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LGR Oddware - Radius Pivot Display (Patreon)

Published:
2021-06-17 19:03:57
Edited:
2021-06-25 14:20:25
Imported:
2021-07

Content

https://youtu.be/mpayqVGmKyo

Now this right here has been near the top of my "want to review" list for YEARS, ever since seeing it make an appearance in an episode of Computer Chronicles from 1991. And thanks to a very generous donation from an LGR viewer recently, here we are with one in fantastic shape -- and sourced from Computer Reset, no less!

It's the Radius Pivot Full Page Display, a rotating CRT monitor for PCs running DOS and Windows 3.x. And it supports full color SVGA! The most well-known Radius monitors are all monochrome displays for the Macintosh, which were permanently mounted in portrait mode. But not the Pivot! It's got color and it rotates 90 degrees to show an entire 8.5"x11" page of work at once.

And thankfully, we've also got the MultiView SVGA card to go along with it, a rarity all on its own. It's a 1MB ISA graphics adapter that works in conjunction with drivers and software from Radius, allowing on-the-fly rotation of MS-DOS and Windows applications using the Pivot's internal mercury sensor to detect orientation. Slick.

Hope you enjoy, folks! This one won't be going public this week but next week instead, since I'm "taking the week off" right now. Which really means I'm still laying the groundwork for upcoming videos that need extra time in the oven, along with simply catching up on regular life stuff. Yep yep.

Files

Radius Pivot: The Rotating CRT Monitor from 1991 [LGR Oddware]

Taking a look at the Radius Pivot Full Page Display! You might've seen monochrome Radius Portrait displays for the Mac, which were permanently mounted sideways. But not the Pivot! It's an SVGA color computer monitor that rotates 90 degrees for a vertical display in Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS. ● LGR links: https://www.patreon.com/LazyGameReviews https://www.twitter.com/LazyGameReviews https://www.facebook.com/LazyGameReviews ● Download the DOS and Windows 3.1 drivers here: https://archive.org/details/radius-pivot-pc-drivers-utilities-1.0b7 ● All background music licensed from: http://www.epidemicsound.com #LGR #Retro #Oddware

Comments

Mac84

Ooo, I look forward to watching this! 👍 I have one for my Macintosh that I just picked up. If you happen to need any footage or whatnot from the Mac side, feel free to let me know.

Anonymous

Rotating CRTs? Madness!

Anonymous

I saw cool crab in the preview image and decided this was relevant to my interests.

Anonymous

Wow and that's a big bulky CRT getting rotated, crazy.

Anonymous

Ironic timing for this video. I found one of these buried at CR a couple months ago. It has a vertical collapse and I literally put it on my bench last night to start working on it. Such cool displays!

LazyGameReviews
>>62052098

Ooh, I wish you luck! Mine has some nasty vertical hold/sync issues that tend to away once it warms up 10 minutes or so. A recap is in order for me at the very least. Is yours "property of Entex" as well?

LazyGameReviews
>>62051800

Nice, a Macintosh Pivot? I'd be interested in seeing that in action out of sheer curiosity, I've only seen the stationary portrait displays on a Mac.

Anonymous

Great video. Enjoy your week off!

Anonymous

Brilliant, yet again

Anonymous

I love it. I want to give it a kiss and whisper sweet words in its port. Good job on the video. 10/10 would watch a blerb on a more modern OS in the mix.

Anonymous

Dude, maybe @viti95 can add Pivot Doom to his FastDoom source port? He already added completely niche things like Hercules graphics support. Pivot Doom would be an excellent blurb video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6bGwLqzEe4

Anonymous

You're presenting Excel on a Pivot monitor and don't make a pivot table joke? Loved the video!

Gadgetman

What an awesome monitor. I absolutely love it. I remember an Apple vertical CRT monitor, but I don’t know what Apple computer it was. I use an iPad Pro 12.9” in a 360 degree keyboard case/stand. It’s so easy to change between landscape and portrait.

Anonymous

$3318? Still cheaper than an RTX card these days! What a bargain!

Anonymous

Very cool. The slow speed of the 2D graphics kind of kills this, unfortunately. I am interested in how the two-way communication works via the VGA plug goes.

