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The Macintosh Portrait Display Adapter, Or, I Suck at Making Cables

Posted by: warmech on 2021-11-24 19:04:48 A while back, I acquired a Macintosh Portrait Display that ended up only needing a re-capping to get back in working order. What I did not have, however, was a way to connect it to any of my Macs. After picking up some connectors from Mouser, I set out to make a cable to get my IIsi hooked up to it. The cable works, but it looks ugly as hell. So, recently, I set out to teach myself how to design PCBs and decided to start here with an adapter to just let me use a standard (and, most importantly, cheap) 15-pin display cable. The result? Well, first... Old and busted: New hotness: I just got the PCBs in this evening and assembled what you see above... and it works great! The 13W3 connector here is waaaay too expensive (~$17) but once I get some less expensive ones I plan on selling these at basically just over the cost to build. I know there can't be that many folks that need a means of connecting their MPDs to a Mac, but for those that have a handmade cable that either doesn't look so great, or have a broken OEM cable, or are just missing one altogether, I figure this might be of use.

Posted by: ScutBoy on 2021-11-24 19:20:20 Nice! If you start a list, please put me on it to buy one when you are ready 🙂

Posted by: mmu_man on 2021-11-25 00:03:44 Cool! Now for the cable, you could have reused some thicker VGA cable. And the connect shells can be painted, I did this for my AAUI cable.

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