clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong) (11/13/90)
I received the following in email after posting the summary of my request for inexpensive full-page monitor info. Reposted with permission of author: ========================================== I've had a Samsung FPD on my SE for over a year now, and I'm quite happy with it. Here's a review I posted shortly after I got it - everything I said then still holds. ---------- Well, enough speculation and hand waving about the Samsung/Cornerstone single page display - I bought one, so here's a review... First, I use a number of different large screen displays at work, so I'm familair with the various sorts of problems large screens have. I bought the Samsung/Cornerstone combination for my Mac-SE at home two weeks ago, for $495 from Software That Fits. STF shipped it Airborne - got it the next day. It comes with a one year warranty (which my credit card doubles). I am VERY happy with this display - especially for the price! It is perfect for my application (custom typography and compositing for various publishing houses, mostly using TeXtures). MONITOR: Has a very solid feel, and a good tilt/swivel stand built in. Weighs about 11 kg. Contrast is not as high as the Mac 9" monitor, but still quite acceptable. Linearity and pin cushion well adjusted. Curvature of the screen is higher than, say, the Apple single page display, but not unpleasently so. Focus is crisp and uniform across the entire screen (in part because of the higher curvature). If the Mac and the monitor are closer than about 8 inches together, there is some interference between the two, which results in a wavy display. If the Mac is to the left of the monitor, the interference is only on the Mac screen. If the Mac is to the right, there is interference on both screens (Mac HV supply is on the left). If you don't have room on your desk to keep them apart, some sort of shielding will be necessary for stable displays. There is no anti-glare coating on the monitor, but I haven't found this to be a problem. INTERFACE card: Installed with no problems in the SE. Comes with all hardware to put the connector in the punch out panel. With Mac cracking tools and a pair of pliers, it took maybe ten minutes to install. One jumper header on the board, allows you to change the base address in case you have conflicting devices in an expansion chassis. No provisions for multiple boards inside the SE - if you have an accellerator, you'll need an xpansion chassis, I'd guess, unless the accellerator has provisions DRIVER software: There are two versions of this. The package came with something called "Single Page INIT," a sort of bare bones driver. Lets you configure what side the Mac screen is on, and at what height, so the total screen area of the two monitors (L or T shaped) is both logically and physically contiguous. Automatic screen saver. That's about it. I had a few problems with incompatibilities with other inits, which cleared up when I renamed the driver to have a space character in front of its name, so it loaded first. I faxed a message to both STF and Cornerstone about features I'd like to see in the driver. STF called me back in a few hours - they had just received new software from Cornerstone with a mooseload of features. Shipped it to me Airborne overnight, got it the next day, no charge. Never heard from Cornerstone. I've been most impressed with the service from STF. The new driver, called " Cornerstone," does everything the old init does, and a lot more. It's a cdev, so a lot of it is configurable on the fly, from the control panel. Select normal size menubars and menus, or big ones (with a special font supplied), normal or big (actually, pretty giant) arrow cursor. Set idle time for screen saver. Pop up menus, with various options. If the Mac screen is disabled, you can set it instead to act as a magnifier (2x, 4x or 8x) of the area around the cursor. If you have applications that are incompatible with the large screen (some games, and old versions of Hypercard), you can set them so when they're launched, the large screen is disabled and everything's moved back to the old screen (doesn't work with Multifinder). You can select either 72 or 84 dpi. I actually haven't tried a lot of theses features, so I can't say how well they work. COMPATIBILITY: I run system 6.0.2, multifinder 6.1b7. 2.5M memory. I mostly use Textures 1.01f, MS Word 4.0, Cricket Draw 1.1, MacTerminal 2.3, NCSA Telnet 2.3, MPW 3.0. Inits: MenuClock 3.0, Suitcase II 1.2.5. I haven't had any problems at all. I found that the heirDA init caused system crashes, but I didn't persue it, since the driver provides pop up menus. There is one pretty annoying bug. For some reason, the _HideCursor toolbox call does not seem to function. In many text based applications, the cursor will disappear while you're typing, until you move the cursor. It no longer disappears, so on occasion it partly obscurs what you're working on. Not deadly, but annoying enough that I hope they fix it. SUMMARY: I like it. A lot. If you're looking for a large screen, and don't want to spend a lot of money, this is the way to go. If you're thinking about the double page display (which uses the same driver, and I think the same interface card with more memory installed), you might want to look at it first to see if it's flat enough. Software That Fits has been a great mail order company to deal with. cheers, -m- Mike Blackwell The Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, 15213 412-268-8830 mkb@rover.ri.cmu.edu ================================ -- ........................................................................... : Kathy Strong : "Try our Hubble-Rita: just one shot, : : (Clouds moving slowly) : and everything's blurry" : : clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu : --El Arroyo : :..........................................................................: