The Mac Plus had modern multi monitor support in 1986 and I got it working!

In 2023, many people use two or more monitors on their computer to increase productivity. It is generally thought that Apple introduced this capability to personal computers back in 1987 with the release of the Mac II. It appears that someone else beat them to the punch with a way to do it on the non-expandable Macintosh Plus, and I got it working again.
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Mac 512k internal hard drive:
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32x32 Article about the Radius FPD:
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Radius Full Page Display specs:
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PicoRC (PicoATX PSU for the Mac SE and other vintage machines)
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--- Instructional videos
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--- Music
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[@bthjf12003]

Much of the original Mac ROM and the display subroutine were written by Andy Hertzfeld who left Apple and founded Radius in 1986. Radius did a lot of work for Apple on the Mac II and SE.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Ah well that really explains things a lot then!

[@Toonrick12]

Why reverse engineer when you can just do it fowards?

[@GeomancerHT]

@@Toonrick12 Why reverse engineer when you can just.. be THE engineer :D

[@Toonrick12]

​@@GeomancerHTThat's what I said.

[@bob2600]

The 😅😅😅😮😅😮😮😮witrattyyyyyyy

[@gklinger]

The opening appeared to be Adrian's Digital Upstairs... :)

[@RealGengarTV]

Adrian's analoge livingroom

[@retroattic4647]

In 1992 while working for a government contractor, as an intern, I scored a Mac II FX filled it with new bus cards and had an Apple two-page display black and white, two 13-in Apple displays on top of that, and two 17-in color displays on either side. Five monitors on a McIntosh in 1991. Every senior person in the office had me hooking up dual and triple monitors to their Macs after that.

[@lhpl]

Did you also use the screen extending extension MaxAppleView, that would extend the screen area from 640x480 to 705x500 or something when using the original Apple color graphics cards? Not quite the 800x600? or 1024x768? of the 17" display, but great on the good old Sony Trinitron socalled 13" RGB display. What a great display that was, just as its later, larger "brother", the 17" Trinitron.

[@pizzablender]

@@lhpl I remember Apple dit some really poor screens after that Trinitron. Oh man...

[@lhpl]

@@pizzablender the cheapo "Performa+ Display" (I think that was its name) 13" wasn't great for sure. The 17" (MultiScan?) was also a good Trinitron.

[@tedthrasher9433]

At $4,000 in 1986, that’s the equivalent of an $11,000 upgrade! I interned at a well funded research lab in 1990 that had Mac IIfx’s, but none of them were equipped in a multi monitor configuration. This is really amazing to see on a Mac Plus!

[@tt2468]

Hi Adrian, long time viewer - love the videos! In the "Edit Transform" dialog (CTRL + E) of your capture source on that scene in OBS, set `Bounding Box Type` to `Scale to inner bounds`. That'll scale to the size of your space no matter what res or aspect ratio you're using. Sincerely, an OBS developer.

[@kbhasi]

🤯

[@Gunger-H-Gunter]

thank you computer saint

[@Gannett2011]

Your joy at getting this to work is infectious. So pleased this worked out for you.

[@maxtornogood]

It's about the happiest I've seen him getting something working on the channel!

[@fred_derf]

The capability to handle multiple monitors was baked into the Mac from the beginning. The screen was defined as a quickdraw object, so it could be any shape you could make with quickdraw shapes. You could, for example, define the screen to be a circle, or half a circle, or a square and half a circle. If I remember correctly, the Mac screen was actually defined as a rectangle with rounded corners. So putting two rectangles together for a two display system was simplicity itself. The big obstacle Radius faced wasn't getting the OS (and apps) to work with multiple displays it was getting the hardware to support a second monitor. Also note, most applications worked with the Radius display just fine, the problem apps were ones that didn't follow the Apple guidelines -- most were soon updated and by the time the Mac II and "official" multi-monitor support came out there were basically no software issues.

[@8BitNaptime]

So was the PC with its various memory spaces for different cards.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@8BitNaptime Not quite the same thing. The PC let you put whatever you want in any free memory or IO region - be it video, sound, network, or whatever you can think of. This would be more like Windows 3.x supporting multiple monitors. It’s the foresight in the hardware abstraction layer that makes it unique.

