Macintosh Powerbook 1400 screen question

[Technoguy]

Hello, everybody. I have a question regarding my beloved Mac Powerbook 1400c/133. After many years of opening and closing, the casing of the monitor assembly literally exploded in my face, rendering the screen/ lid useless. I looked on eBay for a new monitor and found that the two that are for sale are from a Powerbook 1400cs. If you are not familiar with the Powerbook 1400 series, let me explain. The 1400c uses an active matrix display, while the 1400cs uses a passive matrix. My question is: What is the visual difference between the two? I know that active matrix LCDs are supposed to produce a much sharper image that can be viewed from a wider range of angles, but would I still be able to play games and such with a passive display? Since I have never used a Powerbook with a Passive LCD, I don't know what the difference is. If someone can help me, It would be much appreciated.

[eeun]

My memory is pretty fuzzy, but I believe the cs version didn't refresh as quickly causing some ghosting, and the colour saturation wasn't quite as good. Fine for business applications, sucky for games.

 

Was it just the plastic frame supporting the LCD that broke? If so, you may be able to transplant your current LCD into the passive LCD's shell. Just a thought...I have no memory of what the internal case plastics were like and whether they differed between the two models.

[Technoguy]

Brilliant idea! That's exactly what I'll do. Thanks for your help, eeun.

[Osgeld]

there is 2 problems with a DSTN passive screen

 

They are hard to see, their contrast is much lower, their saturation is much lower and their viewing angle is pretty much direct infront of you and not much else

 

They blur like a mother .... Its fine if you spend all day in claris, but I could never stand them in games and would hook my laptops up to a external monitor for playing games

 

Think of it like a gameboy or game gear or lynx screen, but larger so all the bad stuff seems like its more

[+thegoldenband]

Back in the early 2000s, whenever I was on the road, I did a lot of gaming on my PowerBook 1400cs with iNES and (to a lesser extent) Stella. The ghosting was too severe for shooters and some platformers, so I mostly played RPGs and strategy games. I beat Dragon Warrior II & III, Earthbound, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Destiny of an Emperor on that machine...nice memories!

 

The 1400cs also had a great keyboard, and was fairly popular with writers long after it became obsolete. I still have mine, but it's defunct under a barrage of hardware problems (bad audio, dead battery, won't boot, problems with either the screen or the graphics chip, etc.).

[Technoguy]

My mother bought this computer back in '99 or '00 for writing. She has this habbit of buying way more computer than she really needs. That was actually a good thing for young me. I played some of my first video games on that thing when I was a toddler.