I was going to comment a comment to end all comments. It literally would have broken the internet. Now I've forgotten what it was. Probably for the best.
We are not museums or historians; a little mod here and there to make old school tech more accessible to the user is fine in my book. 😁 Always good to see a bit less e-waste and more useful machines, even if they are now pretty much just for fun...
@eck8989 Exactly what I mean - I'm not into Macs myself but I like to resurrect old school tech. The phrasing was meant as a reply to Adrian asking if people think that he ruined that classic machine.
I fully agree. The most important part is to get it going. Perhaps, also, if someone needs a "proper" part, you could then pass it on if it's in decent shape.
I'd agree completely. I think one difference with modern "antiques" and old antiques is that things made in the 20th century were made for purposes we still find useful, but are complicated enough that they require maintenance. So the old idea of purity doesn't apply. We own these things to USE them, not to sit on a shelf. There's long been precedence for this idea. People have been collecting cars for decades. People that restore them want them to RUN, show them off, and drive them around. Not sit in a garage collecting dust. They restore them to work, and they sometimes modify them and put new engines in them. It's still useful because we still use cars! There's another class of antiques that fall into a completely different category. Stuff like a butter churn, or a pickling crock, or a washboard. Nobody uses these things anymore at all or any modern equivalent (my parents had all these things sitting around the house as museum pieces). I just think there's an inherent difference between these two types of antiques. Especially a computer. A computer sitting on a shelf, not turned on is just a hunk of plastic, metal, and silicon. It doesn't really become something of value and interest until you actually use the thing. Cars are the same.
Unless I missed something, the CRT was not hooked to ground. The probe was, as a consequence, also not hooked to ground. If you do that frequently it would explain why you have been zapped by CRTs before.
Hi mate. My dad was a tv technician (in the crt age, right before companies told the repair era to throw the lcd away and give the customer a new one) essential equipment was a mirror to stop him throwing his back/neck out trying to look around to see the screen.
Yup. Had an internship in a TV repair shop some 20 years ago and every work desk had a mirror of some sort (either square tiles or larger ones) glued to the wall so they can see the front of the TVs/monitors while working on them without acrobatics
I always liked amber monitors too. Green always looked dark to me. People told me that I should want a black and white monitor because *duh* the expensive Apple Macintosh computers all had black and white displays!
@@StarkRG I had an amber non glare screen growing up and my eyes never got strained on it. Having one of each now I am still partial to the amber but both seem easy on the eyes.
Always fascinated by how CRT technology worked. They were always a mystery growing up and now that they're obsolete I still kind of miss them. I wish I would have picked up more CRTs when they were being dumped off everywhere as trash.
yeah, in grad school I ended up with a big pile of old CRT-based dumb terminals and so on and at the time they were just garbage, and I took them to a shooting range to see if they’d actually implode. Turns out, no, they don’t. The terminals they came from are probably still worthless but the CRTs themselves might have been good for something. Oh well. Formerly-common things only become valuable because they were formerly-common to the point nobody held onto them. Working Commodore 64s used to be like $5 at any random thrift shop.
There are still some to be found. It's pretty rare these days but I do still find CRT TVs on the curb sometimes The situation with CRT computer monitors tends to be a little more stupid (like even if it's some boring, bog-standard VGA monitor people tend to ask money for it) but there are still some deals to be had. I'd watch Craigslist. The TVs are mostly good for game consoles and older (1980s) home computers, while the monitors these days are mostly early-2000s VGA monitors. There's also some decent deals from time to time on things like the early CRT iMacs - which of course have a computer built in but with a bit of work could probably be repurposed as a VGA monitor for another computer. Granted, it's not like in, say, 2006 where CRTs were just getting dumped all over the place... And I think it's pretty hard these days to find a decent deal on something like that Apple IIc monitor. But you can find stuff if you watch for it.
@@fluffycritter that's a bummer. I have a vintage audio repair shop inside a thrift store in Chattanooga Tennessee. At any one time that thrift store will have perhaps half a dozen CRT televisions and at least a couple of CRT monitors. They take them in all the time and sell them like hotcakes.
I had an amber composite monitor driven by a CGA card for a long time. Once I saw how ghastly many games looked in CGA 4-color mode, I was actually pretty happy to have my three shades of amber.
I think things are going the way of this type of hobby being more and more watched on UA-cam. It's nice to see in the quality places I can find it already, this being one of them. Great video!
I watched a video the other day, an interview with Steve Jobs and the rest of the Mac team from Apple, and a question came up regarding the B&W nature of the screen. The basic response was that B&W was chosen because they could have a higher resolution screen and graphics than if they had tried to do colour, and that B&W would be better matched to upcoming laser printers which would be B&W at that time anyway. Colour was a matter of cost - trying to fit high resolution colour graphics into the Mac at it's price point just wouldn't have worked commercially.
So, two things about this: First, I heard somewhere (can't find a reference off-hand) that in 1982/3 during development of the Mac there was only one large-scale supplier of 9" full-color CRTs, some company in Japan. The CRTs were really expensive, so Steve flew out there to try to negotiate a deal. Supposedly he showed up to the meeting under the influence of something and made a total ass of himself so the whole deal was cancelled by the manufacturer. The "we prefer B&W" story was then made up as cover. Is it true? Maybe, but probably not. As noted, a color version of the Mac would've likely doubled its already high price because you'd need not only the color tube but more RAM and a faster CPU to process the extra pixels as smoothly as B&W, and more disk space to hold the color icons and whatnot. Is it believable? Yeah I wouldn't put it past Steve to do something like that. Second, and verifiably true, is that single-color CRTs are much sharper than RGB CRTs (at least, as far as 1980s-era tubes go) and so are preferable for precision work (CAD, graphic design, etc) and also well-suited for the low resolution (512x384) of the original Mac: sharper dots mean things can be smaller on screen without getting blurry. White was likely chosen because it's closer to working on paper, which is what most office-type jobs involved prior to computers whether you were reading documents all day or creating them yourself. Amber is usually considered to be easier on the eyes over long-term use compared to white, but that may be anecdotal; anti-glare coatings are likely to have more of an effect (and anti-glare CRTs were supposedly common upgrades back in the heyday of B&W Macs, since most of their tubes didn't have anti-glare from the factory).
It's a reversible modification, nothing has been destroyed, there shouldn't be a single dissenting voice. But there are 42 dislikes... No pleasing some people.
I'd take something like this (especially with his explanation of having 2 unmolested ones and this is basically his testbed) over those dipshits who gut vintage machines like this, and throw everything away just to put some crappy LCD and a shitberry pi in there any day
A very important thing to check before swapping CRTs is the filament voltage. I believe most of these 9" monitor tubes are 12v but 6.3v is also common on CRTs (and vacuum tubes in general). If you put a 6.3v tube in a 12v chassis it will have a good chance of burning out within a few seconds.
When it comes to computer displays from the 70s and 80s, it seems all monochrome CRTs are 12v and all color ones are 6.3v. I'm sure in the TV realm things may have been different
This is a period correct hack. I could totally see one of my friends, back in the day, doing exactly this kind of swap. It's certainly no less "pure" than my MacSE that was upgraded, back in 89, with a Radius 020 accelerator (and's been running that config ever since). These old machines are meant to be used; what makes them so charming today is that, not long ago, they were just viewed as e-waste. Now they are the survivors with a second life, even if it's just to entertain and enable our tinkering and exploration of bygone eras. It doesn't matter if they're a perfect, fresh out of a box NOS example, or a machine cobbled together from parts, every example that avoids filling up a landfill is a victory. And yeah, that's a pretty cool hack, so I'd say the world is just a little bit better place with a greenscreen Mac Stealth Classic 2 in it.
Green and amber might be easier on the eyes but the paper white screen looks the best with the original Macintosh(s). As it matches the color of the Mac case as well.
Green is one of the colors our eyes are most sensitive to. Following that, if you keep the intensity low, green results in less eyestrain. Amber is perceived to be easier on the eyes because it tends to have a lower perceived brightness. It's counterintuitive. Clarity and adequate contrast at a lower overall brightness is easier on your eyes (assuming you adjust it correctly.)
That's been my main gripe with LCD mods trying to make dead CRT devices useful again. I still have an early iMac with a dead CRT (dim, blurry AF, HV cutting out) and a semi-dead logic board (boots but will randomly freeze). I've thought about putting an entire ITX PC in there and a 15" (i think it was?) LCD, but the slight curvature of the case for the CRT makes any LCD mod look like ass, so it's been collecting dust in the basement ever since. I've even thought about venting the original bad CRT and carefully cutting away at the glass so that only the front face with the mounting screws stays intact, then getting rid of the phosphor coating and sticking an LCD behind the original front glass or something, but since I have no clue how to cut the glass without making it crack and ruin the front that idea never went anywhere either...
I'd still go back inside later on and put the thinner support in to prevent the screw from tearing the end of the plastic mounting point. I'd be just a little afraid of that. But still very cool, though I prefer the white screen :D
really cool channel , and really enjoy watching the repairs of the the old tech. which follows me on to when I started watching Seinfeld and low behold in one of the scenes there is a MAC of some description in the back ground and straight away I thought of you and this one. 👍
Adrian, thank you for another fun video. I went to reply yesterday when I watched, but comments were disabled at that time. I have to say that I'm not a fan of green phosphor CRTs in general but I like the mod. (Part of me hoped in vain that you were going to put an amber-phosphor tube in it!)
Love this mod! I always thought they would look good with an Amber or Green monitor. Also, thanks for all your videos! I was able to fix an old broken ebay C64 (250425) sold for repairs and now have it working fully. Your videos were crucial to my success. I replaced U11 and U9, can you believe I have the exact replacement chips (OKI M3764-20 plus the 16 pin sockets as well) from ones I have salvaged over 30 years ago. I didn't even know I had them until I looked through my old electronics stash and i couldn't believe it myself, there they were. My first, but certainly not my last C64 repair :)
Green is keen, and white's alright, but amber is where it's at. Seriously, it's good to see this alternative for the Mac - it'll provide a way to keep the hardware going as display tubes become scarce. Well done!
It is neat. I didn't expect it to look as good as it does. And I love that it doesn't involve cutting anything! It can be put back at anytime. Those are the mods I love. I need to find another Macintosh. Used to have one and that was a blast.
I just did the same type of swap between my iic monitor and se/30. Just a fun oddity to have with them both. And then afterwards was looking around to see if I could find a red-ish phosphorus tube from some old monitor but haven’t had any luck.
I accidentally broke a Mac SE screen during a system dust/dirt cleanup last year. Now I know ANY Mac or Apple //c 9” screen will work as a replacement. Thanks! I’ll be looking for a green one too ;)
Adrian I like the way you put that green CERT in the iMac classic I like that that’s what I always dreamed of having on one of mine but I don’t have one so I always dreamed of having that Sunday
Yep I think the Vectrex used a Samsung tube, although the Macs used two different brands of CRT, one being Samsung and the other I can't really remember.
I was working on a Quadra today, and had the DB15 to VGA adapter set to the wrong monitor ID. The Quadra decided for some reason that my display should be green. It wasn’t all green, it could show pure white, pure black, and was capable of colors, but all gray shades were green instead. I spent a few hours cleaning up an old drive and installing 7.6.2 on it. When I finally finished up and could power-cycle the computer with a new ID set, I got regular grays back. It was a relief. I don’t think I would like a green-scale Mac.
For the spacer, just file the one that is the closest to working until it fits. Even if only half of the spacer is left and the screw hole is open, it will still work better than nothing. The spacers are 3D printed plastic, likely PLA, they will file very easily.