[@pawanyr360]

I wonder why Apple CloseView didn't work with it (as called out in the ReadMe). I presume the magnification effect probably worked on the graphics on a fairly low level and just didn't know how to deal with the card.

[@CaptainSwag101]

Ohhhh, I always wondered, when looking at a classic Mac's video output on a flat-panel display, why it had rounded corners! That would explain it, though I wonder why they did it that way?

[@fred_derf]

@@CaptainSwag101, writes _"That would explain it, though I wonder why they did it that way?"_ The display was shaped to match the bezels on the Mac. As a bonus, the corners are the easiest place to see any geometry or focus issues so Apple was able to "hide" any such imperfections in their displays.

[@rigues]

Radius was founded by the hardware designer of the original Macintosh, Burrell Smith, later joined by other talents like one of the original software developers, Andy Hertzfeld. That's why their products were so amazing.

[@Toonrick12]

It also explains how they were able to do such magical things with the Macintosh platform without Apple sueing them.

[@Lanceawright]

Mike Boich too!

[@frustro4323]

Before I subscribed and binged your content, this is the reason why I started watching. this is the Happiness, The Joy the Experimentation....everything this... this is what... this is beautiful. I've missed you.

[@techsaverscomputerrepairca2127]

I knew a guy who bought the Radius. I bought his Mac Plus ROMs from him and plugged them into my Spectre cart on my Atari ST, giving me Mac compatibility on my ST. I had a 4Mb expansion card, 4096 color mod, 16MHz 68000 upgrade, stereo mod, and 20Mb hard drive. I could also run MS-DOS on my ST, and had a switchbox so I could toggle between color and monochrome monitors. Stuff for the ST was actually kind of cheap, so I actually did most of this for less than the cost of a Mac at the time. Loved that system, but eventually had to ditch it all when Win95 came out and I needed Internet access.

[@dickdewit8433]

In those times I was working for a distributor of mac related pheripherals, and we had different options for a second monitor, Radius, and Supermac, specially made for desktop publishing mainly, but there were more brands I forgot. Best regards from The Netherlands

[@dh2032]

I remember the Supermac, branding, the place I worked one, from a point of now looking back at it the Supermac stick was on a big CRT monitor a big 20+ inches, most people would been happy the main room TV was that big, and seemed connect from bunch of BNC connectors to, what, I much later would described graphic card, in card slot on some mac standard, in the big box Macintosh IIxx or something like that naming layout at the time it was the only mac that full colour screen, and apart seeing picture, and you graphic/text in colour, it little thing to, like you change the colour of your desktop folder icons?

[@lhpl]

​@@dh2032The original "labels" were 8 colors you could apply to any file or folder, which was handy. With system 7 came the very well designed color icons (which you were supposed to design in families, so that they would work and look good and recognisable in b&w, grayscale, indexed color and full 24 bit color, in small 16x16 and large 32x32 pix formats. At that point (or could be v. 7.1 or 7.5), you could also paste a custom icon onto any file or folder.

[@slightlyevolved]

​@@lhplI'm pretty sure custom icons were in 7.0. At least, I know it was in 7.0.4p that shipped on my Performa 400.

[@Peter_S_]

I remember upgrading the EPROMs on a couple of those for customers but the two pieces that really stuck in my head were the installation steps of threading the monitor cable through the security slot, and using needle nose pliers to attach those two little springs being used as jumpers to the motherboard.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

That's cool! So I guess that was by the time they had an install kit that could be installed by a 3rd party versus Radius?

[@Peter_S_]

@@adriansdigitalbasement In the 1990ish timeframe I remember a sort of a "clamp on top" socket on the bottom of the Radius board made from the same green plastic as the VRAM and CPU sockets on your board which would push over the top of the soldered CPU and come to rest against the motherboard. It was a bear to get on the first time and it never struck me as a good mechanical connection. Then you needed to attach the two springs. We were the official Radius shop (and the official Apple V.A.R.) for San Francisco, but we didn't do any board level soldering and Apple would have had our hides if we were retrofitting boards with a soldering iron.

