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Date Posted: 03:49:47 05/03/01 Thu
Author: Alexey Danilchenko
Subject: PowerCC with LCD issues

I'm currently in the middle of replacing CRT in my PowerCC to the LCD. There some issues related to this project and I wanted to warn anyone going to go the same way about all the difficulties as well as ask for advice.

There are basically only four options available:

1) use LCD - VGA interface board - this one is converting analogue VGA signals back to digital.

The main problem here is signal quality and blinking. The signal quality will suffer from converting it to analogue and back again (the video card DAC converts digital signal to analogue CRT signals). And the major factor here will be the price of this analogue board - around 300 USD. So the total cos of the solution LCD+board will be high.

2) use specific graphics card for driving LCD directly (none exists for Mac) - and the cards are pretty expensive too (about 200 USD for the simple one).

3) use standard graphics card with internal LCD connectors (or derive digital signals from graphics card by your own) - they are non standard and may require custom connectors.

This is quite complicated way - there are several cards I know about that might have this kind of connector: nVidia's GeForce, 3dfx's Voodoo and ATI Xclaim 3D Plus. Unfortunately all of them are using different connectors and no pinouts for them is available. So if any of you have any information regarding the pinouts on the internal connectors for these cards - post it here please.

The separate issue here is ATI's new Radeon Mac edition. It does not have any internal connectors but it does have a soldering place dor it - next to the DVI encoder (TDMS transmitter) chip - just behind of the external DVI connector. It might be possible to try to derive those signals and solder the connector in it's place. Again - any information would be appreciated.

4) use a cards with DVI/DFP connectors

The main problem is interfacing to the LCD. NOTE: the graphics card with DFP or DVI output is NOT enough to drive LCD signals. Well as I said above it might be posible to derive those digital signals before they went to DVI encoder chip (which is almost always separate chip). Briefly, DVI and DFP uses TDMS signals (differential serial encoding of digital signals - something like USB or FireWire) to pass a digital signal to external monitor. The problem here is that in order to attach LCD to DVI/DFP - a TDMS receiver/decoder is needed to decode differential signal back to digital. There's only one adapter I've found so far that is capable of doing this job - "http://www.digitalview.com/products/controllers/info2.php?ControllerModel=DVI-1280" but again - it's quite expensive (about 250 british pounds - even more in USD). So the total cost of this solution will be very high - LCD+DVI board+graphics card.

If anyone have any suggestions - please post them - this might help or show another way of doing all this.

Thanks,

Alex

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