There's another thing about the display on the original Macs that also demonstrates the intent to make the machine excel at desktop publishing: The original pixel size was 72 to the inch, so each pixel was one point in type size measurement, making it straightforward to create a WYSIWYG desktop publishing application. Or, at least, as straightforward as it could be.
I’ve always preferred the paper white phosphor. When I ordered my personal VT420 terminal, I special ordered the white phosphor. My Apple /// had the Monitor /// with the green phosphor. I hated the textured coating and the slow refresh. It is interesting seeing green phosphor on a classic Mac.
"It's not that easy being green, having to spend each day the colour of the leaves. When I think it would be nicer being red or yellow or gold, or something much more colourful like that..." - Jim Henson (RIP 1936-1990)
Reminds me of when we were maintaining our aging machines in the late 90s early 2000s, there was no consideration of purity. Or of keeping it tonally original. These machines were our daily drivers so their function was more important. Well maybe not the Classic, my baby was an LC575.
Reminds me heavily of camneerG, the Mac Plus webserver that had a green CRT shoved in. it's called camneerG because the donor CRT wasn't 100% compatible as a drop-in and one of the wires got crossed during the swap. It was never fixed and left as-is.
I'm not sure a meter is the best thing for discharging the CRT. Meters are usually pretty high impedance. It'll tell you if it's charged but I don't think it would discharge it very quickly. Fortunately basically all CRTs have discharge resistors built into the circuitry so it's not a big deal.
You should do something with the IIc monitor case. Maybe put in a small LCD screen that fits, as well as some sort of single-board computer (which you could also run an emulator on). Since it's so yellow you could try whitening it, or painting, or just leave it alone.
Nah. He can well use that "white" screen by simply cutting out excess plastic of about the size of the spacers he has put into the Mac Classic case and use shorter screws (and maybe to cut a couple of new threads). Since he has those spacers, he can always revert to the green CRT, but with spacers inserted.
Very nice, Would be fun to do it to a SE/30 and toss on A/UX. A Mirror works wonders when dialing in a CRT. That way you don't have to constantly move around it to see what changed.
I'd argue it's not the colour that is straining but the contrast with the environment. Using a screen while being in the dark is more eye straining than doing the same but turning on a small light behind the screen or on the side of your desk. Whites and flashes of light don't hurt if your Iris's aren't as wide open.
i wonder if you can swap the implosion bands between two monitors of the same size other than the implied implosion in the name of the band being an issue
Maybe someone who is super proficient in metal work could do it? I know people have cut those off before to cause better destruction of CRTs for fun -- so it would be possible probably to use some tabs to maybe weld the other one in place? But doing so without damaging the CRT? Not so sure... and no way I would try it :-)
@@adriansdigitalbasement Maybe it would be possible to cut off the tabs (with a dremel for example) and epoxy new tabs on the implosion band. Something like an angle bracket, maybe purpose made or adjusted to fit. I suppose it should be conductive epoxy.
I have a Macintosh Plus in my collection with green CRT. I bought it around 10 years ago at local market. Still not sure why the former owner did that mod. Maybe the original tube was broken and they only had green CRT replacement back then.
I think a display with a mostly black background definitely looks better in green, but I'm not so convinced about the old mono Mac look like that. Still, if it looks better for you go for it, it's your machine and your choice!
Oh hey comments are enabled now. When you said it was made to look like paper, made me wonder how hard it would be to replace the CRT with an e-Ink display
I'd love a green monitor. Wish I'd bought one when they had them on offer. Closest I came to what you did here though was fit a green LED into my Commodore 64 (and an aftermarket modulator) .. I have changed CRTs before but only like for like. Also had a belt off one I thought I'd discharged! 3-inch spark .. it REALLY hurt.
dude your videos are always an automatic thumbs up 👍 from me, but I gotta say, personally I prefer the og white screen. But it's still pretty cool what you did here !
Back in the day I worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, in the graphics department. We were responsible for making overhead projection cells, advertising brochures, wall signs for events, an so on. Al lot of our output was done on the Mac. It was quite a capable little computer for running graphic design. I later moved to the CAD depatment drawing up printed curcuit boards. those were fun times. I believe the white phosphur was used for better clearity (higher contrast). On green and amber screens the lettering never looks very clear, where as the black and white is crisp. why do you think Black and White TV looked so clear back in the day you could get a lot of detail out of a B;ack and white image. I never cared for the glowing edges on the lettering, even if you turn the brightness level down the surrounding phosphurs still had a tendency to glow a little making the type fuzzy.
I think in terms of a monochrome display I prefer green but amber is a close second. I guess it depends on the application. I don't mind white though. I grew up with a Mac SE/30 in my room and I loved it.
Ah once you had no image I instantly remembered my first electrician task, I was playing with a chinese nintendo rippoff, famicon (I dont even know if it was a ripoff anymore, because its like a 1:1 system lol) hooked to my moms small 13" CRT TV. Now we were a quite a poor family back when I was like 9 or so. Then in the middle of some game, I accidentally janked the cables of the console, so that the CRT tv fell of the shelf to the ground. My heart skipped at least 5 beats, I thought I destroyed my moms TV. Back then it was serious business! So the TV had no image. I paniced, because there was no visual damage, just a scratch on the front plastic face. So I had no other way to just, unplug it, open it up and try to figure out how to fix it lol. So it turned out something came loose, but after that the image was all messed up, that's where I found these internal small analogue controls, I started messing with them and after a few seconds I made the tv even sharper and colors more vibrant. My mom still doesn't know about it :D I've been working with electronics ever since :D
Would love to see a video on the death of the green phosphor circuitry and the trouble that went with over voltage i suppose it lost all the magic smoke loved that tantalum cap blowing up wow what a bang
Now, to find one to install a color CRT if you can find one. Love your videos, They give me inspiration. I have a project that I would love to do; Build a modern PC, Running at no slower than 2 GHz, have it boot from an SSD, no smaller than 3TB, abd see what happens. I would not have any critical software on there, but for fun, wonder what would happen, I probably wouldn't hook it up to the internet, citing concerns for viruses and malware...probablu would make an awesome word processor
Paper white displays are great and all… if you can find them. The Mac Classic isn’t particularly rare anyway. IMO amber is way better than green, but that’s also the color of monochrome monitor I grew up with so that might have been nostalgia.
