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

[@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

[@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!

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@MattPlachecki]

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

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@AnthonyRBlacker]

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!!

[@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.

[@drumcorpsmediaarchive]

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.

[@offperception]

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

[@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.

[@aijcadd]

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

[@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!

[@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.

[@diegoknyte]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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!

[@robertgruen2088]

Back in the '90s common Windows X86 computers could do a second monitor, but to your point they were not graphical, only raster. I set up a second monitor on my boss's computer that would run under Borland's C++ development environment that allowed him to see debug information real time while developing Windows code. It was just a raster system and we had an extra monitor lying around so I bodged it up for him one day when he was out and he loved it.

[@chrishuston4445]

Thanks!

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Thanks for the support!

[@NFreund]

As a sysadmin for an engineering office (i'm not sure if the translation brings over correctly, what an "Ingenieurbüro" in the DACH region does, from what i read, "engineering offices" in the US are different) that's over 35 years in the business, i've got a few seniors that told me stories about working with MicroStation in 1987 on Macintosh and after 1989 on PC-AT with two monitors. Apparently it was an absolute pain in the ass to set up, but if it worked, it was amazing to work with. Apparently there also was a VAX version wich supported even more monitors, same as UNIX. It's pretty impressive that some issues still exist, over 35 Years later...

[@iteachtime]

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

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@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! ☹

[@MaxOakland]

I really want one of these old Mac’s. They’re so cute and cool

[@BrotherAlan]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@fredflintstone505]

I was 21 in 1986 and that would have blown my mind. The first time I was exposed to multiple monitors was somewhere around 1990

[@tony359]

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

[@jonathanwhiteside6092]

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

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

I haven't touched a Mac since the 80's, but from what I remember the reason it's possible to use dual screens or high res screens on a Mac without any drivers or special program support like you had to do on a PC is because they use a flat memory model where the screen buffer is defined in main memory, and the OS just look at the info about screen buffers and access it straight up in flat memory. So there's no graphics processor or controller on the Radius card, just a DA converter that is fed digital data from the memory bus. So drawing on the external screen used exactly the same primitives as drawing to the integrated screen. This is also why the external screen feels like it is a bit sluggish compared to the internal. All graphics is drawn by the processor. There is no helping controller that can do flood fills or bit blitting to scroll the content of the screen. It's all done by the MC68000 processor in software. And as the external screen is larger with more pixels to handle it will appear a bit slower. Now there may be memory for the framebuffer on the Radius display card, but if so it's mapped into system ram. It would be interesting to see if the extra framebuffer memory is visible if you look at total installed memory. My guts say that it is as the system have to be able to read from and write to it. And if it was mapped in over existing system memory then they wouldn't have had a need for the framebuffer memory on the display card, but could just have pulled the data needed to feed the DA converter directly from system memory. Programs following the Apple Mac design guide should be resolution independent and not make any assumptions as to the memory location of the screen buffer. Now we know not all programs slavishly follows any design guide. Programmers are notorious for looking for short cuts and ways to improve performance.

[@saurabhgupta1402]

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

[@andrewsavage3356]

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

[@MyChannel-vm6dw]

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

[@MajorHavoc214]

6:08 And that's exactly why that became the authors and publishers best friend.

[@volvo09]

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

[@TL....]

my father and others at his office had this setup in the late 80s when he was working for EF Hutton

[@thedungeondelver]

Ayy! Very cool video, Adrian! I don't know if you recall, but back in '21 you and I emailed about this a bit. Such a cool gadget for the time. Thoroughly enjoyed this (like all your videos :) )

[@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.

[@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.

[@AttilaSVK]

my Mac SE/30 came with a Radius card, I think it's a Two-Page Display card, which had a single BNC connector output. It apparently outputs either black and white or grayscale composite video at 1152x882. I pulled it from my Mac, because I don't think I'll ever find a matching monitor, or a solution to convert the video signal to something more common, like VGA or HDMI.

[@femboichik]

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

[@Applecompuser]

Enjoy your vides. Thanks for making them and posting.

[@TheBasementChannel]

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

[@flounder31]

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

[@Nerd3927]

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

[@tomsaltner3011]

I remember some smaller advertising agencies using the SE with big, very expansive monitors, often HiRes-B&W - with both monitors active. And that was in the early nineties...

[@NaoPb]

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

[@technicallyjoe5730]

I just opened a fresh sealed Radius FPD Interface card with all docs and discs if you want a copy of the 3.5inch floppies

[@mheermance]

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

[@unixgod13]

I had a work Mac SE with a Radius display and I think both the Radius and internal display worked at the same time. We used this Mac that replaced a Xerox Publishing System.

[@3v1Bunny]

I so wished I lived in that era .. I'm from '81 and just a bit to young to have been able to fully tweak it when it was the big deal.

[@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..

[@AreHan1991]

Thanx for an entertaining time trip. Love your enthusiasm!

[@strictlysega]

back when i first did multi monitor it was back on my pentium 3 in 2001-2002 and the 2nd screen i used was my tv. was good to watch dvds on etc

[@22jcampb]

The monitor itself or a different modern monitor may support rotation via the built-in settings menu, especially if it is physically possible for the screen to be rotated in relation to the stand.

