve never seen picture of one before!
20:10 512x384 was the resultion of the 12" colour monitor that came as the least expensive option for the Macintosh LC. Again it's funny that the CPU on the RPi is more powerful that the machine it handles the display for.
The old Mac presentations were done using an Eidophor projector. It was oil based and was used for live video projection. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor
Were there any big-screen demo events for the Classic/II? The SE and SE/30 both had PDS slots so a video output solution would be trivial - just drop in an existing PDS video card - whereas there would need to be a little effort involved in building a custom board for the Classic, a machine that wasn't really worth demoing at a keynote anyway, though if they had something that was used previously with the Plus or earlier compact Macs it could easily have been adapted to these. In the dev note, potential Classic and Classic II devs were discouraged from building any internal add-ons for the machines because there was little overhead for additional power draw and basically no considerations for mounting anything to the board or the chassis. That didn't stop Interware, who developed an internal 8-bit video card for the Classic II, but there wasn't much else built for these beyond one or two CPU upgrades or ROM expansions.
When the video adapter has 1000x the computing power of the host computer
Given how much is done in software I wonder how much the arm cpu is utilized. Eg. Could a slower clocked core still handle this?
That's probably what it takes to have zero latency!
@@Codeaholic1 It's probably using dedicated counters/dividers and interrupts on the SoC to generate the timing rather than CPU instructions due to strict timing requirements of HDMI, so it probably could run on a slower CPU if it had the same counters.
@@stevethepocket Wouldn't that be Pi-Zero latency? 😉
The best way to look at it is, think of the video adapter as a magical black box. Doesnt matter it's compute capability, it's just there to facilitate video lol
Ha! I knew you would find some cool uses for the RGBtoHDMI, but I never expected HDMI from a Mac. Awesome job!
"I'm going to do less videos..." does way more. Haha. I started with a classic Mac. This old Mac stuff warms my heart. Kudos.
ya i dont think the "do less" worked out for him XD
These are videos that he's probably already filmed when he made that announcement.
He's likely going to start to release less videos in a week or two.
Shhh don't make him realize he's doing more haha
This is gonna give life to a WHOLE lot of old Macs with busted screens.
hm. would be amazing to make third party after market cases for them too then. instead of it being a mac classic it'll look like one of those small performas. or. replacing the crt with a LCD
@@rayproductionsbackupchanne3862 Many options for that, with help I'd be willing to attempt something. Could make laser-cut, 3d-printed, extruded etcetera. Whilst I cannot produce the physical items I'm plenty capable of making the cad files
I think there's not nearly so many compact macs with busted screens as there are with battery-bombed logic boards...
I would love to see you put a LCD or LED in an old Macintosh. Imagine how many machines could have life again. 🤯
My first Classic for instance! I broke it’s crt neck… 😞
I've been looking around for information do do exactly this and boom, this video pops up
I was going to post the same thing.😂. That would be an awesome upgrade.
I'm curious how you're going to handle fitting the flat lcd panel in to the curved opening the crt went in to? Are you going to make the opening flat by removing plastic or add on an extension to take up the extra space between the opening and the panel?
@@Codeaholic1 , some case modding will need to be done for sure, maybe a 3D print something. Also depends if you could get a screen, maybe a laptop one, to be a form
Factor that would fit the space.
There are not enough thumbs up in the world to express how freakin' cool that is!
Use a TD2TU converter.
HDMI is such a terrible thing ! NEVER again !!!!
@@blitzwing1 The connectors are rubbish and the connections affect the way the laptop works ! Turning the sound off and reconfiguring desktop layout !
The whole adapter wiring is far more colorful than the image passing through it. :-D
This is awesome! I will finally be able to build myself a se30-based home cinema!
For extremely short black and white films?
@@benholroyd5221 I am (slowly) completing the next version of macflim (www.macflim.com) with sound and smaller files! Unfortunately, the encoder doesn't really support movies longer than a few minutes, so I'll settle for 80s music videos :-)
@@fredsretrocoding1421 Oh wow. I thought you were being sarcastic, (well more sarcastic).
Impressive that you managed to get it running in a window, I'd have thought you'd have to bypass the os entirely to stand a chance.