[@alls0p69]

We had a setup like this at my rural Indiana Junior High School around 1992 using the same setup. It was replaced during my second year with an updated (still Mac) version. I am unsure if it was the Radius, though (memory fades).. It was in a teacher resource room (away from students), but I had an in with our Librarian and she let me use it a few times after regular school hours. This IS what sealed the deal for me on having multiple monitors.... I had my own dual monitors by 1998 (PC), and I have four now. I will never go back!!! Thanks Adrian!

[@RetroGamingWithEdgarRivera]

Wow that's amazing. I never thought that the older Macintosh all in one models like the Macintosh Plus have the ability to display a second image let alone with a special multivideo card like the Radius Display. That's freaking cool and honestly way ahead of it's time.

[@Peter_S_]

The funny thing is that the enabling technology of the GrafPort behind the scenes of these multi-monitor setups predates the Macintosh, from when QuickDraw was called LisaGraf.

[@cesareferrari8056]

I had a Radius display as a second monitor on my Mac IIcx - it was the rotating Radius monitor with 16 greyscale support. I believe you could upgrade the ram to 256 greys but I didn't do this. I used it with Emagic Logic for viewing and editing music scores (midi back then). It was awesome. Nice to be reminded of this tech!

[@ReinMixTape]

You looked genuinely happy like a excited kid. Happy memories of childhood and relatives are special. You did a great job making that work.

[@ultraviolettp3446]

You are a great asset to the tech world. Sometimes vintage machines have a "thing about them" that cannot be matched by modern hardware. You are excellent and keep up the great work!

[@bradlaue7433]

I had a Macintosh SE back in the day and had added a second display to it through the use of a "ScuzzyGraph II" by Aura systems. It plugged into the SCSI port and a system extension sent QuickDraw commands to the unit. Performance was sufficient for word processing and other tasks the Mac SE was capable of, though a bit slower than the onboard display - hard to notice though. The performance differential became more apparent when I had gotten a Mac LC II and set it up on there as a lark. External video was a LOT slower than the new video hardware on the LC. Still a neat piece of history. Let me add a second display to my Mac SE without even having to use the PDS slot.

[@mistermac56]

At the planetarium I worked at in the late 80's, early 90's, we had a Mac Plus and Radius portrait display and used Aldus Pagemaker to do our star chars and flyers. It was fantastic.

[@MattPlachecki]

I think I was nearly as excited as you were when I saw that that gray screen with the radius splash screen!

[@drumcorpshistory]

I remember Radius, they were doing some exciting things back then-like LGR's Radius Pivot monitor that has that special card and monitor with that mercury switch that would auto-rotate the screen based on the position of the monitor, as long as the software supported it.

[@volvo09]

I'm not surprised that it was radius who made this product, especially with how pupular macintosh computers were in publishing. Very cool!

[@mrkrsl_]

It was probably around 1989, but my first Macintosh experience was this exact compact Mac/vertical monitor dual display setup. I would have been around 14. My dad was a printer and one summer holiday he arranged a week’s work experience for me at his printing firm. Most of the week was spent shadowing the guys working the huge Heidelberg presses, but on the Friday I got plonked in front of the Mac in their small office and was left on my own. It ran some kind of DTP software and I remember mocking-up a newspaper front page with some disparaging headline about the company. I don’t remember what model Macintosh it was, but it was 100% this setup. The external monitor was on the right, the way you had it. Since it was one of my earliest computing experiences, I didn’t think it was unusual at all, but it was very cool and it got me started on a thirty+ year Macintosh journey. Thanks for sharing this. You definitely need to source one of those vertical monitors.

[@der.Schtefan]

The thing I admire the most from you is your seemingly unlimited patience, persistence, and perseverance. So many times I watch your videos and think "I would have given up a long time ago", but your attitude is amazing. I must say that it makes me persist through many debugging sessions where I have to find problems with somebody's code or system, knowing that you would also not just give up.

