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Apple Colorsync - G3/G4 Scan Rate Problem? 7

Posted by Cliff from the might-this-be-a-defect? dept.
whostudios asks: "Last year I bought two Apple Colorsync monitors which both died within 12 months. Both had a broken main delection board, and both were connected to blue and white G3's. Last week I bought myself a Sony G500 21" and in the box I found a special adapter which fixes some kind of a scan rate problem with G3's/G4's. Could this "problem" have something to do with my broken Colorsync monitors? I don't know anything about scan rates, but I read that the wrong scan rate could possibly damage a monitor..."
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Apple Colorsync - G3/G4 Scan Rate Problem? More

Apple Colorsync - G3/G4 Scan Rate Problem?

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  • First of all, why would Apple be unaware of this problem, while Sony has a 'fix'?

    Secondly, almost all CRTs nowadays come with Mac adapters. The plugs are standard 15 pin vga ports (sorry I don't have the more technical term... something with an 's' I think...). I don't know if Macs have different ports, but yeah, I'm pretty sure they do something differently in terms of scanrates. I assume that monitors that Apple sells will not work on a PC without an adapter (if at all).

    Bottom line, Apple monitors are made for Apple computers. Other monitors are made for other computers, and come with Mac adapters.

    If there is some incompatibility between Apple computers and Apple monitors, somebody dropped the ball...
  • The Apple Colorsync monitor line was the last series of Apple monitors which had the "old" monitor plug. When the g3 was introduced, so was the Apple Studio Display line, which all had normal pc-like plugs. So in a way, the Colorsync line wasn't designed for the g3/g4.

    I just can't believe that two monitors die so soon with the same defects...
  • Well, I'm sitting in front of a G3 on a Saturday morning editing some poxy SGML files, for a poxier multimedia product; and the G3 has a regular 17 inch SVGA "PC" monitor plugged straight in. No adaptors whatsoever.

    The beige PC screen does sort of ruin the blue-and-white effect, although I didn't buy it.

  • Macs, monitors, scan-rates, ColorSync and electricity:

    Apple used to use a different pinout for it's monitors plus they had the H-sync on Green. Therefore one could not simply change the pin-out of the cables but also had to do some funky signal processing which is what those little Mac-to-VGA boxes do. Making it even more complex Macs are built to autodetect information from the monitor which is why those little boxxen usually had a dozen switches or a wheel or whatever so you set it to tell your Mac the appropriate information. This is probably what you found in your monitor box and it was unneeded if you had a current generation Macintosh.

    For the past few years Apple has slowly been moving away from it's non-standard material and now uses the usual VGA connectors except for it's new Cube and the latest round of flatscreens (which use a brand new connector pretty much limited to Apple.) The mice and keyboard are all USB and follow the HID standard, the drives are IDE, the bus is PCI and there's an AGP slot - in short they're pretty generic hardware these days with just a custom chip set, built in sound & networking & of course a PowerPC CPU.

    Similarly the video cards are pretty much stock ATI's, nothing funky, nothing bizarre. They drive the monitor like any other card and there's no special Mac frequencies that aren't pretty much universally supported. The Apple monitors are high-quality Sonys and aside from being a (suprisingly) pretty good value for their quality there's nothing unique about them. You can plug in any VGA monitor and expect good service out of it. One thing that often does confuse folks is that the MacOS has a different default Gamma setting then other OS's and therefore without correction images can appear darker/lighter when compared.

    Lastly ColorSync is just a color-matching technology. If you calibrate it carefully a color will show up the same on other properly calibrated ColorSync monitors. If you use the proper profiles for your printer / film output / whatever you can expect very good color conversion & matching there too. There's nothing electrically unusual about ColorSync, no strange settings or off-frequency stuff happening.

    Basically what I'm saying is there's nothing inherently different about Macs or their monitors these days.

    What you might want to consider is your electrical service: Get one of those US$5.00 testers from the hardware store and make sure your polarity is correct and your ground is good. Figure out what else is on your circuit and consider the effects other devices might have on eachother. If you're plugged in on the same circuit as an old laserprinter (5 min heavy-draw reheat cycle) or other such device you might well be seriously shortening your monitor's lifespan (as well as damaging your computer's power supply, hard-drive, and even some video cards.) You would do well to consider isolating your relatively expensive computer hardware from 'noisy' devices like those involving electrical motors, radio transmitters, or heavy-draw devices like large appliances.

  • Well, something tells me Apple monitors are pretty much just the same as any other monitor these days... what was it... oh yeah! Perhaps the fact that I'm sitting in front of a Studio Display plugged into my x86 linux box, and it's been working perfectly for several months now. I've also seen many G3/G4's plugged into plain old VGA monitors without a problem.
  • The new Apple Display Connector is quasi-proprietary. It bears many similarities to the ANSI digital video connector, but adds five pins (the X-shape on one side of it) for carrying analog signals. Do the math and you'll notice that Apple is back to using sync-on-green. But that only matters if you use the analog, the other pins seem to match the ANSI spec. An adapter is still needed because the shape of the connectors is different, and of course the sync-on-green nastiness for analog; but the switches and dials are (hopefully) a thing of the past since it uses DDC.

    Question: Is the DDC in the new ANSI spec compatible with the DDC in current VGA monitors?
  • I bought an AppleVision 1710 back in the fall of '97 with my Apple Dev Discount ($660 for the monitor). It started going pink and green and flashing on me within a few weeks. I got it replaced with another 1710. Same damn thing with a month. I got it replaced with another 1710. (BTW, both of the replacements were *not* new monitors. They were refurbs which really fscking pissed me off. My bran new monitor blows and they send me a "repaired" version?!) That replacement monitor had visible damage to it's case (scratches, dings, looked like it had been pried open with a screw driver, etc...). I called and raked them over the coals with an axe. 4 months later they finally agreed to replace it. By this time the Colorsync series came to the market. They are exactly the same monitors. The Colorsync series has a different emblem and a minor change on the rear of the case. That is it! Most of the part numbers for the two are the same! They wanted to replace my AppleVision 1710 with a 1705 which had a smaller viewable, worse resolution, and costed half the price of the one I bought. 3 guess on where I told them to go. They finally gave in and gave me a Colorsync 17 (which is the working version of what I originally bought!). With each replacement they boosted my warranty by a year. That monitor last a year and 3 months before it started doing the same damn things. I called. They refused to honor my warranty. I called a lawyer; we contacted the BBB since I really couldn't afford court costs. I haven't heard anything since.

    For the record as a former Apple Tech, I can tell you with every shred of fact possible, that of 3 Apple Authorized Apple Service Center's I've been associated with, not one ever successfully made repairs Apple insisted on doing to repair one of those fscked monitors. They required us to tear is apart and replace the main deflection board ourselves (occasionally a few other parts). I did this repair many, many times and not once have I ever seen or heard about it working. After we made the defunct repair, we had to call Apple to order a certified box to ship it back in. Frequently those boxes were back ordered. Try explaining that to a customer. Joy. After a few weeks after we sent it to them, they would possibly send it back. Not always, just possibly. Occasionally they said it was fscked and to have the customer call customer service and that we couldn't help them anymore. Bastards. Now don't get me wrong, I love Apple. I love the hardware (most of it--laserprinters, some monitors, the new machines, and the good PCI powermacs especially) but when it hits home like this, I really get pissed off. Like I said, I can relate.

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