@@benholroyd5221 I thought the same thing at the begining, but at the end, the windowed version is 4x less data. I align the window on a multiple of 8, so copybits doesn't have to rotate, and it goes well enough (I had other ideas, but they were not necessary). Won't work with the audio version, though, due to timing issues with sound and disk, so I 'll probably limit sound to full screen.
@@fredsretrocoding1421 surely don't need sound from multiple videos anyway.
I am seriously impressed. I wouldn't even have tried this, and I have a habit of thinking " there must be a simpler way" and very quickly realising why X is like it is.
Heh, I just realized when he pulled the external output up that I used to think, back when I first used an original Mac, that the rounded corners were actually missing pixels on the built-in tubes and not just the way the Mac's desktop is drawn as a design choice :/
Maybe they did it because of the corners and do it so it's not outside a few pixels ?
@@Spelter I'm fairly certain the corners are rounded because Jobs wanted them to be, not because of any technical reason (even indirectly). Look up the story about Steve Jobs and "roundrects", though that one specifically concerns QuickDraw I would be surprised if the rounded corners of the screen (which were on the Lisa as well) weren't born from a similar idea.
Inspired by you, I built my own 2 units of RGB2HDMI and successfully hooked it up to my own Mac Classic 1. I can intercept the HDMI signal to a cheapie USB stick capture device. I'm probably gonna set up a Mac plus in the same way, to reach compatibility with older games from 1984-1986. I set up a channel called '1Bit Fever Dreams' to show off my captured game sessions! Thanks Adrian!
Oh wow, how cool to see a pixel perfect capture of that mac on my Thinkpad. Brings back memories man. That's a really cool project, that RGB-to-HDMI pi-thing.
No reason to do this sounds perfectly fine to me!
That's awesome that you can do direct video capture from a Classic Mac now. All you need to add is direct audio capture of the Mac speaker :)
HDMI can carry audio, so there should be a way to get the speaker output into it.
In theory yes, but the converter board has to sent it because HDMI is a bit different with sending aound than 3.5mm audiojacks. Basically, its digital not analog.
Saw this recently on Noel's channel as a screen replacement, and immediately thought of old Macs. Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought of that! Rock on sir!
I've never seen a device generate content quicker than this RGB2HDMI! That little guy must be freaking awesome! Great video, Adrian!
This is really cool! I love the way the pixels look - it reminds me of running the Apple 30" Cinema Display, which uses dual link DVI to get it's 2560x1600 resolution, on a device that only supports single link DVI, so that you get the single link timing in the display of 1280x800 (not scaled) which looks nicely chunky 🙂
I'm loving this modern era where anyone can create brand new hardware stuff for old machines, whether it's designing and fabricating a completely new motherboard, connecting up modern console controllers, and now displaying retro output over HDMI. Brilliant!
Seeing the old Mac desktop full-screen in high quality is something special, even to me, who was never a Macintosh user. I hope you will use this converter on many retro systems in the future!
So cool! I wanted HDMI or VGA out on the compact old Macs for so long. Thank you for the video and settings! HDMI for all retro Macs one day :)
If you're happy to have the RGB2HDMI external, you could sneak a ribbon cable out through the kensington lock slot. You'd probably want a more secure connector for the wires internally, otherwise it would be super easy to yank the cable loose. Not to mention it would be a lot easier than having to figure out which pin on the cable connects to which wire coming from the analogue board every time.
I definitely found the integer scaling much better than the interpolate 4:3 soft option. You can really see the difference in the diagonal lines of the arrows on the scroll bars, it's definitely blurring the edges/corners of the pixels together.
Anyway, great job! Always good to have another tool to show off these machines in your videos!
It's so awesome that people are making hdmi mods for all of these vintage computers and game consoles alike
It's so nice that the retro computer YT channels are like a big ring of buddies, helping each other and promoting each other's content. I just recognized David's game in the background at 4:00. A viewer of The8Bit Guy is probably a viewer of one or more of LGR, TechMoan, Adrian's Digital Basement and it's not like they are taking view counts from each other, in fact, they watch each others' content too.
Looking forward to a review of the BlueSCSI :)
Yeah I have one -- definitely need to do video capture when I do.
