Low End Mac

E-Machines Futura II SX

LEM Staff - 1234.11.10

The E-Machines Futura II SX is a 7″ NuBus card compatible with 68K- and PowerPC-based Macs running up to System 8.1.

Details

The card provides standard QuickDraw acceleration and supports the following resolution/color combinations:

  • 640 x 480 up to 24-bit
  • 832 x 624 up to 24-bit
  • 1024 x 768 (at 75 Hz) up to 8-bit

E-Machines Futura cards have a rotary switch for setting the resolution. The following is a list of switch settings. This setting is overridden when using a supported monitor with Apple’s sense coding.

    resolution    refresh            monitors
1   832 x 624     67 Hz              T16
2   1024 x 808    71 Hz              T19/TX
3   640 x 480     60 Hz              any VGA
4   1024 x 768    60 Hz              any XVGA
5   832 x 624     75 Hz              T16a-E16
6   1024 x 768    75 Hz              E16, SuperMac 19", others
7   640 x 480     67 Hz              E16, others
8   1024 x 768    75 Hz              RasterOps 19", others
C   13"/16"       Dual Resolution    E16
D   16"/19"       Dual Resolution    T16II/E16
E   19"/21"       Dual Resolution    T19II
F   16"/21"       Dual Resolution    T16II

Notes

  • ROM versions below 1.1 may have problems with Power Macintosh systems. If anyone has the Diagnostics Utility for determining ROM version, contact me. Some Futura II SX cards have a socket for a DSP daughter card upgrade. This upgrade is very similar to the DSP upgrade available for the SuperMac Thunder/24 card. These versions also lack the rotary switch on the card used for display configuration.
  • Can also use a 10Base-T ethernet daughter card instead of the DSP daughter card (on models with the connector for the DSP card).

Other Resources

Field Reports

“I wish to tell you that the machine in which I installed this card is a Macintosh IIci with a Daystar Turbo 601 PPC upgrade card, so it can run Mac OS 8.1. It is working in a 640 x 480 resolution with millions of colors.”