Wouldn’t be terrible to make it easy to do color as well. I chopped up my unit w the xceed card and ran it color from the PDS to the LCD. Pretty painless actually and strangely satisfying.
Apple Macintosh SE/30 monitors and video cards
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/30
This post covers some topics around one of the retro machines I have. They helped me form some thoughts on additions I might want to add to mine.
HDMI out on a Mac
- [Wayback/Archive] My little guide on RGBTOHDMI installed on Classic, Plus, etc. | TinkerDifferent
- [Wayback/Archive] RGBtoHDMI for my Mac SE/30, how to wire up – YouTube
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – hoglet67/RGBtoHDMI: Bare-metal Raspberry Pi project that provides pixel-perfect sampling of Retro Computer RGB/YUV video and conversion to HDMI
The RGBtoHDMI interface converts the “digital” RGB video signal from the BBC Micro or Electron to HDMI compatible with most modern TV/Monitors. The interface comprises a Raspberry Pi Zero and a specially designed Hat containing a small CPLD. Custom firmware on the Raspberry Pi, in conjunction with the CPLD, is able to correctly sample each of the Beeb’s video modes to give a pixel-perfect rendition.
- [Wayback/Archive] RGBtoHDMI for a SE/30 (settings from Plus and Classic 1 won’t work) | 68kMLA
Needs a Raspberry Pi, but looks very interesting.
256 shades of grey
Back in 2022, someone started doing an amazing thing: reverse engineering and rebuilding a 256-grey/color video card for the Macintosh SE/30 PDS (Processor Direct Slot).
A very interesting start of a long journey with the result that a few people could actually play around with it. Hopefully by now more have been produced, but be aware: this is a hobby of the designer, so unlike some other hardware: do not expect high numbers of these boards to become available.
Long thread in – for now – 14 pages of which I think below are the most important excerpts:
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | 68kMLA
I think it’s time for a little “worklog” kind of thread about this…
For the past year I’ve been working on and off with @cheesestraws and @GeekDot to dissect this SE/30 PDS videocard:
It’s made by Formac and was bundled with one of their ProNitron monitors back then driving it at 1024*768 at 8bit colour.
The card is built around the TMS34061 video controller that’s found on a lot of video cards from the era.
You can freely configure it with practically any counter values you want to have it produce different resolution video output signals while it conveniently also handles all the VRAM/DRAM refresh and addressing magic for you. So a perfect solution for when you don’t actually know what you’re doing and just want to poke around a bit 😛…
Currently we’re still struggling to get the declaration ROM and driver code to properly default to 8 bit mode, because due to some clock distribution changes I had to do to the board 1 bit mode won’t function correctly. Right now the card still defaults to the 1bit mode and you have to find your way into the monitors control panel to change to 256 colours/grays to get a useable image on screen. So now it’s either figuring out how to get rid of the 1bit mode all together or bend the hardware to correctly output 1bit… The race is on, whoever finishes first, geekdot or myself 😛
PS: for those who were wondering, yes it does work together with the Turbo040 unlike the Micron XCeed for a full stack of purple awesomeness 😃
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Is there any possibility of adding a pass thru slot so we could have Ethernet/accelerator and grayscale, or would one need a standalone splitter first?
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Out of curiosity, why did you decide for the Formac card?The Micron uses an ASIC (“Maveric”) which is in unobtanium.
The Formac uses (vintage) standard parts.
Easy decision IMHO……
Would you be able to drive an external screen ?You certainly could and I included headers to break the video signals out to an external screen but the main purpose is to drive the internal CRT at 256 shades of gray.
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If I may ask, is there something specific that made you choose Formac instead of Micron?Just like I said in the opening post, the TMS34061 is an incredibly „easy“ to use chip if you don’t want to deal with all the stuff that gives people headaches… DRAM access and refresh, implementing line/row counters for different resolutions, tweak all the timing between the different GALs/PALs that need to talk to each other.
Especially that last point will become painful when you start replacing PALs with modern ATF equivalents that totally don’t keep up to the propagation delay that their naming might suggests.
I’ve done a few clones of things that implement state machines spread over multiple GALs and fixing timing issues once you use ATFs isn’t fun at all.
