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Author Topic: Headless eMac  (Read 1746 times)

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Offline XDelusionTopic starter

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Headless eMac
« on: October 21, 2011, 07:33:34 AM »
Aside of low Graphical Memory, my only real gripe with using MorphOS on an eMac is the crappy crappy crappy monitor which displays WAY to freaking dark, so much so that even boosting the brightness and what not does nothing to improve my movie watching experience, though it does manage to give me an instant head ache.

So I'm considering this at the moment, would be a fun project if it ain't any more difficult than it looks here.

Has anyone tried this?

http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/eServer/
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Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2011, 07:45:45 AM »
Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to when you could trade it in for a Mini or (better yet) a Power Mac G4.
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Offline Wolfe

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #2 on: October 21, 2011, 11:52:31 AM »
Well, it could be a fun learning experience and you could custom case it in an old custom painted LC, IIsi, IIci case, or use an LCD in place of the CRT in its original case, or make a Steam Punk unit  $$$ . . .

But, it seems like a big hassle since used macs are so cheap!
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Offline tone007

Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #3 on: October 21, 2011, 02:04:38 PM »
I did it many years ago with a G3 iMac that had a dead screen.



It was easier on that one, though, it had a standard 15 pin Mac monitor connector on the board that I just converted to VGA with an adapter.
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Offline Matt_H

Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #4 on: October 21, 2011, 04:26:19 PM »
Loss of brightness is apparently common with CRTs - all of my VGA CRTs are now suffering from it (my Commodore monitors are all fine, interestingly). You could probably pillage a better screen from another eMac for negligible amounts of money.

EDIT: Oh, other solution: MorphOS CGX prefs allow you to set default gamma/brightness/contrast settings in software. Similar to the monitor calibration function in OSX Displays prefs. These settings are what make my aging CRT usable.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2011, 04:30:20 PM by Matt_H »
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Offline koaftder

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #5 on: October 21, 2011, 04:33:31 PM »
Most of the time there are two pots on the rear of a flyback transformer in a CRT monitor. Usually one controls the beam spread and the other controls the beam intensity. I'd give that a try before scrapping the CRT junk.
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Offline XDelusionTopic starter

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #6 on: October 22, 2011, 08:02:33 PM »
I'll look for those pots...

In the mean time I think this would be one of those projects only worth doing for the fun of it. Obviously I'd rather have a Power Mac or a Mini with 64Mb of video RAM, but if I could re-case this, I'd consider keeping it and then later just registering a second copy of MorphOS for another Mac.

My problem at is finding connectors that plug into the eMac mother board so that I can make some adapter cables.
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Offline XDelusionTopic starter

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #7 on: October 25, 2011, 07:56:31 PM »
So should I just use solder to connect all the pins that should be GND, 12v, etc. Together then solder the corresponding cable to those points?
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Offline TheGoose

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #8 on: October 26, 2011, 12:16:06 AM »
@tone,

:lol:  just love your mods.


Hold on, gotta boot up the bin here, fire off some emails. And organize my socks.
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Offline XDelusionTopic starter

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #9 on: November 06, 2011, 08:08:40 PM »
So here is my work in progress...

http://www.amiga.org/forums/album.php?albumid=146

Rather than re-type my problems I'll just let you read them here:

http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8109&forum=11
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Offline XDelusionTopic starter

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Re: Headless eMac
« Reply #10 on: November 11, 2011, 06:47:26 AM »
Success, photos and how to coming soon! :)
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Earth has a lot of things other folks might want... like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made, like more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and room for their way of life. - William S. Burroughs
 
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