Anonymous

3:19 nice Technology Connections cameo!

Valora Inverse

Oh, that's neat! I'm very not-versed in like. Refresh things and how they work, but is that diagonal refresh line concerning at all? It feels like it should be to me since I've never seen one like that, but, like I said, no experience.

LazyGameReviews
>>62058804

It's not visible in person. That's just what you get when filming a CRT sideways, especially at mismatched vertical refresh/shutter speeds :)

Anonymous

I actually have a portrait monitor + ultrawide setup! I use the portrait monitor for email/chat/discord and anything else that makes sense for vertically oriented content. It is a cheap USB-powered portable monitor that happens to be a 1080p/HDR monitor. Highly recommended.

LazyGameReviews
>>62056460

Heh, I forgot the tablet was in the frame. I've almost always got YouTube going while recording b-roll. Oh well, now it's a shoutout!

Pietro Gagliardi

But did this monitor also support the Mac? If so that seems very out of place for them... unless classic Mac OS didn't support dynamic resolution changes at this point? Wouldn't surprise me with all the DIP switch settings on my DB-15 to VGA adapter

LazyGameReviews
>>62059186

Yeah I gotta get in on that. Don't have any more space on my desk but perhaps with a VESA mount on an arm of some kind!

Anonymous

When we are talking rotating screens my mind goes straight to my Thinkpad X60T / X61T Tabletmode was never used, but it was very convinient to rotate the screen to show a buddy on the other side of the table something :P

LazyGameReviews
>>62059754

Not to my knowledge, and there's no mention of the Mac in the manual. Far as I know Radius always sold their Macintosh-compatible monitors separately, since the software, graphics card, refresh rate, and connectors were all different.

LazyGameReviews
>>62061570

Always liked the way those looked. I'd probably almost never use that mode either but I'd like the fact that it was there!

Lucas J. Chumley

Is it just me or does this upload feel like it didn’t process right? I’m getting hella weird dropped frame-esque lag in random places.

LazyGameReviews
>>62063506

I watched through the whole thing here on the YT app without issue, hm. What section are you getting frame drops? If anyone else is also having problems, lemme know!

Anonymous

PIVOT!!!! Sorry, I had to. I’ve been trying to get a radius portrait display for my Mac IICX for a while now.. This is mega cool though! Props to that tech connections video too..! :)

Anonymous

I see you are a fellow Dietz Nut

Anonymous

Nice to see a product that not only actually does what it's supposed to, but it's actually useful (within its limitations, of course).

Kris Asick

Mmm! You know what would've been the perfect Win 3.1 game to test on this monitor? HYPEROID! :o

moosemaimer
>>62070185

I was gonna say turn it into a 3-axis joystick and play Descent. Or even better... adapt a H/V shooter like Salamander and flip the screen between stages.

moosemaimer

107Hz? John from DF is going to be breathing down your neck to get his hands on that thing.

Ryan Rardin

I wonder if there was any software made that natively supports this thing?

Anonymous

I use a portrait Ultrawide next to my 16:9 main monitor and it's super handy. Highly recommend a portrait ultrawide, Clint.

Uncleawesome

Interesting monitor :) And this is something I never say, I don't know why but you look great in this episode :)

Anonymous

Computer Reset? Is that a place, magazine, store or something else?

Alyxx the Rat

That is one hot display. Would've been awesome to play arcade games on.

Anonymous

Xerox Alto experience with your PC

Anonymous

Would definitely love to see the disassemble/recap either on blurbs or future LGR

Anonymous

Awesome video! And good thinking to check if Sim Tower would work in portrait mode… shame that it didn’t take advantage. Such a wonderful game.

Adrian's Digital Basement

I worked in a computer store in the early 90s (while I was in high school) and I remember seeing one of these come through the store. I was so intrigued by it! It was hooked to a Mac and until this video, I had no idea it could also work on the PC! So cool! Even more wild is back in 2017, a friend saw these on the street and asked if I wanted them: http://imgur.com/a/rjQXAo4 Of course I said yes as I can't let a CRT get trashed! Yep one was the pivot color and one the pivot monochrome! Both had been rained on (it is Portland after all) but both worked. I had no idea these worked on the PC and gave them to a friend who was a Mac guy. They went on to be used by him! I did try a regular VGA cord but it didn't work. (And you had mentioned it needed a special cord) The color monitor had the Mac DB15 still attached which my friend used. Anyway fascinating monitor and great video showing it off!

