Another crazy idea from starhawk

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starhawk

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
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Hey, was staring at my (hopefully soon-to-be-modded) '92 Mac SE... and I realized that I may be able to do something interesting with the guts. Mind you, I'm a total n00b with this stuff, BUT here goes anyways.

The screen is a 9" monochrome CRT. It is particularly rigid in its capabilities: each pixel can only be turned "on" (white) or "off" (black) -- no grayscale inbetween. Resolution is exactly 512x342.

My idea is to turn it into a serial display (like the LCDs in those stupid keychain photo frames) that I could use with a microcontroller... the catch is that I'm not sure how to do it. (The other catch is that I'm waiting on a screwdriver bit to come from the wild lands of eBay before I can open the case.)

That said, pointers would be appreciated, or (if it's true) telling me "it's impossible so GTFO".
 
I seem to remember someone adding a composite input to an old Mac, and then using some custom timings to get an image to display. That being said, it might be more straightforward to boot the mac to a desktop and automatically run a terminal emulator, and then speak to the Mac via some sort of serial interface.
 
Was thinking more in the "run it from a microcontroller" sort of fashion...
 
So you're looking to drive the monitor directly by a microcontroller? There have been a few people to do it--I've seen several posts on Hackaday of people doing exactly that.
 
What I'm talking about is setting up a serial display interface like, eg, newhaven display's products, such that one could control the display from *any* microcontroller.
 
Meh, this doesn't matter anymore, the mod that would have made it happen is on hold for funding reasons, per usual, which also means that I can't afford the parts to make this little project work, either.

EDIT: since I can't close this thread myself, if a mod would come by and do it, that would be appreciated.
 
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