whiteheada@yvax.byu.edu (10/03/90)
I just purchased an SE/30 with 80 meg HD and 5 megs RAM. I would like to put a 13" Apple color monitor on it. Does anyone have any experience with different brands of video cards? Does the addition of color slow the machine down? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Armand Whitehead Brigham Young University
MLH1@bunny.gte.com (Michael Hackney) (10/05/90)
I purchased an SE30 about 2 months ago and upgraded it with color. After much searching I chose the RasterOps 264/SE 30 32 color card and the Seiko trinitron monitor - an AWESOME combination. Running color at full 32 bits does seem to slow screen refreshing down a bit, but that happens on my Mac II also. With 8 bit color, however, the screen refresh is very fast - faster than my Mac II at 8 bits (RasterOps 264 card in it). This is because the SE 30 hardware goes in a "processor direct slot" (PDS) instead of the <slower> NuBus slot in the II machines!!! Another nice think about my setup is that I get a larger Desktop because the original SE 30 monitor works also. One piece of advice. Whatever card you choose, I highly recommend getting (and becoming a registered user) of "Launcher". Create a Launcher for each of your applications and set the video display attributes to whatever the app requires. This eliminates the headache of using the control panel to change video modes everytime you switch apps that don't work/use a particular mode! Enjoy, michael
lemke@radius.com (Steve Lemke) (10/06/90)
MLH1@bunny.gte.com (Michael Hackney) writes: }One piece of advice. Whatever card you choose, I highly recommend getting }(and becoming a registered user) of "Launcher". Create a Launcher for }each of your applications and set the video display attributes to whatever }the app requires. } }This eliminates the headache of using the control panel }to change video modes everytime you switch apps that don't work/use a }particular mode! This is why RadiusWare (the init/cdev that ships with Radius display interfaces) includes a "pop-up bit-depth changer". You simply hit control and option, and click the mouse, and a pop-up menu appears. With the currently shipping version, you see a list of the available bit-depths for whatever screen the cursor is on (e.g. 1, 2, 4, and 8). However, I just re-wrote it (it will be in RadiusWare version 1.6, which is NOT available yet) so that it will now display not only the available bit-depths (now in the wording of the control panel, e.g. Black & White, 4, 16, 256), but will also let you switch between color and grayscale, and furthermore the changes you make will be saved for the next time you restart. In addition, it will (should) work for any display you have installed in your system, provided one of them is a Radius display (a condition necessary for RadiusWare to load in the first place). Anyway, the major point being that this is also a lot more convenient than going all the way into the control panel, and it now does (soon will do) essentially the same thing. (PLEASE DON'T call Radius asking for RadiusWare 1.6 - if you already have a Radius display in your Mac II or SE/30 and you're interested in getting a copy of it when it's ready, send me email. I might even send you a beta version to play with. Other than the bit-depth changer, however, there's really no new features that you would notice, though, other than Tear-Off Menu compatibility with the new FileMaker Pro.) --Steve -- ----- Steve Lemke, Engineering Quality Assurance, Radius Inc., San Jose ----- ----- Reply to: lemke@radius.com (Note: NEW domain-style address!!) -----