Nostalgia: Got my hands on a PowerMac 7200/120

[Shawn]

I went dumpster diving and picked up an old PowerMac 7200/120. It didn't have a keyboard or mouse or any cables. It was full of pretty disgusting and had been left out the rain but I throughly cleaned it out and it seems to still work. When I turn it on it makes the apple sound and appears to start booting off the hard drive.

Does anyone know how I can hook this up to a PC monitor? I have the old monitor but it's been broken. It seems to have a standard dsub connection on the back of the monitor but not at the back of the computer. I'm assuming there is an adaptor I need. I guess I'll have to get a keyboard and mouse for it too. Anything else I will need? I want to get this working just to play around with.

Here are the specs.

I know I won't be playing with OS X with it, but I already have a G3 for that.

 

[stevf]

if I read those specs correctly the video is a 2 row 15 pin connector (the models before that one use a really wierd connector, but I am pretty sure yours doesnt) you can get an adapter that changes it to the standard 3 row 15 pin vga you are used to. many monitors used to come with them. shouldnt be too hard to find

 

[ForumMaster]

i have the opposite problem. i have an old Mac Monitor that has the 2 Row 15pin and i want to use it with a pc. can i just cut the wire and connect it to a 3 row 15 pin regular Dsub?

(srry for stealing your thread dude.

 

[halfadder]

You can reroute the pins, the signal itself is still plain generic VGA.

There are also cheap "Mac Monitor Adapters", the better of which have some DIP switches for setting default resoultion... like an SGI or Sun, Macs can use a variety of different resolutions during bootup depending on the monitor's abilities and the last used resolution.

Apple used the two-row DB15 connector for video for a long time before switching to ADC/DVI. I first saw DB15 back in 1988 when most PCs were still using two-row DB9 EGA/CGA. Some of the better Mac video cards used 3 or 5 BNC connectors (Red Green Blue HSync VSync) and some used the *really bizarre* 13w3 connector which was common with SGI and Sun workstations at one time.

 

[Shawn]

Do I need to get one with the dip switches or can I just adjust the monitor resolution in the OS?

 

[halfadder]

It's been a long long time since I've used anything that old... in some cases you might not be able to run higher than 640x480 unless you have the DIP switches, they are there to tell the Mac what resolutions the monitor supports. I really don't know.