Stephen's comment and Adrian's answer are both showing as being posted 2 weeks ago!
@@wazhoola14 glitch in the matrix!
@@wazhoola14 Patreon's privileges I guess!
If it can handle that pixel level checkerboard ok, it can do anything. Very neat!
This looks like the answer to the question “How do I screen capture my NeXT Cube and NeXTStation color displays?” Awesome work, Adrian!
FYI - you got a shout out on Macbreak Weekly this week :). Keep up the awesome work, Adrian.
I haven't heard anyone say SCSI for ages - so happy I found you! :)
How can 7 people NOT like this? I mean, really?
Heh, a few people have posted angry(ish) comments :-)
@@adriansdigitalbasement Not sure why anyone would be angry...lol. Always a few bad apples I suppose.
Possibly cos HDMI is so terrible !
@@adriansdigitalbasement angry about what ??? this is was fantastic !!!
If my Mac Classic hadn't *literally melted* from a battery explosion in a humid basement 8 years ago I'd be all over this, it's so cool to be able to give old priceless experiences a new lease of life with something as simple and as bog standard now as a Pi
Yay, the return of the Lansdowne Road jersey 🇮🇪 . I love all the enhancements we’re getting for our old machines thanks to projects like this. Exciting stuff
I've been toying with a diy colour classic (or 575) inspired machine from the ground up, but video is something I've been a bit apprehensive about. This might be just the ticket. Thanks Adrian!
2:33 Sometimes the only reason we need is - "because we can!" 🙂
Congrats on being Andy’s week pick on MacBreak Weekly!
Very cool! That RGB2HDMI project just keeps being more awesome. I remember looking into getting the video out of a mac classic I spent far too long on restoring years and years ago and gave up due to nothing being able to process the signal properly. I did learn a ton about macs, scsi, disk imaging and so on during that project though so it was good fun :) Another project you might be interested in if you haven't seen it already is the USB Wombat from BMOW, where you can use a modern USB keyboard/mouse on a classic ADB machine, or the other way around!
While videos filled with troubleshooting when countless things go wrong are interesting it is nice to have the occasional video where things just work
How totally cool that is. Never even thought you could do this. Love it!
Hey! Nice to see the RGB2HDMI used on a compact Mac, did you try the Compaq Portable too?
Compaq portables have a CGA port on them so you would just plug it in.
@@stonent the internal header on a Compaq Portable color/enhanced graphics adapter is not exactly CGA
@@Vintechfinder I was talking about the CGA port on the outside of the card.
honestly this is awesome, like you could build a custom psu/analog board and build a completely lcd version of this. great for preserving these old machines.
True, but there would be the problem with getting into the menu, he would need to either capture keyboard commands somehow or drill holes for new buttons and solder then onto the board. But yes, it would be possible, but some would say it's not a real old machine
@@Spelter ofc yeah, but if the lcd software is hardwired to work in a certain way there shouldn't be any issue. the thing with these old pcs is that eventually they're all gonna die, so i think it's great that we can preserve the experience of using this hardware as closely as possible to the original. emulators already do wonders, but with fpgas and the m68k family still being relevant, i see a future hardware clones at the very least possible.
Great video as always. Crystal Quest really takes me back. I first played this in 1990 on what I think was a Macintosh SE.
There was really something fascinating about those black and white monochrome high resolution displays back in the day. And the Apple ping. I’d literally go from store to store playing around with these as a kid for entertainment.
you’re a very brave man reaching round the back with a naked CRT lol
1:30 Goodwill just couldn’t make up its mind on the price…
Aw man, thought you were gonna show off Colony next! This project is sooo cool!!
Can you elaborate what you meant about the pixel aspect ratio not being 1x1? All Macs had square pixels. The 512x342 is the B/W screen pixel dimensions, 512x384 was for the Color Classic's 10" screen and the 12" color display (vs. the 640x480 13" screen). Those screens were just about the size of two menu bars taller, meaning you could fit more stuff on them.
I remember being at the local Apple dealer when the Mac came out (I was there for the Lisa debut as well) and being very excited when I measured things and figured out that it was using square pixels (the Lisa had rectangular pixels).