My rule of putting things into new places vis engineering ; is that nothing fits ever period. There's always some small part that you have to saw off or change - and that's if you're lucky. Even if you measure twice first, with three dimensions there's always something that wont quite fit.. without a little extra persuasion.
I wonder if you could have just taken some 60-100 grit sand paper to just sand down the side of that spacer to allow the board to clear it? Would that have been possible Adrian? Just might be a good idea so that the corner has more support? Also if it does help it could help inform the print maker to just make that spacer a bit narrower and offer a revision to that 3D print! Loved the episode!
Interesting that it can be done. I've used the Apple IIc monitor before, as well as amber monitors. But having used Mac Classics for years, it's just wrong without the black and white screen.
Your impure Mac Classic sounds like the Commodore 64 I'm building. I'm using the ATX 64 board and replacing all of the custom chips with as many FPGA replacements as I can find.
Having sat more hours than I care to remember in front of computers and terminals with green phosphor I think I would always find it a bit unnatural with the "inverted" video. I just expect light text on dark background when it comes to a green CRT. Oddly enough I remember swithcing back and forth between terminals with white on black and vice versa (what we used to call a positivie display) without an issue, but there's just something about green in my mind.
That looks so cool. I don't agree with all this 'Keep them original and period correct.' You should see what I've done to some of my Spectrum's, ZX81's and an Amiga A1200. Not to mention the Amstrad PCW 8256. (that is totaly unrecognizable, LOL). When storing old CRT's, I always wrote on the front with a sharpie where they were from, (TRS-80/19inch Phillips ect), It made it easier to identify them. Great video. Sorry, I seemed to ramble on a bit there. :)
A fun project could be to do an e-ink paperwhite display and see if you could reorient the electronics inside and 3D print a new back of the case to make a Mac that looked normal from the front but was thin viewed side-on.
Has e-ink gotten any better? I would think the refresh rate of e-ink displays would be abysmal when trying to do anything on an actual computer, even an older slower one like this.
@@brianv2871 You can get a tablet called an Onyx Boox Max 3 with an HDMI input allowing it to be used as a monitor. Refresh no good for a game but it's able to make local changes fast enough to track a pen tip while sketching for instance. Should be useable for DTP and office apps.
Doh!! I accidentally had comments disabled on this video when it went live this morning.
Opps x3
I was going to comment a comment to end all comments. It literally would have broken the internet. Now I've forgotten what it was. Probably for the best.
I was wondering why it was off lol
I thought there were some drama in the video I missed ... like a paperclip or something ...
A reboot always helps @nerd in disguise :-)
We are not museums or historians; a little mod here and there to make old school tech more accessible to the user is fine in my book. 😁 Always good to see a bit less e-waste and more useful machines, even if they are now pretty much just for fun...
@eck8989 Exactly what I mean - I'm not into Macs myself but I like to resurrect old school tech. The phrasing was meant as a reply to Adrian asking if people think that he ruined that classic machine.
I fully agree. The most important part is to get it going. Perhaps, also, if someone needs a "proper" part, you could then pass it on if it's in decent shape.
I'd agree completely.
I think one difference with modern "antiques" and old antiques is that things made in the 20th century were made for purposes we still find useful, but are complicated enough that they require maintenance. So the old idea of purity doesn't apply. We own these things to USE them, not to sit on a shelf.
There's long been precedence for this idea. People have been collecting cars for decades. People that restore them want them to RUN, show them off, and drive them around. Not sit in a garage collecting dust. They restore them to work, and they sometimes modify them and put new engines in them. It's still useful because we still use cars!
There's another class of antiques that fall into a completely different category. Stuff like a butter churn, or a pickling crock, or a washboard. Nobody uses these things anymore at all or any modern equivalent (my parents had all these things sitting around the house as museum pieces).
I just think there's an inherent difference between these two types of antiques. Especially a computer. A computer sitting on a shelf, not turned on is just a hunk of plastic, metal, and silicon. It doesn't really become something of value and interest until you actually use the thing. Cars are the same.
@@stevesether Hey, I use a butter churn and pickling crock all the time!
There are enough in museums anyway, let's have fun with them!
Unless I missed something, the CRT was not hooked to ground. The probe was, as a consequence, also not hooked to ground. If you do that frequently it would explain why you have been zapped by CRTs before.
Hi mate. My dad was a tv technician (in the crt age, right before companies told the repair era to throw the lcd away and give the customer a new one) essential equipment was a mirror to stop him throwing his back/neck out trying to look around to see the screen.
Yup. Had an internship in a TV repair shop some 20 years ago and every work desk had a mirror of some sort (either square tiles or larger ones) glued to the wall so they can see the front of the TVs/monitors while working on them without acrobatics
lovely little swap, I've always preferred the look of amber monitors. That might be because of Fallout: NV though. Lol
The Caesar has marked you for death, and the Legion obeys! Ready yourself for battle!
I have a new old stock 9 inch amber CRT that I've been saving for a project like this for a while now. Might just end up as an amber Vectrex, though.
I always liked amber monitors too. Green always looked dark to me. People told me that I should want a black and white monitor because *duh* the expensive Apple Macintosh computers all had black and white displays!
@@lwvmobile lol :D
You've built your own Pip Boy? Haven't you?
Not a fan of the green, but it’s not my computer. Always doing something different each video and I can appreciate that. Still got a thumbs up. 👍
That’s brilliant! I think the green CRT will definitely reduce eye strain, and it’s a neat little swap to set that Mac apart from the rest.