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This is interesting, maybe someone can wire a DB-15 adapter or even a 13W3 adapter for this so it can be possible to use other video cards with the internal SE & SE/30 displays
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Switching between internal and external display would require some sort of video signal switch which I don’t plan to implement. The card is going to be wired up in a way that as soon as you connect the CRT neck board wiring harness it will always output compact Mac resolution (or optionally 512*384 if you want that selectable by a jumper on the card)
With the internal harness disconnected it’s going to output 640*480 (or 800*600 – that should still fit into the 512k of VRAM as well)
The video signals are always present on both, the internal connector and the breakout header, at the same time. That’s why it has to be handled in a more restrictive way… neck board connected->always do compact Mac resolution so you won’t fry the analogboard by sending VGA or even 800*600 sync rates to it.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 2 | 68kMLA
Is your existing Backplane Expansion Card adaptable to a 640×480/800×600 VGA converter built into it?It is, but I’d rather keep it DB15 so it will still be easy to wire it up like for like to other graphics cards.
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On the system board, you wouldn’t need the PDS buffer setup, no?That would definitely have to stay if you plan to use other cards in the PDS slot as well.
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We’re getting pretty far afield here. We’re quibbling over jargon in the computer imaging, photographic and printmaking fields all at the same time! No worries and certainly no offense intended.
This is why I left out a lot of messages: like any forum, there was a lot off-topic (:
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 3 | 68kMLA
About the progress… [and a request for help]
Theoretically the DeclROM for the BolleCard is done.
It compiles fine in classic MPW (doing it in the correct vintage way ;)) and boots all the way through…[Wayback/Archive] New DeclROM booting – YouTube
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Micron solved your problem with code that must be at the very beginning of the INIT, but it wouldn’t crop up with VROM removed as it checked for sense lines on the external connector, no? As the GS setup is changed in hardware with the bucket open, this shouldn’t be required?
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Either way, looks like we’re getting there. Geekdots magic and the invaluable GDevice tip seem to work out…
The card comes up in 8bit grayscale mode now on a cold boot which was not the case with the “stock” driver.
There’s no 1bit mode present anymore at all now and I didn’t notice anything weird so far after running the card for a few days now.…
Note: video is below under the blog post signature.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 4 | 68kMLA
Considering apm’s “Compact Mac retina display” hack (640×480 internal CRT) what we need now is a 603e based CPU card. So we could run a networked 640×480 grayscale Mac OS 9.1 on SE/30, and boot it from ROM …😈
and a lot more fantasising about other hardware upgrade possibilities
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Now if you feel like complicating it further, how about a animated boot splash? If it all possible to let’s say display 5-20 different boot screens in quick succession, that could be really cool!Well, I thought about that, too (obviously), but there are certain limitations:
There are “the 3 commandments for a primaryInit“:
Started a very interesting thread discussion on initialisation and APIs available at what point of the initialisation.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 5 | 68kMLA
I’m hoping QuickDraw functions are ready by then as drawing the screen with grey worksUnfortunately, as GeekDot said above, you can’t call anything except for the slot manager in PrimaryInit. The grey and the logo are poked directly into VRAM.
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Continuing the very interesting, but long, discussion on initialisation and APIs available at what point of the initialisation.
Cool, to further keep it clean, how about a second thread dedicated to any possible A/B integrity complications under long term use at the expanded 512×384 resolution of 12″ RGB zaTopper Display?
A/B appears to handle it just fine as is, but might some low rent version of APM’s Retina Display hack be in order? Uprating a couple of components as he did might be in order, if not a couple of turns added to the flyback to split the difference?
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number of TMS34061 Bolle was able to accumulatemore like “was willing to pay for before we even knew we could get it to work”
The RAMDACs aren’t exactly what I’d call “available” as well. That’s what you get when building stuff around old crap 😛
Currently looking into what the address decoder is actually doing and why it won’t work with our larger 16k ROM to get the totally cosmetic splash screen feature working in a nice way.The tube sockets I ordered from a local seller do not fit the CRT, got another bunch from a Chinese seller now and hope they’ll fit (I kind of hope they don’t, so I won’t have to build a ton of the CRT neck boards – hate all that through hole crap)
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Another reason I am posting an update: everybody please refrain from messaging me individually asking when this will be available for sale, if I can put you on a waiting list or if you can pre-pay for a set. I can’t keep track of everyone who wants one, leave alone get back in touch once cards are available and wait for responses. I tried this before, it did not work out.
