On Wed, 3 Jul 1996, Lt Avram Dorfman wrote:

> There's a big catch though: the pass through PDS slot points at right
> angles to the card it self, i.e. the video card is parallel to the
> motherboard, about 2 inches about it. Translation: it would have to go
> right through the floppy & hard drives, and about 1/2 inch into the power
> supply. I had the motherboard hanging out of the back of my opened SE/30,
> being supported by the internal video cable, with the SCSI ribbon twisted
> upside down to connect.

> Because there is plenty of room beside the monitor tube for the video card.
> Does anyone know how hard it would be to make one of these? I assume that
> having a ribbon cable between a male and female PDS connector wouldn't provide
> good enough signal quality, thoughts?

I'm not sure why that would be any worse than raw copper traces across a
circuit board, personally.  At least a ribbon cable has a rubber jacket,
not much shielding, but better than a coat of lacquer (sp?), I would
think.  As long as it's pretty short, anyway, I can't see that causing a
problem.  You might want to run separate (larger) wires for power, though,
as ribbon cable probably isn't thick enough to handle the current flow.

> Also, is it even possible to find a pds
> connector without cannibalizing hardware?

It's probably one of the standard connector types, though I wouldn't have
a clue which one.  You might try calling Apple tech support and asking for
the part numbers... I doubt it would be "proprietary", since everybody
building a card has to use them.  But then, you know Apple....

Good luck,

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