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MacViking card found in a SE
Posted by: Byte Knight on 2022-08-06 13:29:20 I got a Mac SE in a lot of Apple stuff and it has a MacViking card going to a male DB9 port in the back. It says "c 1987 by Moniterm Corp" and there's also a sticker that says "Viking 1 & 2400 Controller for the Mac SE." I can't find much info about it anywhere - I'm assuming it's a video card? Anyone have any interest in it? Thanks!
Posted by: pcamen on 2022-08-09 08:54:41 Moniterm made monitors advertised for desktop publishing in the lat 80's - early 90's with the Viking brand. I found this in the Spring 1990 edition of Macintosh Buyers Guide. So that would appear to be the card that came with that monitor.
Posted by: Pushpull76 on 2022-08-09 09:20:38 Owwww at a first glance I thought the simms were on the Viking card 😍
Posted by: LaPorta on 2022-08-09 10:05:51 There’s potential to make/get an adapter for that thing…that would be cool!
Posted by: ArmorAlley on 2022-08-09 11:12:44 1024x768 @8-bit grayscale on an SE back in 1988! Wow. That is some card. It cost as much as the stock SE itself. Add in PageMaker 3.5, 3 more megabytes of RAM and a DeskWriter from HP and you had a decent DTP system for under $10K. A stock Mac II with 4MB RAM would already be pushing up towards that.
Posted by: Bolle on 2022-08-09 12:16:01 1024x768 @8-bit grayscale on an SE Only the Mac II card does 8-bit. The SE card is monochrome.
Posted by: ArmorAlley on 2022-08-09 12:28:15 Only the Mac II card does 8-bit. The SE card is monochrome. True. I read it too quickly. Of course, the SE can't handle colour. It doesn't have ColorQuickDraw (I think it is) in the ROM. Thanks for the correction. Still while 8-bit would be very impressive, 1024x768 on an SE is what impressed me.
Posted by: Crutch on 2022-08-09 12:55:06 I don’t have an SE at the moment but always thought it DOES have Color QuickDraw in the (256k) ROM. Actually I am fairly certain of that. So I wonder why this card doesn’t support color on an SE?
Posted by: Phipli on 2022-08-09 13:12:22 I don’t have an SE at the moment but always thought it DOES have Color QuickDraw in the (256k) ROM. Actually I am fairly certain of that. So I wonder why this card doesn’t support color on an SE? No, sadly the SE doesn't have colour quickdraw. Only colour interfaces for them are limited to the small number of colours the original quickdraw supported. I've never seen one of them, did the sczzygraph do that? Can't remember.
Posted by: Byte Knight on 2022-08-09 15:05:41 Moniterm made monitors advertised for desktop publishing in the lat 80's - early 90's with the Viking brand. I found this in the Spring 1990 edition of Macintosh Buyers Guide. View attachment 44863 So that would appear to be the card that came with that monitor. Interesting - Minnetonka is only about 15 minutes away from me! Might have to go check out the address...
Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2022-08-09 15:41:47 Very cool stuff. 1024x768 (AKA 19" resolution) spread across 24" sounds like about 64DPI? Panasonic PanaPro system was similar, but was 1bit B&W in TPD res on a 19" monitor with SE and NuBus cards. I got the NuBus version for my used IIx. It may have been B&W like the SE before it, but it was like moving from a toddler's mattress to a king size! To heck with 72DPI! 😀
Posted by: olivercampion on 2026-02-26 08:41:54 I just got a Macintosh SE with one of these cards in it. Does anyone know it it’s possible to wire up a VGA adapter? 🤔 Also looking for drivers!
Posted by: olivercampion on 2026-03-03 09:01:08 I’ve found a driver file, but couldn’t get it working. More details on this thread …
Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2026-03-03 11:35:19 1024x768 from this SE VidCard suddenly sounds very interesting to me. RGBtoHDMI – 6-bit TTL Edition might work nicely if no other solution appears for existing cards. Project is open source or at least based upon the original open source device? Shoehorning a bare bones, single bit HDMI output implementation into a clone of this VidCard might be worth looking in to? edit: @olivercampion nice! Could one of you post really high res pics of both sides of that card? Hopefully drivers pan out.
Posted by: olivercampion on 2026-03-04 04:35:19 1024x768 from this SE VidCard suddenly sounds very interesting to me. RGBtoHDMI – 6-bit TTL Edition might work nicely if no other solution appears for existing cards. Project is open source or at least based upon the original open source device? If I ever get it working then I'll definitely want to try to get the output working. For now though it's going in the attic. I've got a 030 Mobius accelerator card on another SE which I'm about to wire up a VGA cable for 🙂 Shoehorning a bare bones, single bit HDMI output implementation into a clone of this VidCard might be worth looking in to? edit: @olivercampion nice! Could one of you post really high res pics of both sides of that card? Hopefully drivers pan out. Attached photos. Hope they're good enough!
Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2026-03-04 16:57:22 Nice! All discrete logic with dump capable PALs I think? So methinks it ought to be easy enough to clone. If someone gets one running it should be easy enough to clone. Wondering if the paired monitor might be a TTL interface? Pretty sure my 19" PanaPro from that era was TTL. Gotta check through the hoard. ISTR having another Card that can be used on an SE accelerator of some kind or by using the simple adapter it came with for direct SE PDS installation.
Posted by: olivercampion on 2026-03-05 00:49:03 Gotta check through the hoard. ISTR having another Card that can be used on an SE accelerator of some kind or by using the simple adapter it came with for direct SE PDS installation. This is the other one I have ... which I'm trying to see if I can get working with a simple VGA cable wired in to a DE9. The pinouts that I've found on another thread are definitely wrong so going to try to use my multimeter in frequency mode to identify HSYNC and VSYNC.
Posted by: iantm on 2026-03-05 12:15:38 Good gawd, $2500 in 1989, a $7000 video card
Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2026-03-05 13:26:57 Welcome to the dawn of desktop publishing where pixels were king, even in single bit/black-n-white. Think of these as the high end GPUs of the day. 😉 @trag can you hop in and detail testing for TTL output and then converting it to analog?
Posted by: Chardonneret on 2026-03-12 10:26:13 I also bought an SE with same card. I wish I had a Moniterm Monitor.
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