P.S. The Mac's screen was has a wider aspect ratio than a standard 4:3 display -- Mac's were widescreen before wide-screen was a thing.
@@fred_derf Ah yes, the color displays (512x384 and 640x480) were standard TV 4:3, but that obviously makes 512x342 a bit shorter than 4:3. Though none of these are 1:1 (that would be square).
Great job ! Just discovered this video, and this channel. As I'm beginning to restore old Macs, I'm very interested in such possibilities like this one, or BulSCSI, RaSCSI,... Thanks for this !
Excellent work! Turns out your previous failure was really just prep work for this success!
I remember seeing ads back in the day for gadgets that would let you connect an external monitor to the classic (128k) Macintosh that came out almost immediately after the system came out. It's great to see the concept go from unobtanium, to available again.
Interesting! I wonder what kinds of monitors it worked with since the Mac video timing isn't following any normal standard (like NTSC, PAL, etc.) I watched some Apple keynotes where they had Mac video output on a large projected screen -- and I wondered how they made that possible.
@@adriansdigitalbasement As I recall they were for CGA monitors, I will do some research and see what I can find. I did find this link at a forum where back in 2014 people were discussing the feasibility of it, and apparently there was a repair book for classic macintoshes that explained a bit how the video output worked, and the possibility of using a TTL monitor. I'll just put the link here:
68kmla.org/forums/topic/23661-external-compact-mac-crt/?do=findComment&comment=246156
This will be fabulous for people like RMC with his museum, he could add this to older machines so that whatever someone is playing on a machine in the museum could also be show on a big screen.
PS - If you'd like one of the c0pperdragon boards for Amiga, I've built a handful and would be happy to send you one.
Quote: "the crt is very bright, very strong".
Of course it is. Our friend Adrian has been at it. So it should be working like a dream.
Hehe 😋
Thanks for the handy vid Adrian. 👍
Thumbs way up! I’ve been trying to get my old dual 800k floppy SE to come back life ( original owner - me). Haven’t got it to boot yet, but it’s great to know that I can get a video signal out of it if my analog board is dead!
Such a cool experiment. Thanks for sharing
Love the Irish rugby shirt 😎
Ahh, that's what that was. It kind-of looked familiar, but I couldn't remember.
The Lidl knock off Irish rugby jersey
Much love for good ol' Crystal Quest. That's one of the games I showed to my PC using mate to showcase good mac games. He LoL'd and went back to Doom.
How amazing is this! The video capture looks like something I've seen emulated on my monitor, but it's being run from a real classic Mac! I've been following similar rgb2hdmi projects in the Amiga scene, but seeing it here on a Mac gives me an idea. It's probably beyond my skill level (I've done basic recapping etc), but I have a Color Classic II whose CRT is really bad and looks like it's on steadily for the past 20 years. In the right hands, a project like this could be used with a new internal LCD on the Color Classic II much like Noel did with his Amstrad CPC. The only problem I would have is, it would ruin the originality and aesthetics of the machine. The trinitron crt Apple used on the color classics have a distinct, flat curve to them. The LCD would have a wonderful picture, but look completely out of place in the housing I think?
I've been planning to do this! Great to see it - the documentation for the RGB2HDMI project is *appauling* - why are there three different dongles? it says for different computers - so much of the documentation is focused on adapting for specific systems vs specific signals. Thank you so much!
OMH i just remember playing that game with my nephew 30 years ago!!!! (I was 12 or little over). Thanks to this video! Amazing flashback, from the very depths of my brain
Adrian, you rock! As always keep up the good work.
The cross hatch pattern at boot is fascinating!
