I recently acquired a Nubus Radius Thunder IV GX 1600, and it’s running nicely in my Macintosh IIfx, which I keep around for poorly defined reasons.

The primary reason for writing this article was to state that it does work under System 6, or at least 6.0.8. Running 1600 x 1200 in 24 bit color in a operating system released at the same time as Windows 2.0 is certainly amusing. However I couldn’t get QuickDraw acceleration to work, so the desktop felt sluggish, with acres of 24bit pixels taking literal seconds to redraw. Looking at System 6 desktop at 1600 x 1200 really does remind you how much real-estate this used to be. Larger default fonts have blunted the vast feel of such resolutions.

Under System 7.5.5 on the same box it’s a different story, QuickDraw acceleration moves things along nicely on the desktop, though the Control Panel apps are a little quirky. PhotoShop 3.0 with the PhotoEngine plugin performs well, adding some MMX like zip to the standard filters.

Unfortunately it’s not all roses. My KVM setup or Mac->VGA adaptor seems to add a little ghosting at 1600x1200x65hz, and there is a bit of flicker from time to time, and sync-on-green issues seem to randomly kick in. And if I’m being totally honest, a lot of vintage software starts running into issues with a desktop that large, and most games chug badly.