Adam's Apple

Working with Vintage Macs

Vintage Mac Video and Monitor Mania

Adam Rosen - 2007.12.17 - Tip Jar

Popularity:

I deal with older (pre-G3) systems regularly, both through my consulting work and my personal collection, the Vintage Mac Museum. Here are some tips I've found for keeping the old beasts running and working with modern monitors.

Proprietary Video & Monitor Mania

Old CRT monitors are a dime a dozen (literally in some cases), but they're bulky and heavy; unless you have lots of space, it's hard to keep more than a few around. I make due around the Mac Museum primarily with two monitors for older systems: a 15" VGA LCD (1024 x 768 resolution) and a 17" multisync CRT.

Nearly every Mac that has a video out port or dedicated video card supports 1024 x 768 - what's needed is an adapter to convert the Mac's DB15 connector to a VGA (HD15) style output. These are cheap and readily available; a few different ones may be needed due to quirks between machines. The 15" LCD monitor is small and can work with nearly any old or new Macintosh.

The other useful item is a multisync CRT. 17" models are dirt cheap (often free) and can support 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, and sometimes up to 1280 x 1024 resolutions. Older Apple monitors come with the DB15 style video connector; newer Apple monitors and other brands use a VGA plug, so a DB15-to-VGA adapter is needed with older Macs.

More Tips and Suggestions?

I'm sure there are many other tips and suggestions on the topic of working with old and vintage Macs; write in to the Low End Mac Mailbag or contact me with your suggestions and we may do a follow-up to this column with additional ideas.

This article was originally published on Adam's Oakbog website. It has been adapted and reprinted here with his permission.

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, use our Google+ page, or read our RSS news feed

Adam operates Oakbog Professional Services and The Vintage Mac Museum. He publishes The Vintage Mac Museum Blog. If you find Adam's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Adam's Apple Columns

Mac OS 9 Isn't Dead Yet, 2011.05.16. In some areas, the need to run Classic Mac software or the cost of upgrading apps to OS X keeps people using Mac OS 9.
Installing Mac OS 9 on the Mirrored Drive Doors Power Mac G4, 2011.03.21. The MDD was Apple's last Power Mac capable of booting into Mac OS 9, and you need to have just the right version of 9.2.2 for it to work.
Vintage Mac Workhorse: Power Mac G4 Cube with Mac OS X 10.4.11, 2011.03.03. The G4 Cube has plenty of power and runs OS X 10.4 Tiger very comfortably, letting it act as a server accessible by new Macs and old.
More in the Adam's Apple index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Quadra 950, introduced 1992.05.18. Apple's huge tower has 5 NuBus slots and runs a 33 MHz 68040 processor.
May 18 in LEM history: 92: Quadra 950 - 99: OS 8.6 more stable - 00: What can you squeeze into a compact Mac? - 01: Friendly LC 500s - Leaving Win2k behind - 05: OS X 10.4.1 update - A new PowerBook with Tiger - Tiger: Lots to like, but some annoyances - 06: 400K floppy click of death - I wish Apple were more like Microsoft - 07: 9.9% notebook market share
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Opinions expressed are those of their authors and may not reflect the opinion of Cobweb Publishing. Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all.
Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2013 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Low End Mac, LowEndMac, and lowendmac.com are trademarks of Cobweb Publishing Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad, iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, Mac Pro, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it, and we don't share the information we have with others. For more details, see our Terms of Use.