I think I'd prefer amber.
@@StarkRG I had an amber non glare screen growing up and my eyes never got strained on it. Having one of each now I am still partial to the amber but both seem easy on the eyes.
Always fascinated by how CRT technology worked. They were always a mystery growing up and now that they're obsolete I still kind of miss them. I wish I would have picked up more CRTs when they were being dumped off everywhere as trash.
yeah, in grad school I ended up with a big pile of old CRT-based dumb terminals and so on and at the time they were just garbage, and I took them to a shooting range to see if they’d actually implode. Turns out, no, they don’t.
The terminals they came from are probably still worthless but the CRTs themselves might have been good for something. Oh well. Formerly-common things only become valuable because they were formerly-common to the point nobody held onto them. Working Commodore 64s used to be like $5 at any random thrift shop.
There are still some to be found.
It's pretty rare these days but I do still find CRT TVs on the curb sometimes
The situation with CRT computer monitors tends to be a little more stupid (like even if it's some boring, bog-standard VGA monitor people tend to ask money for it) but there are still some deals to be had. I'd watch Craigslist.
The TVs are mostly good for game consoles and older (1980s) home computers, while the monitors these days are mostly early-2000s VGA monitors. There's also some decent deals from time to time on things like the early CRT iMacs - which of course have a computer built in but with a bit of work could probably be repurposed as a VGA monitor for another computer.
Granted, it's not like in, say, 2006 where CRTs were just getting dumped all over the place... And I think it's pretty hard these days to find a decent deal on something like that Apple IIc monitor. But you can find stuff if you watch for it.
They're still out there. Check the thrift stores in your area.
@@ScottGrammer Most of the thrift stores where I am outright refuse to take CRTs and got rid of their last ones ages ago.
@@fluffycritter that's a bummer. I have a vintage audio repair shop inside a thrift store in Chattanooga Tennessee. At any one time that thrift store will have perhaps half a dozen CRT televisions and at least a couple of CRT monitors. They take them in all the time and sell them like hotcakes.
My Dad's old AT&T AT clone had a green CRT. It was always such a treat to use his new 386 and play our games in color!
I had an amber composite monitor driven by a CGA card for a long time. Once I saw how ghastly many games looked in CGA 4-color mode, I was actually pretty happy to have my three shades of amber.
This is a pretty cool mod. I love how confident you are that it’s going to work
I just got a G4-450 Mac and would love to see a few videos about this machine and some upgrades I love the channel, keep up the great work!!!
I think things are going the way of this type of hobby being more and more watched on UA-cam. It's nice to see in the quality places I can find it already, this being one of them. Great video!
I watched a video the other day, an interview with Steve Jobs and the rest of the Mac team from Apple, and a question came up regarding the B&W nature of the screen.
The basic response was that B&W was chosen because they could have a higher resolution screen and graphics than if they had tried to do colour, and that B&W would be better matched to upcoming laser printers which would be B&W at that time anyway.
Colour was a matter of cost - trying to fit high resolution colour graphics into the Mac at it's price point just wouldn't have worked commercially.
So, two things about this: First, I heard somewhere (can't find a reference off-hand) that in 1982/3 during development of the Mac there was only one large-scale supplier of 9" full-color CRTs, some company in Japan. The CRTs were really expensive, so Steve flew out there to try to negotiate a deal. Supposedly he showed up to the meeting under the influence of something and made a total ass of himself so the whole deal was cancelled by the manufacturer. The "we prefer B&W" story was then made up as cover. Is it true? Maybe, but probably not. As noted, a color version of the Mac would've likely doubled its already high price because you'd need not only the color tube but more RAM and a faster CPU to process the extra pixels as smoothly as B&W, and more disk space to hold the color icons and whatnot. Is it believable? Yeah I wouldn't put it past Steve to do something like that.
Second, and verifiably true, is that single-color CRTs are much sharper than RGB CRTs (at least, as far as 1980s-era tubes go) and so are preferable for precision work (CAD, graphic design, etc) and also well-suited for the low resolution (512x384) of the original Mac: sharper dots mean things can be smaller on screen without getting blurry. White was likely chosen because it's closer to working on paper, which is what most office-type jobs involved prior to computers whether you were reading documents all day or creating them yourself. Amber is usually considered to be easier on the eyes over long-term use compared to white, but that may be anecdotal; anti-glare coatings are likely to have more of an effect (and anti-glare CRTs were supposedly common upgrades back in the heyday of B&W Macs, since most of their tubes didn't have anti-glare from the factory).
It's a reversible modification, nothing has been destroyed, there shouldn't be a single dissenting voice. But there are 42 dislikes... No pleasing some people.
Now 64 Mac purists. They probably believe Apple invented white phosphor.
It's normal for every video in youtube actually. Don't know where it came from, but most are most likely bots.
I'd take something like this (especially with his explanation of having 2 unmolested ones and this is basically his testbed) over those dipshits who gut vintage machines like this, and throw everything away just to put some crappy LCD and a shitberry pi in there any day
Not only that, he now has a spare CRT for one of his other machines.
The dislikes are from people who think PCs running MS-DOS are the coolest retro shit ever.
A very important thing to check before swapping CRTs is the filament voltage. I believe most of these 9" monitor tubes are 12v but 6.3v is also common on CRTs (and vacuum tubes in general). If you put a 6.3v tube in a 12v chassis it will have a good chance of burning out within a few seconds.
When it comes to computer displays from the 70s and 80s, it seems all monochrome CRTs are 12v and all color ones are 6.3v. I'm sure in the TV realm things may have been different
takes me way way back to elementary school in the early 90s using Apple IIes
Cool transplant video. Had fun watching it.
