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| Interware GrandVimage 24-19B Nubus graphics card mods ... |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-04 09:30:20
I bought an Interware GrandVimage 24-19B Nubus graphics card for my Quadra 700 on eBay from Japan. The card has 3MB of video memory but only an 80MHz RAMDAC for 1024x768 at 16.7M colors max. Can I modify the card and convert it to a 24-21B by updating the ROM and possibly replacing the RAMDAC with a 110MHz version to have 1152x870 at 16,7M Colors?
Is there a english PDF Manual for the card out there? |
Posted by: finkmac on 2025-07-04 09:53:39
"probably"
i've been meaning to try that, but i'm missing several bits. namely ROM dumps and RAMDACs
there's no english manual, this was exclusively sold in japan. |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-04 11:02:20
Flash or EEPROM could be an AT28C512 or AT29C512? The question is how to program it or replace it with a DIL version? The RamDAC can be found on eBay as Bt473KPF110.
Most standard RamDAC chips are compatible with each other.
The control panel is fortunately in English. |
Posted by: Franklinstein on 2025-07-04 13:22:01
I figured VRAM was more important to getting higher resolutions than RAMDAC clock speed so I'd try to increase that first, but I'm definitely not an expert.
I have a couple of GrandVimage cards that are depopulated on VRAM so I'd be interested to find out what may be required to get them to the next level.
Interware made fantastic products and it's a shame they mostly stayed local. I'm not sure why so much of their software has English in it though. Maybe that was just in case they decided to expand overseas? To appear "cool"? To work better in an English version of Mac OS used to prepare products in Japan for distribution to clients overseas? Who knows? |
Posted by: nathall on 2025-07-04 13:35:09
It is extremely common for Japanese software to contain English, sometimes containing almost exclusively English. As someone who formerly imported hundreds of Japanese video games from roughly the same timeframe (1987-1995) I’d say 75% of them were either entirely in or mostly in English.
I always assumed it had something to do with the character set; English has only 26 characters, save punctuation and numerals. A Japanese character set has, at least, hundreds. The developers could never be sure exactly what characters might be supported in their customer’s hardware. If they did everything in Japanese, they ran the risk of their software being unintelligible if any given customer’s hardware didn’t support all the characters they were trying to use. If they wanted to use a device’s built-in character set, English characters were a pretty good bet to be included universally, regardless of where the hardware was from. This was the only way they could be sure to avoid using unsupported characters, unless they designed custom character bitmaps to be included in their software. |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-05 02:45:11
I figured VRAM was more important to getting higher resolutions than RAMDAC clock speed so I'd try to increase that first, but I'm definitely not an expert. The 19B Nubus card has 3MB of Video Ram so that is good for 1152x870 with 16,7M Colors. That 3MB is the max with this card.
I think I need the 21B card version ROM for my 19B card but I'm not sure if it's always different for different nubus cards. Do I have to read the AT28C512 directly from the chip, or can I do it from the running system? |
Posted by: Arbee on 2025-07-05 05:16:36
English was common in Japanese software in the 80s because a full Japanese font would be gigantic and Japanese characters, and Japanese characters are more complex than Western ones. So in addition to the large storage for the font, you need a higher resolution for them to be legible (or the characters have to be huge on screen).
The Mac was the first machine (including Japanese domestic computers) where you could reasonably break through those restrictions. Even then on lower-end Macs they had the Plus with the special double-sized ROM for the KanjiTalk font and the NuBus card with 1 MB of ROM containing the fonts.
In China they broke those restrictions with a domestic Apple IIe clone called the China Educational Computer that had 128K of ROM vs. the 16K in a real Apple. The 560x192 monochrome double hi-res mode was sufficient for legible Chinese characters (many of which are similar or identical to Japanese).
Also, programming languages were almost universally in English, just like they are today. If you wanted to program a Z80 or 6502 or 68000, you had to learn at least some English. |
Posted by: Franklinstein on 2025-07-05 08:49:15
The character storage/display requirements/limitations were definitely a thing in the 16-bit era, but most of these Interware cards were from the mid-late '90s and KanjiTalk had been a thing for years, so using English to save space or improve legibility wasn't strictly necessary anymore. Plenty of comparable Japanese utility software of the era used Japanese exclusively in the UI (such as B's Recorder Gold, arguably the best utility for MO disks).
It's funny where they decide to use English vs. Japanese on stuff in their home market. Sony or Yamaha products, for example, often have the controls labeled in English. National (a.k.a. Panasonic) and AIWA usually used exclusively Japanese labels on their controls. I assume it was more of a targeted consumer thing: Sony and Yamaha for the young and/or upmarket buyers, National and AIWA for the oldsters and common man. |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-06 04:58:14
The 1.4.1b2 control panel is in English and a small part in Japanese. I hope I can change it all to English with ResEdit? |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-07 09:03:33
put the Card in my Q700 ... |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-07 09:43:10
some Screenshots ...
Higher resolutions above 1024x768 are possible and you can also set them but this will result Display Errors on the Monitor. Now I'm wondering if you really need the ROM of an 21B? I think so... |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-07 09:52:11
There is a IC10 EEPROM "NM93C46M8" so I was thinking that must be updated to the 21B Version of the card ...? |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-07 14:15:46
... is there a program that runs under Mac OS to read the ROMs of Nubus cards and save it to a file? |
Posted by: joevt on 2025-07-07 16:48:57
I have a SlotsGrab utility at
https://github.com/joevt/SlotsDump
Read these:
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/calling-all-roms-collecting-declrom-data.46056
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/any-apps-that-probe-nubus-space.49830
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?thr...lay-used-with-the-radius-se-accelerator.50344 |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-08 06:06:30
I have a SlotsGrab utility at
https://github.com/joevt/SlotsDump
Read these:
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/calling-all-roms-collecting-declrom-data.46056
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/any-apps-that-probe-nubus-space.49830
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?thr...lay-used-with-the-radius-se-accelerator.50344 Thanks ...
Is there a ready to use binary file from the SlotsGrab Tool? I can not compile it ...!
When I have time I read the three links ... |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-08 12:07:51
Can I use this Romdump under MacOS7 ...?
Download under OSX (macOS M4 MacMini) and copied via ftp to my Quadra 700 and it can't run because it's broken? |
Posted by: joevt on 2025-07-08 18:41:25
Download under OSX (macOS M4 MacMini) and copied via ftp to my Quadra 700 and it can't run because it's broken? Does it have a resource fork on your Quadra 700? |
Posted by: franklyn on 2025-07-09 01:04:50
No
I expand the Zip File onto the Quadra and it do also not have a Resource Fork ... |
Posted by: joevt on 2025-07-09 01:56:54
It should have a resource fork on your M4 Mac mini. Copy it to the Quadra using a method that preserves the resource fork. |
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