[@10p6]

Interesting. First use of Multimonitor for me was the Atari 800 XL and the XEP80, second was Atari Mega ST with video card.

[@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.

[@DiazFelix]

Fantastic video Adrian

[@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.

[@Halarue]

Completely surreal ! This is great !

[@randomscribblings]

Also UNIX workstations of the 80's and whatnot. Nothing stops you from putting two graphics cards in a sun 3/260, for instance.

[@johnathanstevens8436]

Yes, I remember people used to use these for desktop publishing.

[@kimiOfDieLinke]

The Commodore C128 has also this "Pseudo-Multi-Monitor-Support". By having two graphics processors and two outputs it can use them both at the same time. I'm however not aware that any software (except modern games) ever used that. I don't know if such a setup would have been supported by GEOS, the graphical OS available for those machines. I always find late 80's/early 90's Apple Tech was so advanced.

[@kcinplatinumgaming2598]

funny enough i was using multi-monitor support on an Apricot F1 computer back in 1987 because the monitor what it originally had was too small and I needed a larger screen ... i was able to link both monitors .. since that I have always had when possible dual monitors... its just an ideal workspace for my projects ... and now essential

[@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!

[@Felice_Enellen]

Adrian, I'm pretty sure that for many years some monitors have had an internal feature to act as a true portrait monitor, not just to be a monitor you can turn and tell your PC to render in portrait mode. Check around your supply or maybe check with some monitor geeks to see if there are any old monitors suitable to the task that might be available for cheap on ebay or something. If not, you'll have to mod probably both the roms and the board itself, since I'm pretty sure it's hardwired to output a narrow, tall raster. Fixing it in the monitor would be the ideal solution, short of having a man-in-the-middle adapter with an internal frame buffer that could buffer the full frame before doing a rot90 on it and forwarding it to the display.

[@The1RandomFool]

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

[@NullStaticVoid]

I worked at a screenprinting place that had a Radius Mac set up in the late 80's early 90s. May be mixing up job memories, but I swear they had one of those dark purple/blue Radius monitors for viewing graphics. I also had a Mac II with one of those portrait orientation Apple monitors that came with a very oddball connector. Like different sized pins on the same connector just to be Apple. Scored a lot of weird computer gear for free in 90s because I worked next to one tech startup area, and lived next to another. So I always found older computer gear tossed out. Even scored a bunch of copies of Suse Linux that way.

[@Toby_the_Glen]

Back in those days (before computer hardware was totally focused on gaming) these machines were often used in pre press for page make up and typesetting. The ability to have access to a high definition screen, able to display a full A4 page in portrait, was super useful and super expensive. Most graphic designers worth their salt would have these in their studios. Don't tell PC guys this, but Macs were always better in a graphical environment, but then gaming happened and apparently guarantee only reason you need a PC?

[@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...

[@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.

[@davidrumming4734]

My first experience of a Mac was a multi screen setup using a Mac SE 2mb RAM (then upgraded to 2.5Mb) with hard disc, and a video card driving an external 19in black & white (1bit, not greyscale) CRT. Yea I could use both the external screen and inbuilt Mac screen at the same time - and the workspace was shared…could move files/windows between the screens. System 6.0.3? Pre-multifinder. Very cool! Had a INIT or control panel or both to govern everything. Booting with extensions off (shift key down) disabled the software and you were then restricted to the inbuilt Mac screen. The Mac II did not invent this. Those odd size portrait displays….very expensive-we didn’t have one of those. I understand they ran some strange resolution and MAYBE could only be achieved using the custom video card….and possibly the reverse also true, you can’t use the Portrait card to drive a regular Apple 12-14in screen, but don’t quote me on this stuff. My first Mac at home was the SE/30 with 8mb ram, hard drive, Apple 2x ext cd-rom, + original 100mb Zip drive. The Mac had a video card fitted driving my non-Apple 14in external colour monitor at 256 colours. Lots of wires but very stable system. I can’t remember but I don’t think system (upgraded to system 7.1 then 7.5) had a INIT or other software for the video card…must have been pre configured in ROM on the card? In terms of use ability, like the first example, shared workspace.

[@douggrove4686]

We had one of those at work, back in the day.

[@marc6340]

I LOVE your enthusiasm!

[@chuckbenedict7235]

Some of you best content yet!

[@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 :)

[@R.B.]

That setup was how I ran my Windows 98 machine a decade later. Specifically so that I could open full page documents on the side of my main monitor. I had no idea this was possible on the Mac... but at that price it still would have been out of reach.

[@jorgepinogarciadelasbayonas]

Macintosh was generally out of reach for the majority of people. Commodore Amiga was way less expensive but it also lead to bankruptcy of the whole company.

[@jorgepinogarciadelasbayonas]

Basically what the Macitnosh needed was the video slot capability of the Amiga 2000 which had a lot of expansion capabilites in 1987. The Macintosh had none because Steve Jobs didn't liked it.

[@EinChris75]

I love that excitement. Do you think the left slider is really brightness? It has a turtle and a rabbit as icons. Turtle slow, rabbit fast... perhaps some speed setting for something?

[@chadhartsees]

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

[@industrialsewingmachinerepair]

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.

[@jimmerseiber]

I think it would look super cool with the mac monitor set up like the original photos

[@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.