This is a period correct hack. I could totally see one of my friends, back in the day, doing exactly this kind of swap. It's certainly no less "pure" than my MacSE that was upgraded, back in 89, with a Radius 020 accelerator (and's been running that config ever since). These old machines are meant to be used; what makes them so charming today is that, not long ago, they were just viewed as e-waste. Now they are the survivors with a second life, even if it's just to entertain and enable our tinkering and exploration of bygone eras. It doesn't matter if they're a perfect, fresh out of a box NOS example, or a machine cobbled together from parts, every example that avoids filling up a landfill is a victory. And yeah, that's a pretty cool hack, so I'd say the world is just a little bit better place with a greenscreen Mac Stealth Classic 2 in it.
Well said.
Green and amber might be easier on the eyes but the paper white screen looks the best with the original Macintosh(s). As it matches the color of the Mac case as well.
Green is one of the colors our eyes are most sensitive to. Following that, if you keep the intensity low, green results in less eyestrain. Amber is perceived to be easier on the eyes because it tends to have a lower perceived brightness. It's counterintuitive. Clarity and adequate contrast at a lower overall brightness is easier on your eyes (assuming you adjust it correctly.)
Interesting! I know I've read that tungsten filament bulbs in cars is easier on the eyes but indeed is less bright -- for similar reasons I guess?
@@adriansdigitalbasement Definitely easier on the eyes than the bright blue-white of an LED headlight.
Neat swap! One day, it would be neat to see retro inspired LCD mods (not channel specific, but generally) that replicates the curvature of CRT's too.
That's been my main gripe with LCD mods trying to make dead CRT devices useful again. I still have an early iMac with a dead CRT (dim, blurry AF, HV cutting out) and a semi-dead logic board (boots but will randomly freeze). I've thought about putting an entire ITX PC in there and a 15" (i think it was?) LCD, but the slight curvature of the case for the CRT makes any LCD mod look like ass, so it's been collecting dust in the basement ever since.
I've even thought about venting the original bad CRT and carefully cutting away at the glass so that only the front face with the mounting screws stays intact, then getting rid of the phosphor coating and sticking an LCD behind the original front glass or something, but since I have no clue how to cut the glass without making it crack and ruin the front that idea never went anywhere either...
I'd still go back inside later on and put the thinner support in to prevent the screw from tearing the end of the plastic mounting point. I'd be just a little afraid of that. But still very cool, though I prefer the white screen :D
Always wanted to see a green Mac. Love it!
A green monitor would look SO COOL on a Mac SE with that MacEffects clear case.
ohhhh man you're so right
really cool channel , and really enjoy watching the repairs of the the old tech. which follows me on to when I started watching Seinfeld and low behold in one of the scenes there is a MAC of some description in the back ground and straight away I thought of you and this one. 👍
I put a green CRT in my green SE case that I got from MacEffects. I think it looks great.
Adrian, thank you for another fun video. I went to reply yesterday when I watched, but comments were disabled at that time. I have to say that I'm not a fan of green phosphor CRTs in general but I like the mod. (Part of me hoped in vain that you were going to put an amber-phosphor tube in it!)
The amount of knowledge you have on CRTs are is impressive
Love this mod! I always thought they would look good with an Amber or Green monitor. Also, thanks for all your videos! I was able to fix an old broken ebay C64 (250425) sold for repairs and now have it working fully. Your videos were crucial to my success. I replaced U11 and U9, can you believe I have the exact replacement chips (OKI M3764-20 plus the 16 pin sockets as well) from ones I have salvaged over 30 years ago. I didn't even know I had them until I looked through my old electronics stash and i couldn't believe it myself, there they were. My first, but certainly not my last C64 repair :)
It looks very cool! Good information about working with CRT's, too.
I love the green screen. Not only does it look cool it looks so relaxing to the eyes.
Keep up the good work. Ron UK
Green is keen, and white's alright, but amber is where it's at. Seriously, it's good to see this alternative for the Mac - it'll provide a way to keep the hardware going as display tubes become scarce. Well done!
It is neat. I didn't expect it to look as good as it does. And I love that it doesn't involve cutting anything! It can be put back at anytime. Those are the mods I love. I need to find another Macintosh. Used to have one and that was a blast.
You are totally crazy - i love you for that. You have created a very unique Mac with this CRT Swap.
I just did the same type of swap between my iic monitor and se/30. Just a fun oddity to have with them both. And then afterwards was looking around to see if I could find a red-ish phosphorus tube from some old monitor but haven’t had any luck.
I think black and white looks nicer for a GUI than green. But it’s still cool to make a working thing out of two non-working things.
I accidentally broke a Mac SE screen during a system dust/dirt cleanup last year. Now I know ANY Mac or Apple //c 9” screen will work as a replacement. Thanks! I’ll be looking for a green one too ;)
Adrian I like the way you put that green CERT in the iMac classic I like that that’s what I always dreamed of having on one of mine but I don’t have one so I always dreamed of having that Sunday
I've heard these have the same tube as a Vectrex. I've seen these converted into vector monitors. Arcade Jason made a mini Asteroids inside a mac
Yep I think the Vectrex used a Samsung tube, although the Macs used two different brands of CRT, one being Samsung and the other I can't really remember.
@@Alexis_du_60 The other brand is the one in this video actually.
Very cool mod!! The thing looks very nice with the green screen!!
I was working on a Quadra today, and had the DB15 to VGA adapter set to the wrong monitor ID. The Quadra decided for some reason that my display should be green. It wasn’t all green, it could show pure white, pure black, and was capable of colors, but all gray shades were green instead. I spent a few hours cleaning up an old drive and installing 7.6.2 on it.
When I finally finished up and could power-cycle the computer with a new ID set, I got regular grays back.
It was a relief.
I don’t think I would like a green-scale Mac.
For the spacer, just file the one that is the closest to working until it fits. Even if only half of the spacer is left and the screw hole is open, it will still work better than nothing. The spacers are 3D printed plastic, likely PLA, they will file very easily.