Ðementation

Wow, I cant believe you got one of these. We had one at my company back in the 90s. They were terrible ! But computer companies were throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck.

Asaf Sagi

Oddware episode about a display that goes both ways. Happy pride month, y'all!

Vladimir Vyun

Wow, that's cool. I've had a rotating LCD monitor in mid-late 2000s. But a rotating CRT monitor? That's new to me.

Akselmo

Had somewhat crappy friday, this will cheer me up!

Anonymous

My setup at home is a 32 inch ultrawide, and 2 27 inch monitors. One is in Portrait mode, and I'll never go back It's SO worth it.

JockeTF

Great video! But, perhaps an epilepsy warning is in order for this one?

Anonymous

That CRT is so cool! But damn the noise it makes when you rotate it makes my skin crawls...

LazyGameReviews
>>62072494

From what I gather, certain professional applications were said to include support for it from 1992 to 1994 or so. I don't know if they followed through on the marketing promises though.

LazyGameReviews
>>62080255

Sure would! I might have to test it out on a newer system that allows manual rotating of the OS through software, then plop some MAME gameplay on here

LazyGameReviews
>>62087535

Ahh dang, too bad you don't have them anymore but at least they were saved! Yeah I haven't seen if the Mac Pivots work on the PC, or vice versa, since there were specific MultiView cards released for both PC and Mac sides of things and Radius's monitors for each platform were sold separately. It would be fun to try though, presumably after putting together a VGA-DB15 cable with the proper pinout.

LazyGameReviews
>>62092647

Curious what was terrible about them! Seems to me like a highly useful and capable display for '91

LazyGameReviews
>>62111078

Imagine what it was like before I lubed it up. The noise was so awful I thought something was broken!

Tyler Kurth

I have two portrait monitors with a landscape monitor sandwiched between them and I am certain it is the most Ideal screen orientations to have. Great vid!

Anonymous

I never realized that the cursor blink rate in DOS is tied to the refresh rate of the screen. It makes intuitive sense, but I never thought about it.

LazyGameReviews
>>62128185

Indeed! Not something that's usually obvious unless you're swapping back and forth between refresh rates :)

Asaf Sagi

That air hockey game brought back memories. I had forgotten all about it, so thanks for that!

LazyGameReviews
>>62153422

Sure thing! Also made a video about it, although that was over a decade ago now :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjV6sA4TjP4

Seth C

Exceptional video sir- will the SGI 1600SW be next? Now that monitor had a wacky card and required resolution. Also would have been great to see this monitor on top of a Mac IIFX based on how rare both were at the time.

Anonymous

Clint you should have filmed this in portrait mode.... Excellent video, your ability to keep my interest for nearly half hour in a video about a monitor is amazing as usual.

Magnus Köhler

Cool monitor, cool shirt, cool crab and cool Technology Connections. All in all a very cool video.

LazyGameReviews
>>62209559

Hehe, I genuinely considered it, and even shot some test footage in portrait. I just hate how it looks on *EVERY* device but a phone. Plus, I'd have to re-do almost every single shot since they were composed for 16:9 and not 9:16, so I end up with tons of black empty space on the top and bottom regardless.

LazyGameReviews
>>62208375

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed! I'm not familiar with that one, but I wonder if it would pair well with the SGI O2 that I have. Been meaning to cover that one for years.

Anonymous

This is the first video i get to watch after becoming a pateron?! AMAZING! its so cool (and i also noticed you watched technology connections hurricane lamp video >>)

SuperTekBoy

Is that the same Entex that Siemens bought in the early 2000s? https://https://www.cnet.com/news/siemens-acquires-entex-to-push-into-u-s-services-market/.cnet.com/news/siemens-acquires-entex-to-push-into-u-s-services-market/