This is one of your most fun videos ever. Really great. Sounds like you really enjoyed it too, you sounded like a giddy schoolgirl ;-)
It would be great if you can get one of these RGB to HDMI Raspi hats as a blank PCB and build it from scratch. As I understand, it self programs the CPLD when you assemble the hat yourself and power up for the first time. This is a great project and being totally open source, it is a huge contribution the the retro community. It really deserves to have an in depth build + review video from all of the best retro channels, and none that I follow has done it yet. IMHO, you should be the one to do it. I will be building a "Superfo" Harlequin 128 v4A board from scratch very soon. It is the last version of the "Harlequin" series ZX Spectrum 128K clones which uses all off-the-shelf 74HC logic IC's to re-create the long time obsolete custom ULA. The board natively outputs RGB and I am planning to use this RGB to HDMI project with it. I know I would be grateful if I saw a build video before I attempt to build mine, I am sure there will be tons of other retro-heads like me who would appreciate such a video. There is some fine pitch SMD soldering involved but with correct flux and iron tip, it is really much easier than one anticipates. Please do this. :-)
I used a custom wire adaptor and resistors to get a "VGA" signal out of the mac classic i had to make sure the motherboard was outputting video to the CRT. Mind you this only worked because the Eizo multi scan monitor I have supports 24KHz even tho the mac classic is 22.5khz, it threw a warning but still displayed it enough to verify the mac was working
I did a test capture from my LCIII using minimum System 7.5 about a year ago. I used a DB15 to VGA adapter out to a powered VGA splitter from DTech. One side goes out to my flat panel VGA monitor (so I can see the native output) the other side goes to a Star Tech VGA2HDMI box. It’s like a headless VGA monitor and supports a lot of resolutions.
The HDMI of that goes to an El Gato game capture HD The old one, I don’t need to capture old Mac video at 60fps. The El Gato goes into my MacBook Air.
The video is on my channel with links to the tools in the doodley-doo. Not quite as cool as this but I can’t solder.
My setup is quite similar to what LGR uses except for the splitter. And he has (at least he did) an AverMedia capture system. Nice job.
This works awesome, pixel perfect on a little HDMI monitor that I can hang in front of the CTR monitor.
I simply adore, how greatly technologies advanced over 30 years or so, and the fact, that raspberry pi convertor has over 500 times more ram, than the macintosh
Wow! If you could find a 9” square LCD, you could replace the CRT. This is awesome. Ill be saving this video!!!
I've owned a Mac Plus and an SE for several years. Their resolution was 512 x 342. I've never seen a classic Mac going to 384. My friend's SE/30 also was 512 x 342. Every Mac with a 9" CRT was 512 x 342. Unless I'm mistaken, the Color Classic was the first to do 512 x 384.
Indeed, the original Mac resolution is not actually 4:3, and it was too stretched vertically after he put it to interpolated (but he called it correct because he always adjusts his CRTs to fit 4:3). How it first looked is pixel accurate.
Good job Adrian! Thanks for sharing the video with us!💖👌👍😎JP
"Why would you want to do this?" ... is something no one in the Retro world should ever ask. ;-) Great vid!! Also, too bad the Pi in the Classic project didn't work. That would have been fun too. ;-)
Yeah the reverse would be amazing -- another enthusiast was working on it too but we just ran into issues with the DPI limitations on the Pi. Not sure if it's a software or hardware issue.
This is of course wonderful! I hope someday there will be a rgbi (c128) to hdmi with a pi-zero that would be really nice :-)
The RGB2HDMI already fully supports the C128 digital output -- just plug it in and set it to CGA and you're all set. Unfortunately the C128 analog video (for 40 col mode) isn't supported at this time.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I was going to ask this too, thanx Adrian!
Having the ability to capture it would be cool! I finally got my hands on a C64, and would love to be able to actually stream some classic games for friends to watch.
You could use multiple converters, like video into an usb video converter. The sound could be a problem, but it would be a cool thing when you solve that. Never saw an external sound device for the commodore.
You could theoretically gut the CRT and put an LCD display in place. This would be a worthy experiment if the CRT was kaput on a Classic Mac.
Very cool. Would love to see a video on running a classic Mac mainboard without the analog board, just using the RGB2HDMI and an ATX PSU. That should be a nice setup for testing MBs. I hope somebody will produce and sell a bigger batch of these....
I like the idea of replacing dangerous CRTs with nice friendly 5v LCD screens. Another nasty bugger, was 8 inch floppy drive. Those ran on mains voltage. All electronics from back then remind me of movies, where some lady spills milk and gets electrocuted by a blender.
