Macintosh SE/30, now in color!
Posted by wave_design@reddit | retrobattlestations | View on Reddit | 6 comments
Posted by wave_design@reddit | retrobattlestations | View on Reddit | 6 comments
wave_design@reddit (OP)
Decided to finish off Marchintosh with a major SE/30 upgrade. Added in 64 megabytes of memory, a new 32-bit ROM, and most significantly, the RasterOps ColorBoard in the PDS slot.
This PDS card enables full 24-bit color output on an external monitor. There are no limitations on which programs can run on which screens… in fact, it’s possible to have a program span both.
A perfect multi-monitor setup for 1989. The cost must have been astronomical though.
Major-Excuse1634@reddit
Mac pretty much set the standard for multi-monitor RTG all the way back there. In a Mac II class computer you could have as many graphics cards as you had NuBus slots. PCs, at the time, you were basically looking at an internal terminal sorta situation with the CGA/EGA/VGA desktop display and then some framebuffer that you could paint on and push images to (ie. TARGA).
xternocleidomastoide@reddit
Yup. Not only did it support as many boards as you could put in the NuBus slots, but the boards themselves were plug-and-play (I was a kid back then, but I still remember the IRQ hell of expansion boards in PCs). And most importantly, you could basically move windows across displays seamlessly.
Basically most modern multi-monitor implementation derive from that Mac approach
Major-Excuse1634@reddit
Agreed. I was also a kid and lusted over the Mac's display tech and the elegance of how the system worked, while being a diehard Amiga user. The Amiga went more down the PC path, with its products extending the capabilities of the base graphics systems. I think I've only ever seen one Amiga solution, ironically fairly modern, that might have spanned desktops. RTG was years away, for the Amiga, when the Mac II came out. And it was clunky until, again, ironically, long after the death of Commodore.
im-ba@reddit
That's crazy, I owned a Mac IIci and had always suspected this but I never got to put it through its paces. That thing was a beast!
Queasy-Hall-705@reddit
Do you work for Jurassic park ? Are you using a unix system too?