[@themacshack5571]

Finally a video with more information about this. Ive been trying to get my plus to display on a second monitor for a while.

[@Nerd3927]

Excellent work and a joy to watch! Very successful Digital archeology this was.

[@Dukefazon]

I love it that you take us through all the processes and all the discoveries, faults and happy moments as well. When something turns out to be working I too feel the satisfaction and joy of your work :)

[@jonathanwhiteside6092]

I love the joy you find in projects like this, it's infectious :) Really interesting video.

[@CarlosOsuna1970]

As a previous commenter mentioned, this was possible due to a deep understanding of the Mac and its internals. When Jobs left Apple two bands formed. 1) those that thought that the Mac API were perfect and the monolith architecture just needed extension hardware to move forward. 2) those that thought the Macintosh model was doomed and things needed to start from scratch to form a real modern system. The first camp split in two as the base team left Apple to form extension hardware for the nascent graphical and desktop publishing area. One such company wax Radius which also offered “the Pivot” which was a monitor that switched from portrait to landscape. The other camp created the Mac II which was workstation class but never really had an OS to match. The start from scratch camp joined Jobs and created NeXT, which tried to be better than the Macintosh II and the SUNstations and Silicon Graphics but failed when these last two switched to RISC.

[@HolgerT]

That’s really cool, as exactly that configuration MacPlus, Radius video card and a Radius Portrait Monitor was my first ever work computer when I started to work as a Technical Writer in 1990. We ran RagTime and Canvas on it and had a shared Apple Laser printer via AppleTalk. Worked pretty well.

[@tjs114]

I remember installing those miserable bleeps when I worked at a DOE lab located in Northern California. They were a royal pain to do, so of course every secretary needed one. There were dozens of clip on expansion boards for the Plus series; but I was so happy when the SE came out with the port. I was on a first name basis with about a dozen people at Radius because we had so many of their products installed. The head of Radius knew the Mac video ROM forward and backward since he wrote most of the code. We were the beta tester for the Radius Pivot- we might have even initiated the creation because secretaries really wanted to work in Portrait to type documents, but go widescreen for spreadsheets.

[@joeventura1]

That screen and Aldus Pagemaker would let you conquer the world!

[@Manawyrm]

Oh, this was an awesome journey! Soo many times I was thinking things like: „Oh, you should open an IDE on that“ and next thing you do is exactly that 😊 Super fun video, maybe even one of the best you‘ve uploaded so far. Thank you!

[@chadhartsees]

Wow this is crazy sophisticated. I wish I had simple controls like that for Windows 10 multiple screens! Amazing level of refinement.

[@shanemonsees4798]

It’s really cool to see this. My best friends mom was a lawyer and had a setup like this in her home office. It was always so cool to see 2 screens on her desktop. We weren’t allowed to play on her computer though :)

[@The1RandomFool]

This is amazing for the time. There couldn't have been very many people using this setup.

This is so nerdy, I love it. I really enjoyed watching this video, coming from working on Macs from 1990. I remember going to my friends house in 1985 and messing around on the computer that you are working on or the version before it. It was a revolutionary appliance, like our first microwave.

[@DiazFelix]

Fantastic video Adrian

[@WesleyNixon]

This is ActionRetro level shenanigans and I love it!

[@XLessThanZ]

Innovation is amazing! I remember seeing the portrait monitor in the Mac periodicals of those days. That was such an awesome innovation. Now days we can wear headsets and have as many monitors as we want 🤣. "How times have changed", as they say 👍🏽

[@pweddy1]

I remember seeing this setup at a local computer shop when I was in college. I thought these were one of the coolest things I ever saw using a all in one style Mac.

[@1BitFeverDreams]

Really cool episode. I'm one of those careful weirdos who build things in doubles most of the time so I could have deal with this with my 2 RGBtoHDMIs too. Your electronics insight about the 5V sense pin puts you in the next level - that would have been a stone wall for me.

[@aijcadd]

That is very cool and rare computer technology. You will be a resource of old computer technology a hundred years from now !