I distinctly remember playing Crystal Quest on a Mac II with a 13” Apple Trinitron monitor. That and Solarian II were some of my favorite general games of the era (the others would be all flight simulators).
"without further ado, lets get right to it."
*runs opening credits*
now that is usefully inform
awesome jobs Adrian
That wors perfectly. A lot of exposed PCB's though. LOL.
That video interface has many times the computing power as that Classic II.
If I'm not mistaken, many of the old compact Mac motherboards were actually capable of sending color. I don't know about the Classic, but the Classic II motherboard was basically an LC II (which was color) and I think the SE /30 motherboard supported color as well, even though the CRT was black and white.
Thanks Adrian. Another great episode.
23:51 is it just me or is that the exact sound at the beginning of the Streets Of Laredo VR game in Red Dwarf?
Adrian, have you looked into NitrOS-9? It looks like a really cool project. This is a quote about the project.
"NitrOS-9 is a real-time, process-based, multitasking, multi-user, Unix-like operating system for Tandy CoCo, Dragon, and several other Motorola MC6809-based computers. The original OS-9 was created in 1979. NitrOS-9 is the modern equivalent of that OS, and includes advanced features like support for up to 2 MB RAM and 4 GB Hard drive partitions. It is still being developed, and support is available in many mailing lists and forums."
Awesome video, Adrian!
I believe that the way that they got early Mac video was a combination of special hardware in the Mac to get it’s video signal out of the case; and then a very large (5 to 10 unit 19” rack mount, depending on exactly when built and what model it was) bit of very expensive hardware called a ‘scan converter’. You could configure them to convert from just about anything to anything; and they also handled the interlaced video flicker issue.
Does it understand Apple //c lcd panel weird digital video output? I'm working on my own project for that, but I'd love to see how well it might work :)
I have an upcoming video on this too -- let's just say at this point other solutions aren't worth doing. :-)
I believe supporting anything beyond NTSC composite video from the //c video port is going to require some additional logic to derive the video signal. I don't know if the cpld on the rgb2hdmi could do this or not. apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/faqs/Csa2MONITOR.html#022
Re: Adrian, excited to see it
Apparently it is possible now. github.com/hoglet67/RGBtoHDMI/issues/209
@@adriansdigitalbasement I have one of Plamen's //c VGA adaptors, but sadly that outputs 720x480, which looks nice on a crt, but horrible on an LCD because of the integer scaling issue - I've been working on getting a PiPico to convert directly from //c digital lcd output to LVDS signals to directly drive an LCD panel - I love the idea of the system you've been using, but for my own satisfaction I'm keen to build a '100% digital, minimum overhead' LCD interface - going to HDMI, using the PiZero SoC HDMI circuitry and then back to whatever the panel uses natively feels like 'cheating', hence wanting to try it on a much more basic microcontroller, at a more fundamental level. Yes, it's a silly idea. Looking forward to seeing how well your setup handles //c video, especially artifact colour vs sharpness - If i am successfull with my experiments I'll send you a kit and you can do a head-to-head comparison, if you like :) Thanks for providing such an entertaining channel, it's always nice to watch your enthusiasm for trying new things, and repairing old ones :)
Yeah the github link above is the work I did with Ian to get the IIc fully supported via the DB15 port. Ian even recently added the mixed mode decoding so in the lower 4 lines doesn't get artifact color applied to it. It works flawlessly now and scales perfectly in pixel perfect HDMI. All the VGA adapters that exist are junky in comparison and that video I'm making will compare them, showing off how superior the RGB2HDMI is at this. :-)
The second aspect ratio you use starting at 20:59 seems like it's stretched vertically. Maybe it's my eyes playing tricks on me, but I don't think so, since the desktop pattern at 21:40 is supposed to be square, but it's definitely taller thank it is wide.
I saw elsewhere in the menu that the HDMI output was 1024x768. A 2:1 scaling of 512x342 would be 1024x684, but if it's full-screen, that means it's being stretched to 768 px, or by 12%. This is still really cool though, that it works even this well!
I'm not sure about this aspect (heh) of the classic Mac CRTs, but I _thought_ they just turned down the Vsize a little so that circles and squares would look correct. I.e. pixels are square, even though the aspect ratio is 1.5 instead of 1.33.