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Awesome! Take your time. I think we should have no rush. This is a collection hobby. No real use are made. Thank you so much!
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 6 | 68kMLA
I’m new to this forum and I’m probably asking a dumb question, but would 256 greyscale graphics significantly slow down the speed of the Mac?
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It does, but having an accelerator negates the slow down which I’d imagine most would also be using in a souped up SE/30 with greyscale. My experience with a SE/30 PDS video card (640 x 480 x 256 colours) is colour games suitable for higher end ‘030 Macs are relatively slow…
Just as an appetizer and to soothe your concerns… it’s not really slowing things down.
Here’s the Speedometer 4.02 QuickDraw benchmark comparison to a Color Classic.…aaaand that’s at the same resolution as the Color Classic (i.e. 512×384, not 512×342)
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Thanks for sending the comparison GeekDot! I also found out the Color Classic actually has the same processor speed as the SE/30, so now my concerns are basically gone. I do have another question though. As far as I can tell from reading this forum, and also by seeing your picture of the comparison, that this graphics card will only support 8-bit grayscale mode. Is this correct? If it’s not capable of switching to other graphics modes (especially 1-bit), will this not break/crash some games/applications that needs this?
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Here’s another teaser 😁…
[Wayback/Archive] Bolle SE/30 Video card demo – YouTube Wow! 256 shades of gray at 512×384!
Note: video is below under the blog post signature.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 7 | 68kMLA
As far as I can tell all accelerators will work together with the card. Tested so far are P33/P34, Turbo040, Carrera040, SE/30 DiiMO as well as the SE/30 specific socketed PowerCache.
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There are a few cards on the way to a few friendly users and we’ll see how to proceed from there.
I am not yet quite sure if I ever want to build any more wiring harnesses for those things 😅I paused working on the card over the summer and just picked up working on it again and solved (kind of) two of the main problems we were experiencing. Was going to post a follow up on what happened one of these days.
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Got one today; it is as excellent as all Bolle products. Runs at 512×384@60Hz.
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Wow amazing work! And despite owning a Micron XCEED setup I’d be tempted to move to 512×384 vs 512×341 not to mention that virtual desktop feature :-D
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 8 | 68kMLA
Not one that is in any way compatible with the SE/30’s, given the Classic is a 68000 based system, and the SE/30 being 68030 based. The PDS is, well, in many ways a path directly to the processor, as the name suggests, which inherently makes it non-compatible. And even then, differences in PDS implementation and other hardware plays a factor, too.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 9 | 68kMLA
SE/30 has Color QuickDraw (which is why color PDS graphics cards were common as well), so it supports 24-bit color natively despite the 1-bit screen.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 10 | 68kMLA
just install the apple appearance manger sdk for system 7. it’ll give you the platinum theme and from memory will let you also set fullscreen desktop images/pictures
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I have 8.1 on my SE/30. I used a 32bit clean rom, pretty sure one is required and that Mode32 won’t get the job done (unless there’s an alternative method).
Only need system 7 disks for initial install. Once set up though, it has worked great ever since. Nice to have HFS+ support.…
For Finder 8.0 and 8.1 installation: see further below in this blog post.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 11 | 68kMLA
As posted in Bolle’s profile post, these won’t be available until late 2023 or early 2024.
There is no waiting list, preordering, or anything like that.…
Attachments
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The unpopulated 16 pin breakout header under the neckboard connector is the color output, I believe. Bolle did mention that it’d do 640×480 or 800×600 color if the neckboard is not attached, on the first page of this thread, unless that changed in the meantime.
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On the original card the greyscale is disabled when an external monitor is connected. I would assume that’s the same case here.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 12 | 68kMLA
There was a pile of iisi PDS Pivot video cards on eBay for peanuts about 10 years ago. Everyone bought one and they’re long gone.
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It’s not just 1-bit either – tons of very important games also rely on 4-bit color being available. I wish I could help fix this, sounds like a weird hardware design choice.
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- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 13 | 68kMLA
Also very interested in Bolle’s Ethernet equipped PDS riser, as seen in Action Retro’s “cursed” SE/30 video series. I think I’d rather keep my SE/30 a 68030, but Ethernet and greyscale upgrades are very appealing.