[@michaelsmall6914]

Back in late 80's a mate had an enhanced 512, with this card and monitor. It was soooo cool, though compared to my Plus(w/4MB) it was also very clunky and slow. Was wonderful to watch you bring back something obscure from my past back to life. Thank you!

[@terrancevanliew1814]

This monitor was a feature on an episode of computer chronicles. I remember both Stewart and Gary being mesmorized by the simple moving of a cursor between both screens. The monitor's size and shape was also said to be based on that of standard copy paper. To make previewing pages easier.

[@derekchristenson5711]

I remember when I was a Cub Scout, a fellow scout's mom ran a desktop publishing business of some kind from their house, using either that setup or one very much like it. I remember that the secondary monitor seemed HUGE at the time, although it's probably laughably small (screen-size, I mean) compared to popular sizes for modern LCD panels. She had "fancy" professional publishing software and a laser printer (the first I'd ever seen) loaded with glossy paper. She made simple signs for us at our request one day, and it felt like getting your own, personalized magazine page. Now, they were super-duper plain and boring compared to what you could do with free software and a nice sheet of glossy paper in a much, much cheaper modern printer today, but they were light-years away from what most of us could do at home or even at school at the time.

[@FunnyE-mailAddressNotProEnough]

Wow, it's so interesting to see a direct capture from a computer which, through my lifetime up until now, I was never aware had any capability of outputting to a capture/recording device! And it's also interesting to watch that style of floppy disk drive -- a Zip drive -- get used on one of those earliest Macs. Especially booting _from_ one!

[@futuristicentity2417]

I remember when I was in Elementary School they used Mac computers similar to this one except the monitor was more transparent and SUPPOSED to look kid friendly still wish I could be an Elementary kid I hate how fast time flies being older now I'm 30 this is like a time capsule to me thanks for uploading!

[@crabdonkey6381]

We had a Radius full page on a !! CI but as you said that was pretty ordinary by that time.

[@PixelPipes]

This really blows my mind. I mean this is literally what we think of as modern multi-monitor support. This is probably the most impressed I've ever been with a Macintosh Plus!

[@offperception]

While I didn't grow up with Macs, I always love learning about them from you. Love your enthusiasm!

[@tramadol42]

Another flashback thanks to Adrian, I love this channel for that. 🥰 I remember using a Mac with this additional screen for our school newspaper in '88.

[@PatrickDunn13078]

We used a Radius monitor hooked up to a MacSE at my office in the mid-90's. We used Ready, Set, Go to create and publish the association newsletter. Once we had it set there and since RSG ran off of floppy we would go to a copy place that had macs and laser printers to do final tweaking and printing of the final copy. This copy would be taken to our printer to print and bind. The monitor really helped in layout and minimize the amount of tweaking we had to do. We also used a couple of accelerator cards (020 and 030) in a plus and SE to speed those up too. Not to mention the Appletalk network that we ran throughout the office. It really was ahead of its time and made us super productive for an extremely small staff. Nice trip down the memory lane.

[@somefreshbread]

I am constantly floored at the depth of knowledge Adrian and other members of the community have about this kind of stuff. It's absolutely wild that you can just output direct HDMI video from a standalone Mac Plus motherboard. And that's not even the most impressive part of any of this.

[@dennisud]

OMG, I had that SAME set up not only with the IIci with a huge 21" monochrome monitor, but with an SE-30 with the additional portrait monitor. I was lucky enough to scrounge the main warehouse of my school district and cobbled together a computer station with a mix of Apple-IIs, 2 Mac SE's, an SE--30, and a Mac II'ci. As I teach Social Science, I had the classic "Oregon & Amazon Trial" games with a few others that I used frequently. We actually had tournaments in my classes to earn extra grades! That was before The District contracted for a network with Dell Computers! Such a sad day they took away my Macs, including mine! ☹

[@madmax2069]

6:23 seen quite a few of those portrait monitors at schools, really takes me back. Never seen one hooked up to a Mac plus, they was always hooked up to a different machine and was the only monitor.