There's another thing about the display on the original Macs that also demonstrates the intent to make the machine excel at desktop publishing: The original pixel size was 72 to the inch, so each pixel was one point in type size measurement, making it straightforward to create a WYSIWYG desktop publishing application. Or, at least, as straightforward as it could be.
Great video. Thanks
I love watching your videos....your enthusiasm and humour are brilliant! Keep up the great work 😁
I’ve always preferred the paper white phosphor. When I ordered my personal VT420 terminal, I special ordered the white phosphor. My Apple /// had the Monitor /// with the green phosphor. I hated the textured coating and the slow refresh. It is interesting seeing green phosphor on a classic Mac.
I think this is the best Apple Macintosh Classic mod that I have ever seen. I love it. I wish the one we had when I was young had green phosphor.
Looks nice ngl
"It's not that easy being green, having to spend each day the colour of the leaves. When I think it would be nicer being red or yellow or gold, or something much more colourful like that..." - Jim Henson (RIP 1936-1990)
Reminds me of when we were maintaining our aging machines in the late 90s early 2000s, there was no consideration of purity. Or of keeping it tonally original. These machines were our daily drivers so their function was more important. Well maybe not the Classic, my baby was an LC575.
Reminds me heavily of camneerG, the Mac Plus webserver that had a green CRT shoved in. it's called camneerG because the donor CRT wasn't 100% compatible as a drop-in and one of the wires got crossed during the swap. It was never fixed and left as-is.
I never knew there were that many adjustments on CRTs
I didn't think there were that many for monochrome either.
But color? Definitely
Scotty: "What is it?"
Data: "It is.. it is... it is green."
Scotty: "Hello computer."
@@jgvillan01 just use the keyboard...
@@arfanmedni7294 "A keyboard...how quaint!"
Scotty : Rev up your corollaaaaaaa
Also Data: “I hate this; it is revolting.”
Guinan: “More?”
Data: “Yes, please.”
I'm not sure a meter is the best thing for discharging the CRT. Meters are usually pretty high impedance. It'll tell you if it's charged but I don't think it would discharge it very quickly. Fortunately basically all CRTs have discharge resistors built into the circuitry so it's not a big deal.
You should do something with the IIc monitor case. Maybe put in a small LCD screen that fits, as well as some sort of single-board computer (which you could also run an emulator on).
Since it's so yellow you could try whitening it, or painting, or just leave it alone.
Nah. He can well use that "white" screen by simply cutting out excess plastic of about the size of the spacers he has put into the Mac Classic case and use shorter screws (and maybe to cut a couple of new threads). Since he has those spacers, he can always revert to the green CRT, but with spacers inserted.
@@docnele he doesn't have any of the boards etc to drive that 2nd screen though...
Very nice, Would be fun to do it to a SE/30 and toss on A/UX.
A Mirror works wonders when dialing in a CRT. That way you don't have to constantly move around it to see what changed.
Good video Adrian! Thanks for always sharing with us!💖👌👍😎JP
All you need is a small tube of the right length to create the space for the screw.
Nice swap.
14:32 - The other 4 corners, ah.. the old CRT pentagram mounting system
Regretting selling my molar mac... It had a bad defection yolk... realizing after watching this I could have just replaced that part. Frick.
I'd argue it's not the colour that is straining but the contrast with the environment. Using a screen while being in the dark is more eye straining than doing the same but turning on a small light behind the screen or on the side of your desk. Whites and flashes of light don't hurt if your Iris's aren't as wide open.
Great job! Personally would have went with amber...but, great job!
It looks amazing, I liked, I want to buy one Macintosh for myself 👏👍
i wonder if you can swap the implosion bands between two monitors of the same size other than the implied implosion in the name of the band being an issue
Maybe someone who is super proficient in metal work could do it? I know people have cut those off before to cause better destruction of CRTs for fun -- so it would be possible probably to use some tabs to maybe weld the other one in place? But doing so without damaging the CRT? Not so sure... and no way I would try it :-)
@@adriansdigitalbasement Maybe it would be possible to cut off the tabs (with a dremel for example) and epoxy new tabs on the implosion band. Something like an angle bracket, maybe purpose made or adjusted to fit. I suppose it should be conductive epoxy.
@@adriansdigitalbasement With the monochrome screen, maybe you could fabricate a plastic printed collar to fill in the frame gap.
I have a Macintosh Plus in my collection with green CRT. I bought it around 10 years ago at local market. Still not sure why the former owner did that mod. Maybe the original tube was broken and they only had green CRT replacement back then.
I think a display with a mostly black background definitely looks better in green, but I'm not so convinced about the old mono Mac look like that. Still, if it looks better for you go for it, it's your machine and your choice!
18:08 - what happens if the ground wire is not properly connected?
You know I'm not totally sure. I assume a lot of potential builds up on the CRT which could arc to things nearby?
Oh hey comments are enabled now.
When you said it was made to look like paper, made me wonder how hard it would be to replace the CRT with an e-Ink display
Always was parital to amber, our wchool had one in thw apple II days. Loved it as was easier on me eyes.
I'd love a green monitor. Wish I'd bought one when they had them on offer.
Closest I came to what you did here though was fit a green LED into my Commodore 64 (and an aftermarket modulator) .. I have changed CRTs before but only like for like. Also had a belt off one I thought I'd discharged! 3-inch spark .. it REALLY hurt.
Thirty years ago, I was adding ram to an SE30, when I bumped the crt board and cracked the neck of the CRT. Newbie mistake. I was not happy.
dude your videos are always an automatic thumbs up 👍 from me, but I gotta say, personally I prefer the og white screen. But it's still pretty cool what you did here !
Back in the day I worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, in the graphics department. We were responsible for making overhead projection cells, advertising brochures, wall signs for events, an so on. Al lot of our output was done on the Mac. It was quite a capable little computer for running graphic design. I later moved to the CAD depatment drawing up printed curcuit boards. those were fun times.