Yeah, this is just one of those things - he adjusts the V size to fill the screen on his classic Macs so he’s used to those skinny rectangular buttons and adjusted the adapter to match. The circle cursor in that game at the end is oval too.
Another thing Adrian always does out of spec with CRTs is adjusts it so the infrablack bar in the SMPTE test pattern is black, which makes the black be 5% grey and the 5% grey become 10% grey.
I’m assuming they’re both just habitual by now, however they originally came about (misreading/misremembering spec?)
I went to a very early iphone programming talk by apple, and the way they projected the iphone screen at that time was just by putting it under a document camera. wouldn't be surprised if the old Macintosh keynote just had a regular video camera pointed at the screen.
2:25 - I've mentioned before - external displays did exist for this form factor Mac - it connected via the SCSI port, expensive, but it worked! (Oh almost forgot the Mac SE 30 had a a few riser cards upgrades - there was a knockout on the back for the video output port (It was normally used for ethernet ports), I still have my Radius card & monitor!)
Wonder if you can get a SCSI to HDMI adapter to work then
I got myself an Indivision Mk3 for my Amiga 1200, which gives it an HDMI-port, and the picture is also pixel perfect 🙂
15:45 actually, you will see that pattern if the tube was already warm (e.g., you did a full shutdown, and then immediately turned it back on)
Good memories from my Macintosh SE days.
Very interesting , Still interested in getting it working the other way.
@@kuangmark Sorry, the PI over DPI to the CRT. Maybe next version of the Pi will have better clock control.
Good job man! this was super cool!!!
The first time I even used a mac was in the early 90's and I was amazed it was black and white, my friends sister was doing some animation course in university and she had an all in one mac...it was kind of shocking when I had an Acorn Archimedes that was in full colour and in my mind better... I loved that little computer though!
This is very cool. I’d like to see an SE/30 capture in color. iIRC, the SE/30 was capable of RGB output to a color monitor. It might need something extra, I believe there was an expansion board that plugged into the slot on the logic board with a VGA socket.
The extra pixel you're seeing along the right hand side of the cursor, is just part of what happens when the desktop background is 'grey' on those monochrome macs - the checkerboard effect. If the background is black, it isn't as obvious.
Adrian, to get a video out on an original Macintosh Apple had a little board that plugged in between the digital and analog board. It gives a composite out, but like the Lisa’s video out it’s at NTSC frequencies.
Interesting -- that begs the question how did it do it if the resolution and scan rate is wrong? Maybe they had a custom modified Mac to run at NTSC frequencies somehow
@@adriansdigitalbasement I think they either modified the projector to use the scanning frequency of the Mac, or the projector was multisync. Some Lisa documentation talks about using a specific Electrohome monitor or Conrac projector with a 22.7 KHz scan rate.
(One of the few chips on the Lisa motherboard is something that integrates the H sync, V sync, and video into a composite signal, which goes to a jack on the back of the machine)
I got one of the Mac video out boards in a lot of stuff from a Lisa engineer - I’ll have to make a video showing it. I’ve never seen picture of one before!
The commodore PET looks to use the same type of video interface as well... meaning that this should work with that computer also
20:10 512x384 was the resultion of the 12" colour monitor that came as the least expensive option for the Macintosh LC.
Again it's funny that the CPU on the RPi is more powerful that the machine it handles the display for.
The old Mac presentations were done using an Eidophor projector. It was oil based and was used for live video projection. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor
Were there any big-screen demo events for the Classic/II? The SE and SE/30 both had PDS slots so a video output solution would be trivial - just drop in an existing PDS video card - whereas there would need to be a little effort involved in building a custom board for the Classic, a machine that wasn't really worth demoing at a keynote anyway, though if they had something that was used previously with the Plus or earlier compact Macs it could easily have been adapted to these.
In the dev note, potential Classic and Classic II devs were discouraged from building any internal add-ons for the machines because there was little overhead for additional power draw and basically no considerations for mounting anything to the board or the chassis. That didn't stop Interware, who developed an internal 8-bit video card for the Classic II, but there wasn't much else built for these beyond one or two CPU upgrades or ROM expansions.