- [Wayback/Archive] Building an internal grayscale card for the SE/30 | Page 14 | 68kMLA
Not going to do any pre-sales, I don’t want anybody to pay me upfront to secure a card and I don’t have the resources to maintain a list of people who might be interested and get back to every single one.
There will be a thread on the Trading Post section and from there it’s first come, first serve.
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Fantastic! Add me into the mix as interested in one of these – the SE/30 with a Grayscale card in the early 90s blew away little me as a child – was so impressed! I never thought I’d own one…
..now I have an SE/30, but it’s still just black and white only. This card would make the dream come true!
Some videos:
- This seems an important test: [Wayback/Archive] Doom (aka The Ultimate Doom) – Macintosh Garden
- And this was a more extensive test:
Riser card issues
[Wayback/Archive] Micron Xceed power cable extension for SE/30 | 68kMLA
I’d like to use them together and I believe it’s possible, but the 10-pin power cable that goes into the video card doesn’t reach when it’s raised up on the adapter. Is there a cable I can buy to extend it? What have others done to make this work?
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I cut a 24 Pin ATX Power Extension Cable in half after making sure the pin-out was 1:1, worked as expected:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B000FL60AI
[Wayback/Archive] StarTech.com 20 cm 24 Pin ATX 2.01 Power Extension Cable – Male/Female: Amazon.de: Business, Industry & Science
The riser card that raised above all riser cards
Or: how to make an SE/40 out of your SE/30.
That is: if you can get the below card from BolleMac at all: he is a hobbyist, not a full time Mac SE/30 upgrade company (:
This was covered in [Wayback/Archive] Exploring the WORLD’S RAREST Macintosh SE/30 Upgrade – YouTube (and some earlier episodes of [Wayback/Archive] The Cursed Macintosh! – YouTube)
The original thread on the [Wayback/Archive] 68kMLA (@68kMLA) forum vanished (which likely has to do with forum software changing the URL scheme, and not as I first thought with [Wayback/Archive] 2023-07-22 Outage Follow-up | 68kMLA – their cloud provider is mentioned at [Wayback/Archive] 2022-11-21 Site Care & Feeding Updates | 68kMLA).
Luckily the Wayback Machine has the first two pages of it:
- [Wayback/Archive] Carrera040 cloning – Hacks & Development – 68kMLA Forums
- [Wayback/Archive] Carrera040 cloning – Page 2 – Hacks & Development – 68kMLA Forums
Intermezzo:
That allowed me search based on the terms, so I could find the new location of the thread pages and archived them. Here are the links:
- [Wayback/Archive] Carrera040 cloning | 68kMLA
- [Wayback/Archive] Carrera040 cloning | Page 2 | 68kMLA
- [Wayback/Archive] Carrera040 cloning | Page 3 | 68kMLA
URLs:
Forum URLs # old URL new URL 1 https://68kmla.org/forums/topic/59379-carrera040-cloning/https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/carrera040-cloning.35551/2 https://68kmla.org/forums/topic/59379-carrera040-cloning/page/2/https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/carrera040-cloning.35551/page-23 https://68kmla.org/forums/topic/59379-carrera040-cloning/page/3/https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/carrera040-cloning.35551/page-3The new forum software lists
Forum software by XenForoin their [Wayback/Archive] https://68kmla.org/bb/webmanifest.phpThe old forum software listed
68kMLA Forumsuntil May 2021 in their [Wayback/Archive] https://68kmla.org/forums/manifest.webmanifest/, so not sure what to make out of that.
Back to BolleMac Carrera040: more comments are at [Wayback/Archive] Macintosh ‘SE/40’ (SE/30+BolleMac Carrera040@40MHz) : VintageApple which started with the pictures below (for larger pictures click on each link; archived images via github as ImgUr hates being archived in the Wayback Machine).
i.imgur.com/t9SVbNq.jpeg
i.imgur.com/eoHMNl7.jpeg
i.imgur.com/SUugPuK.jpeg
i.imgur.com/ACMp6zH.png
i.imgur.com/cHou7zc.png
Heck, even the original Carrera040 information is still on-line (which indicates the Carrera040 from them was never available for a Macintosh SE/30 at all):
- [Wayback/Archive] MicroMac Carrera040 Accelerator
Available for: Macintosh IIci, IIsi, IIcx & IIx
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Get pure Quadra speed and power for your Macintosh IIci, IIsi, IIcx or IIx. With a fast 66/33MHz or 80/40MHz 68040 with or without FPU, the Carrera040 accelerator will increase your performance up to 600% (depending upon your particular Macintosh model). And with the optional 128KB Cache card, an additional 25%!
