Connecting to an Apple Cinema Display


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It sometimes feels like display technology has outpaced the Apple II’s evolution: connecting to a modern display, such as via VGA, often requires expansion cards that are rare or still in development. I’m hopeful a future Juiced.GS article will outline all the possibilities for bridging these technologies.

In the meantime, Matthew Pearce has demonstrated how to connect the Apple II to a relatively modern and high-quality monitor: the Apple Cinema Display.

This setup has its own hardware requirements and challenges: used in this video are a Portta AV/CVBS RCA composite-to-HDMI mini-converter ($18.99), a Kanex XD HDMI-to-Mini-Displayport converter ($71.49) — and, of course, an Apple Cinema Display, which was discontinued six years ago, in 2011. With Matt’s video having been produced in 2015, that means he was showing us how to connect two equally unsupported Apple products.

It’s not a perfect solution, and one that we saw Matt demo in 8-bit mode only with Oregon Trail; Herbert Fung warns it won’t look great with the 640 x 200 mode of the Apple IIGS. But as a proof of concept, it’s a pretty cool configuration — and one that could have applications for other HDMI or MiniDP devices. For lack of turnkey alternatives, this hardware combination is a good one to add to your bag of tricks.

For more from Matt, check out his factual overview video of the Apple II.

(Hat tip to Buster Hein)

  1. Calibrator says:

    Another solution could be the Microcom Framemeister?

    Not inexpensive (about $350) but it not only supports composite but also analog RGB so you could directly feed a IIgs and output to HDMI (up to 1080p).

    It’s an upscaler (for that it’s not so expensive) but you can add scanlines to make the display appear more pleasant, if you want.

    I personally would have gotten one if the support for PAL would be as good as for NTSC…