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Welcome Image and Text We believe in the long term value of Apple hardware. You should be able to use your Apple gear as long as it helps you remain productive and meets your needs, upgrading only as necessary. We want to help maximize the life of your Apple gear. -- Main menu Skip to content Welcome to Low End Mac Navigation Bar Home | Tech Specs | Articles | Groups | Software | News Feed | Support LEM | Login -- Low End Mac Make the most of your Apple gear -- Mac of the Day Mac of the Day: iMac G5 (iSight) , introduced 2005.10.12. Apple built an iSight webcam into the last version of the G5 iMac. Post navigation ← Older posts Macintosh Malaise: Carson’s List of the Most Compromised Modern Macs. Chris Carson, Building Bridges - 2019.12.17 - The era of Macintosh Malaise is what I call the period from 2012 – 2019, and includes many of the Mac computers sold during this time period. The following is a list of what I call Carson’s Compromised Macs. The era of Macintosh Malaise is what I call the period from 2012 – 2019, and includes many of the Mac computers sold during this time period. The following is a list of what I call Carson’s Compromised Macs . Continue reading → -- Posted in Building Bridges | -- The Looming Y2K20 Bug, and How to Protect Your System. Chris Carson, Building Bridges - 2019.12.16 - It was 20 years ago that the entire world was bracing for what was supposed to be one of the biggest disasters in the history of the world. Now we face another bug that could bring your Mac to its knees. It was 20 years ago that the entire world was bracing for what was supposed to be one of the biggest disasters in the history of the world. Now we face another bug that could bring your Mac to its knees. Continue reading → -- Posted in Building Bridges | -- RCA MM36100 – Amazing “Under the Radar” Consumer CRT Display Dan Bashur, Low End Mac - 2019.09.19 - Dear Low End Mac Friends: It’s been a while. Life and other typical duties keep one busy, but when something extraordinary comes up, there’s always time to talk about it with our community. In this article, I will be discussing an interesting piece of hardware (a display to be precise) – the RCA MM36100. […] Dear Low End Mac Friends: It’s been a while. Life and other typical duties keep one busy, but when something extraordinary comes up, there’s always time to talk about it with our community. In this article, I will be discussing an interesting piece of hardware (a display to be precise) – the RCA MM36100.   RCA MM36100 General Facts Here’s some general facts on this 190 lb beast from the official brochure from RCA:                             Take a look at the inputs on the back: As you can see, there are 2 VGA inputs (one with standard L/R RCA stereo audio inputs and another with line-in 3.5mm stereo audio mini-jack input) on the RCA MM36100 in addition to multiple S-Video, Component Video (480i/240p), audio outputs (including speakers) as well as RF antenna and even a built-in USB hub. This monitor truly has it all!                     RCA MM36100 in Action The most amazing part of this display is how it will handle RGB video from a proper system. Here, I have my Titanium PowerBook 1.0 GHz connected to the display starting up Mac OS 9 and then playing some Doom II.                                                     Why is the RCA MM36100 Significant? 1. Advanced menu options and adjustments without digging into special hidden modes The RCA MM36100 allows you to perform all kinds of adjustments right out of the available menus and then have your preferences then saved as a user preset. It even has additional options on the PC VGA input to have the image be optimized for text or video. Optimized for video selected seems to be slightly sharper, but both options look impressive. Being able to make some quick adjustments to really center the Mac OS operating environment come in handy immediately. 2. I’ve never seen such a razor-sharp images for text and the OS interface on a CRT of this size before! At 930 lines of horizontal resolution, there are Sony PVMs (Professional Video Monitors) and Sony BVMs (Broadcast Video Monitors – truly the ultimate CRT monitor) from the early 2000s that this display tends to fall between in terms of overall image quality. This RCA MM36100 is maybe right on par or dare I say – even a touch better than the average PVM, but not quite as good as a BVM. You are truly getting amazing, top-notch visuals on this display when devices of the era this display was produced are connected to it. Where this display really wins hands-down is with its size. Only a couple PVM or BVM models were produced in this size or greater and the odds of finding a large PVM or BVM are extremely low. At 36″ on a “prosumer” (professional line consumer) display, it allowed a high quality, large size professional grade monitor to be delivered to consumers at a fairly reasonable price, which leads me to my next point.. 3. It’s a far better value than Sony’s PVMs and BVMs Besides size, the biggest differences between the PVM/BVM and the RCA MM36100 is price. Those PVMs and BVMs cost $1000s more when new. A high end 20″ PVM for example ran around $10,000, while BVMs could easily cost several times more (in excess of $30k). At an original retail of $2200, the RCA MM36100 was a fraction of the price of a 20″ PVM when it hit store shelves in the early 2000s, which leads me to my final point.. 4. The RCA MM36100 is historically significant This display was one of the very first high-definition monitors sold in the Western Hemisphere. HDTV was available in Japan/Asia starting as early as the late-80s/early-90s, but the infrastructure to support these great new displays was not largely ready in North America (in particular the United States) until the early 00s. Many television stations and cable companies in the United States had to do a significant amount of preparation for transitioning from Analog to Digital broadcast (analog broadcast officially ended on 6/12/09), so at the time when the RCA MM36100 was being marketed and produced, not too many TV manufacturers were jumping in masses on the HD bandwagon, coupled with the fact that HD content simply was not yet being widely available yet. However, pioneering satellite company, DirectTV decided to partner with RCA and offer a solution to accompany the RCA MM36100 – the DTC100 HD satellite and over-air HD receiver. There is a very good read on this device here . What Else Works Great with the RCA MM36100? Going back to the fact that there are 2 VGA inputs on the back on the RCA MM36100 and one of those has a simple L/R RCA audio and VGA input meant for 480p video, there is one device that was a perfect match.. None other than the Sega Dreamcast!               The Sega Dreamcast was way ahead of its time when it released a little over 20 years ago, quite famously on 9/9/99:                         What made the Dreamcast significant was a number of technological advances including being the first dedicated game console to come standard with a 56k modem and had an optional broadband adapter as well as being able to output 640x480p over VGA. A number of options exist to output VGA with the Dreamcast such as the “VGA box” that has both VGA and S-Video output using Sega’s high bandwidth video output interface on the Dreamcast to handle both options, but recent third party solutions have been able to simplify the design to a single VGA cable with L/R RCA stereo audio. Nothing could be more meant f...