[@mmarreri]

The 1981 IBM PC could use 2 monitors at the same time, but... required 2 video cards: one had to be MDA monochrome and the other had to be CGA color. DOS supported switching with mode co80 and mode mono. Older computers were also capable of multiple displays, using terminals.

[@richardwernst]

He mentioned this but it's not the same as being able to drag/move windows between the monitors.

[@KC9UDX]

The Amiga won't let you drag windows between screens either; but I never actually found that useful. Like dragging windows off the border, it's an annoying feature that only windows users can appreciate.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@KC9UDX Uh … what? Dragging windows between multiple screens is useless and annoying? What do all those “non-Windows” users do with multiple monitors then? Just appreciate the wallpaper?

[@KC9UDX]

@@nickwallette6201 No, we run appropriate applications on appropriate screens. It's not just a jumbled mess of windows and icons like Windows (and most Linux installations) limit you to.

[@kgchrome]

there was no desktop on the PC, so not really a fair comparison. i used the mono for coding and the colour for running code. did exactly what was advertised on the box. @@richardwernst

[@the_kombinator]

I got a VGA and an MDA working on a 286-8 from 1985 ;) They were independent, to be clear, but you could output data to both of them at once.

[@RobertLiesenfeld]

Super cool video, awesome work sleuthing out the video signals! I really really love how genuinely excited you get when you’re working with vintage gear like this and start to approach a solution, it reminds me of how excited I was about computers in the 80s and 90s. Those power supply and video kit projects you mentioned are really neat too! Love the video, keep ‘em coming!

[@Dex99SS]

My first computer was a VERY kitted out Mac Plus... which as a mid 80s baby, by the time I had it in the early 90s, it was a little long in the tooth. As at school we had LC's, LCII, III's, etc... But, I was able to utilize SO much of the LC software, and my own, back and forth... that it really gave me an appreciation for the early apple / mac ecosystem. I enjoyed the heck out of it really, and my dad was the one who made it all possible... as at the time he did his own painting and remodeling thing, and being that I was into electronics and computers, he (unbeknownst to me) took on a job where a good portion of the payment was in trade, and that trade was the Mac Plus, external SCSI HDD, multiple external apple FDD's, and just boxes and boxes and boxes (all og boxes no less) of software. And I mean original apple hardware boxes for the computer, the image writer (original, later got an image writer II from school due to friendly relationships with staff), the HDD, and all of the other hardware accessories... as well as all of the hundreds of original boxes for the, well, basically every single piece of software ever written for the early Mac ecosystem. The guy my dad did the job for, who traded the computer and software for the work, he was some inventor.. who held patents for the original miracle ear, some derivative of space food, laser blocking license plate covers so laser speed detectors couldn't see you... and a bunch more. And he used the mac plus it seems, to develop a lot of this stuff. From cad titles, to print and design, to software development, to games.... as all these types did for sure enjoy a good computer game back then, and there were cases of disks that were nothing but. But all of the spiral bound books for the hardware and software alone would bring a fortune today. And of course, not seeing what it was worth, and after getting my first "actual computer" in 97 (Packard Bell 233MMX), I actually did the unthinkable and gave it all away. Ever since I've been piecing back together bits and pieces of tech I had as a kid... but the mac plus still eludes me. They are often around, with saved searches and listings, even locally, usually being a thing that exists... but I've honestly found it easier to just grab all of the other items in whatever condition they happen to be in, fixing them up, stowing them away... stockpiling my old tech collection. But the mac plus... every one that I see for sale, they all fall short somehow. This one that I had, it was so complete... I just know that I'll never have that again. So I just never pull the trigger, and haven't even tried. BUT... seeing this... man. I didn't have any idea this was even possible! All of the things I'd done with mine over the years, and all of the hardware I had... but I NEVER knew it could do this!

[@LarryRobinsonintothefog]

It's freaky to see a 1986 computer do the multi-screen thing that you can do today on Facebook or on a Chromebook.

[@iteachtime]

Gosh, that was exciting and incredible!! Thanks so much for this wonderful channel. Makes my life better!

