Me and a friend of mine just started laying down some plans for a new custom desktop hack. The plan is to either use my friend's SE/30 or buy a 128k, 512k, or Classic and install a Mac Mini inside. We realized that if the original monitor were completely replaced with an LCD monitor we'd have loads of space inside for better ventilation and installing all sorts of extras in there 
The only problem is I have been unable to find a 9-10 inch LCD monitor with a decent resolution, can somebody point me in the right direction? For those that have done similar mods, what sort of problems did you run into along the way and how did you resolve them?
Just starting a new hack, OS X on a compact mac
January 31, 2006 - 10:14am
#1
Just starting a new hack, OS X on a compact mac
The other mods like this have used LCDs designed for car computers. I think they were very straightforward.
Unfortunately, all of the car monitors I found on Google were 5-8 inches, I'm looking for 9-10, and I also would prefer something slightly higher rez, any links to real good ones for this purpose?
Take a look in the Colour Classic forum down near the bottom of the forum listing. They do similar things to CCs down there...
TOM
http://www.thecoconet.com/
The shop in Tokyo and the web shows only in Japanese. I experienced to use old Laptop LCDs to convert to Apple II monitors and Mac monitors so far successfully. They sell a LCD or aLCD plus a Video circit Kit.
By using the manufacturer's product number I was able to find thet product on an english website. This lead me to discover that Toshiba also makes a similar product, the same size but with a higher resolution, unfortunately I have no been able to find anyone that sells the product, it is the Toshiba 10C313
http://www.applefritter.com/node/9437#comment-28650
I believe DrBunsen has link to a nice LCD...
The sweetness of this hack is that you don't need to destroy the Mac Mini for this to work... just something to keep in mind...
Are you sure you want 10 inches? At least on a Color Classic, I seem to recall that the opening for the monitor is perfect for an 8.4 inch diagonal. Any more than that is simply wasted space behind the plastics. I think the other compact macs had very slightly smaller monitors.
As for resolution, there are only so many pixels you can cram into a compact mac's space before it gets a little unuseable. VGA is great, SVGA works but is pushing it.
Must, resist, urge...
You also have to remember, that small of a screen with that high of a resolution is really hard to read for long periods of time.
Well, I'm hoping the next major iteration of OS X will have resolution independence working flawlessly so the extra pixels would be important.
that auction link is over now of course, but the "seller's other items" link should take you through to some useful 8" to 9" ones. as noted, they're standard format not widescreen.
In this day and age, an SE/30 with its full 32-bit bus, maximum RAM of 128MB and 2TB data storage (with System 7.5.5) is still a useful machine. I have several with Ethernet Cards that I use for quick and dirty plug and play backup DNS, Web, File, mail servers for both Mac and PC networks.
If you're going to hack a machine, try using a Mac Classic. Their boards are dog slow, barely upgradeable and the case actually looks much better than an SE/30