- [Wayback/Archive] MicroMac 90MHz Carrera040 Accelerator
Available for: Macintosh IIci, IIsi, IIcx & IIx
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Get pure Quadra speed and power for your Macintosh IIci, IIsi, IIcx or IIx. With a fast 90/45MHz 68040 with integrated FPU, the Carrera040 accelerator will increase your Mac’s performance up to 650% (depending upon your particular Macintosh model and system configuration).
- [Wayback/Archive] MicroMac DiiMO 030 Accelerator upgrade speeds up Macintosh II CPUs
Available for:Macintosh II, Macintosh IIci, Macintosh IIvx, Macintosh IIvi, Macitosh IIsi, Macintosh IIcx, Macintosh IIx,
Macintosh SE/30,
Macintosh LCIII,
Performa 450, Performa 600
Performa 520, LC 520…
Awarded as one of MacUser’s top rated accelerators, the DiiMO 030 offers top-level performance with a fast 50MHz 68030 processor, 64KB static RAM cache and zero-wait state technology–performance equivalent to a 25MHz 68040 Macintosh such as the Quadra 610. Enjoy increased productivity in all your work.
Other CPU upgrades
Back in the days there were other CPU upgrades as well. You can find them for instance mentioned in this thread (searching for MicroMac, DiiMO, Daystar, PowerCache, Interware you will find more threads)
- [Wayback/Archive] Interware SE/30 accelerator | TinkerDifferent
- [Wayback/Archive] SE/30 Daystar P33 weirdness | 68kMLA
“Modern” System (Mac OS) versions on a Macintosh SE/30
The SE/30 shipped with System 6. But it can not just upgrade to System 7, but run up to the – back then renamed – Mac OS 8 (the project named Copland which was the original aim for System 8 never got released) up to Mac OS 8.1 with some tricks. This brings you the Apple platinum GUI appearance of which you can still find artefacts in modern macOS.
Yup, ResEdit galore all over the place again!
Steps to install are in [Wayback/Archive] Vintage Apple – Gamba – SE/30 with a IIsi or IIfx ROM
Following are methods for installing OS 7.0.1, 7.1, 7.5.3, 7.5.5, 7.6.1, 8.0, or 8.1 on an SE/30 with a IIsi or IIfx ROM SIMM.
With these ROM SIMMs Mode 32 is not required and should not be installed.
Minimum hardware requirements: 16 MB RAM, 44 MB free space on hard drive.
Macintosh SE/30 and Macintosh Classic
Since I have both:
- [Wayback/Archive] Siblings – Macintosh SE and Mac Classic : VintageApple
- [Wayback/Archive] Apple Macintosh Plus, Classic oder SE, SE/30 – Open market place – VzEkC e. V.
Queries
- [Wayback/Archive] mac se 30 second monitor – Google Suche
- [WaybackSave/Archive] “RGBtoHDMI” “SE/30” – Google Suche
- [WaybackSave/Archive] MicroMac Carrera040 – Google Suche
- [WaybackSave/Archive] BolleMac TwinSpark – Search on Google
- [WaybackSave/Archive] BolleBac Maccon Ethernet – Google View
- [Wayback/Archive] bolle site:https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads – Sök på Google
- [Wayback/Archive] bollemac carrera040 – Search on Google
- [WaybackSave/Archive] Bolle Daystar 68030 50Mhz accelerator – Sök på Google
- [WaybackSave/Archive] BolleMac 50MHz Upgrade – Google Search
- [Wayback/Archive] socketed se 30 powercache 50mhz accelerator site:https://68kmla.org/ – Google Suche
--jeroen
[Wayback/Archive] RGBtoHDMI for my Mac SE/30, how to wire up – YouTube
[Wayback/Archive] New DeclROM booting – YouTube
[Wayback/Archive] Bolle SE/30 Video card demo – YouTube Wow! 256 shades of gray at 512×384!
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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