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@sohowcome]

I also had a Mac 512k with a internal hard drive. I unfortunately do not have it anymore, I've been on the search ever since. Great video, btw.

[@anthonyblacker8471]

That is pretty darn amazing Adrian. Wow. I remember in '86 I was happy to have a single 4 color CGA monitor. I wasn't a Mac guy, please don't be mad, my mom ran Unisys at work (I think that was in 86 or so, Unix system before Linux came around) and we had an IBM clone at home, an XT back then.. man this is absolutely amazing!!

[@flounder31]

This is some Grand High Nerdery, Adrian. Great work, getting it going with that bodged setup!

[@JDW-]

Even more amazing is the fact that the Radius FPD was designed to work on the Mac 512Ke too, which has half the RAM of your Plus!

[@techsaverscomputerrepairca2127]

I liked the beginning of this episode...it reminded me of the opening scene from a Computer Chronicles episode from PBS. Plus we got to see another part of your house outside of the basement!

[@insanelydigitalvids]

Very much enjoyed this video, Adrian -- including your never-ending effervescence for this seminal tech. It also speaks volumes about how forward-thinking the original Mac team were. Andy Herzfeld (Mac OS) and Burrel Smith (Mac hardware) not only founded Radius to realise the full potential of the Mac's system software, but Andy and Bill Atkinson (Mac graphics guru and MacPaint author) also founded General Magic, the very first "iPhone"-like PDA.

[@koztech]

Crazy hacks and mods like these (display adapters, internal hard drives, better cooling, etc.) lead to the first example of what would eventually be known as a "Hackintosh". Basically, putting the guts of a Mac into PC cases so they had the room to utilize mods and upgrades to add hard drives, extra internal floppy drives, video upgrades, CPU upgrades, etc. There were books that showed how to do some of these types of mods, but I'm having a hard time trying to remember any of the titles... I think one was something like "Building your own Macintosh"? The early days of personal computing were definitely crazy times! I remember doing something like this in maybe 2001/2002 using an old beige ATX case I had, a G4 logic board, CPU, and a Mac AGP video card from eBay, and some spare RAM, DVD Drive, and hard drive I had laying around.

[@tony359]

What is totally normal and boring in 2023 was Sci-Fi in 1986! Thanks for showing us the set!

[@more.power.]

Well done Adrian we would of been blown away to have two working monitors back in the 1980s. Thank you

[@andrewsavage3356]

Man, I love how PUMPED you get when things freakin' work!

[@spencerdavies4666]

Titan Design developed their Reflex graphics card for the Atari ST which allowed a dual display, but that was in the late eighties.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Very exciting! And your excitement made me more excited! Well done!!

[@TheSulross]

Mac Plus was first computer that got paid to write software for. I was assigned task of creating a kiosk interface to control a laser photo plotter for printing PCBs from gerber files. In 1986 I created a desktop UI for the Mac that looked very much like Windows 95 desktop - Start menu in bottom left corner that sprouted a heirachical menu system - nearly a decade before MS did similar with Windows. The point being is that all these crucial data structures were accessible and could be morphed to create a desktop experience radically different from the stock Apple desktop. The 80s was just a really cool time to be technically involved in the computer industry.

[@Damien_Hu]

PiSCSI (the former RaSCSI) has a branch for the radius PowerView emulation. It enables a RaspberryPi with the PiSCSI HAT (Zero or 4) to use its internal framebuffer to act as a second graphics card, with output to HDMI0. It's quite slow due to the narrow 8-bit data bus of the narrow SCSI interface, so any color/gray depth above 8-bit is going to cause significant slowdowns. But it's a great option for anyone with a compact Mac to add a second, modern HDMI display ;)

[@nobuckle40]

I love how excited you get when something works. Like a little kid on Christmas. That is really cool when you consider the day and age.

[@Applecompuser]

Enjoy your vides. Thanks for making them and posting.

[@Zwiesel66]

It is really exciting to see this card working again after so many years. Your enthusiasm is contagious 😄 27:45 I think the slider has something to do with speed, because of the symbols (rabbit and turtle), maybe the monitor's refresh rate.