I believe the white phosphur was used for better clearity (higher contrast). On green and amber screens the lettering never looks very clear, where as the black and white is crisp. why do you think Black and White TV looked so clear back in the day you could get a lot of detail out of a B;ack and white image. I never cared for the glowing edges on the lettering, even if you turn the brightness level down the surrounding phosphurs still had a tendency to glow a little making the type fuzzy.
I think in terms of a monochrome display I prefer green but amber is a close second. I guess it depends on the application. I don't mind white though. I grew up with a Mac SE/30 in my room and I loved it.
Ah once you had no image I instantly remembered my first electrician task, I was playing with a chinese nintendo rippoff, famicon (I dont even know if it was a ripoff anymore, because its like a 1:1 system lol) hooked to my moms small 13" CRT TV. Now we were a quite a poor family back when I was like 9 or so. Then in the middle of some game, I accidentally janked the cables of the console, so that the CRT tv fell of the shelf to the ground. My heart skipped at least 5 beats, I thought I destroyed my moms TV. Back then it was serious business! So the TV had no image. I paniced, because there was no visual damage, just a scratch on the front plastic face. So I had no other way to just, unplug it, open it up and try to figure out how to fix it lol. So it turned out something came loose, but after that the image was all messed up, that's where I found these internal small analogue controls, I started messing with them and after a few seconds I made the tv even sharper and colors more vibrant. My mom still doesn't know about it :D
I've been working with electronics ever since :D
Amazing mod! - Simple and effective - For me ambar it's more comfortable for long time working.
Would love to see a video on the death of the green phosphor circuitry and the trouble that went with over voltage i suppose it lost all the magic smoke loved that tantalum cap blowing up wow what a bang
Now, to find one to install a color CRT if you can find one. Love your videos, They give me inspiration. I have a project that I would love to do; Build a modern PC, Running at no slower than 2 GHz, have it boot from an SSD, no smaller than 3TB, abd see what happens. I would not have any critical software on there, but for fun, wonder what would happen, I probably wouldn't hook it up to the internet, citing concerns for viruses and malware...probablu would make an awesome word processor
Paper white displays are great and all… if you can find them. The Mac Classic isn’t particularly rare anyway.
IMO amber is way better than green, but that’s also the color of monochrome monitor I grew up with so that might have been nostalgia.
My rule of putting things into new places vis engineering ; is that nothing fits ever period.
There's always some small part that you have to saw off or change - and that's if you're lucky.
Even if you measure twice first, with three dimensions there's always something that wont quite fit.. without a little extra persuasion.
I wonder if you could have just taken some 60-100 grit sand paper to just sand down the side of that spacer to allow the board to clear it? Would that have been possible Adrian? Just might be a good idea so that the corner has more support? Also if it does help it could help inform the print maker to just make that spacer a bit narrower and offer a revision to that 3D print!
Loved the episode!
Interesting that it can be done. I've used the Apple IIc monitor before, as well as amber monitors. But having used Mac Classics for years, it's just wrong without the black and white screen.
Excellent work! Now you need a Mac with a color screen ;)
I absolutely love old tech but thank baby Jesus for the new tech. Looking at a green booger all day long would suck. lol. Great Video great job.
I like the paper white screens I find the amber or green screens are to dark and can burn easily if the contrast is to high and constant
Your impure Mac Classic sounds like the Commodore 64 I'm building. I'm using the ATX 64 board and replacing all of the custom chips with as many FPGA replacements as I can find.
The space in front of the CRT would allow putting some infra-red touch-screen stuff maybe… :D
I thought it was going to be swapped with an LCD. Surely didn’t expect that.
Having sat more hours than I care to remember in front of computers and terminals with green phosphor I think I would always find it a bit unnatural with the "inverted" video. I just expect light text on dark background when it comes to a green CRT. Oddly enough I remember swithcing back and forth between terminals with white on black and vice versa (what we used to call a positivie display) without an issue, but there's just something about green in my mind.
That looks so cool. I don't agree with all this 'Keep them original and period correct.'
You should see what I've done to some of my Spectrum's, ZX81's and an Amiga A1200. Not to mention the Amstrad PCW 8256. (that is totaly unrecognizable, LOL).
When storing old CRT's, I always wrote on the front with a sharpie where they were from, (TRS-80/19inch Phillips ect), It made it easier to identify them.
Great video. Sorry, I seemed to ramble on a bit there. :)
Perfect swap Adrian! But well, screen grid is G2 :) Not that it matters much anyway LOL
Can you not reverse the mounting on the monitor so that there is no need for an adaptor ?
I prefer ember over green terminals, but hey that's a nice swap!
A fun project could be to do an e-ink paperwhite display and see if you could reorient the electronics inside and 3D print a new back of the case to make a Mac that looked normal from the front but was thin viewed side-on.
Has e-ink gotten any better? I would think the refresh rate of e-ink displays would be abysmal when trying to do anything on an actual computer, even an older slower one like this.
@@brianv2871 You can get a tablet called an Onyx Boox Max 3 with an HDMI input allowing it to be used as a monitor. Refresh no good for a game but it's able to make local changes fast enough to track a pen tip while sketching for instance.
Should be useable for DTP and office apps.
Adrian creates a FrankenMac. Excellent video.
If it were an amber CRT, man that would be cool! I've always been a big fan of the amber phosphor.
Ha! You got the polarity right! L0pht got the polarity wrong, and had it reversed, hence the name camneerg ( green mac backwards. )
Amber would look so damn nice. There is just something magical about amber CRTs!
As soon as I find a 9" Amber CRT that works, I'll be attempting that swap :-)
@@adriansdigitalbasement Heck yes!
Is there a way to gut the mac and put a tv signal on the crt?
Did anyone ever make any other colors of CRT? I assume that red and blue phosphors existed for use in color displays. Anyone ever make one of those?
A red CRT would be pretty damn cool, but AFAIK they never made one of those