[@NaoPb]

This is much cooler than I imagined it would be before watching the video.

[@tvtoms]

I do recall those print ads for that dual monitor system. Meanwhile the commercial photo lab I worked at relied on TRS-80's for critical tasks. Mac stuff was like a dream.

[@MyChannel-vm6dw]

My god this channel is such a gem. Ty Adrian.

[@diegoknyte]

Nice work. Love how the radius window has that fancy corner-flair.

[@femboichik]

That's definetly a "IT FREAKIN WORKS!!!!" moment! So wholesome!

[@EmperorKonstantine01]

I worked in a Apple Computer Store Back in the 80's and this was primarily used for Demo Display in the Shop I was working, the advantages were for desktop Publishing but not many people took advantage of the dual display because of additional hardware cost that came with it, so it was a hard sell for customers at that time when IBM machines were taking over and making a killing. However this products design was ahead of its time but lacking productivity and efficiency.

[@BrotherAlan]

I wanted one of those for my Mac Plus so bad. Radius rocked!

[@stevemcknelly5036]

I love when Adrian gets excited, it so infectiously happy!

[@Lanceawright]

Installing that card was a challenge. I worked for Radius from 92-97 in tech support, and we were challenged when Apple would make changes to the OS, and we needed to adapt quickly to avoid people calling in...

[@florianwagner7279]

Well done 👍 Amazing to see a 2 screen mac system from 1986 - I was 15 that time an inspired by my Atari 800 XL that time and saving up money fro the ST..

[@mmuww]

This was awesome to see in action!!! Thank you for demonstrating this ability, pretty sweet indeed

[@kjtroj]

Radius did a lot of really cool stuff back in that era. As I recall, they heavily catered to the desktop publishing market.

[@AreHan1991]

Thanx for an entertaining time trip. Love your enthusiasm!

[@frankiii9165]

The very true nature of these machines, is that you can use the palettes (being normal window palettes or detachable pull-down menus) on the internal monitor and then use the large monitor for your document page. That's how my teacher at my local trade school told me how they worked back in the day. Though I never thought those "non expandable" machines were actually expandable. Nothing is impossible if you fully know what you're working on. That's even more awesome in the SE/30 because as lots of you know already, you can have a color system. And that's why those monitors are named like this (full page, two page, etc), because that's absolutely thought for Graphic Arts businesses. Radius was like hardware demosceners in the 80s. I have a Radius Full Page Display that came with my SE/30 (the original owner was a newspaper) and I would like to experience that, really. That PSU project is freaking awesome too.

[@jimbrothers1883]

We had a similar model in 1990 for brochure editing. Nice system, super-fast and error free. Although, when we moved to page-condensing, the whole system would sometimes freeze. We'd lose a lot of work and have to start over. That did happen a lot.

[@saurabhgupta1402]

Holy moly moly..... I can't believe you have this working

[@NJRoadfan]

Quickdraw was written without a set screen size in mind. A properly written early application should be able to use larger screen sizes. A good example is MicroSoft Multiplan. Despite being developed only for compact Macs, I was surprised that the default spreadsheet window sized itself to fit the entire 640x400 screen on my Portable.

[@fleecystheking]

My parents had a Mac 128k in 1984; they had it upgraded to a 512k motherboard by Apple in 1986, then to a Mac Plus when that became possible. They also had a MegaScreen monitor hooked up to it! I never realized how much money all that cost them back then. Whew!

[@mheermance]

I had one of those monitors and it was awesome for that era!

[@dwincraig5350]

I used to work at a computer store in the 1980's called Mac Corner in Gaithersburg Maryland where we installed this upgrade for both the Mac Plus and the Mac SE.

[@UpLateGeek]

That's so cool! It really is surprising how fully featured this little card is, considering how few chips it has, and only two extra ROMs. I hope you or someone from the community can find the updated ROMs so you can fix those bugs. It would be awesome if you could fit this and an accelerator upgrade in as well, but I doubt there would be room for one on top of the other inside the case (at least without some major dremel action).

[@chuckbenedict7235]

Some of you best content yet!