Tag: Apple Macintosh Compact Mac Vintage

Over the weekend, I had a closer look at the SE/30. As it did not come with any mouse or keyboard, I had to use a set from my PowerMac 8500 AV. Both computers use an ADB port keyboard and mouse.

 

 

 

As I happily plugged in everything, I was disappointed to find that the rear of the macintosh read ‘Macintosh SE’. The specs on the rear sticker was 1 mb ram with two 800k floppy drives. My dream of owning an SE/30 was going to be a dream for a while longer.

 

 

 

 

This was a little puzzling. Could the macintosh have started life as an SE and later upgraded to a SE/30? After all, Apple did offer an upgrade for the original macintosh 128k and 512k. The upgrade kit consisted of an upgraded logicboard, floppy drive and a macintosh Plus rear case.  

 

 

 

 

The good news was that the Macintosh SE powered up to a blinking flopping icon. So at least it still kind of works. The screen is still bright and sharp but there are some vertical lines. Upon closer inspection, there was a little flashing green light through the front ventilation gaps. If this macintosh was upgraded with an internal hard drive than perhaps the hard drive is already faulty. 

 

The next step will be to take it apart and have a look at what’s under the hood.

Launched on 19th January 1989, it was the most powerful of all the Compact Macintosh models. Inside the case was a 9 inch black and white screen with a 16 mhz 68030 processor, 1mb of ram, 40 mb hard drive and a 1.44mb floppy drive.

In those days, floppy disks came in SD (Single Sided), DS (Double Sided) and HS (High Density) formats. The storage size are 400 kb, 800kb and 1.44 mb respectively. The SE/30 had a Superdrive and could read all formats. It’s a great machine to copy data and troubleshoot older macs.

Internal hard drives came standard at 40 mb but there was an option to upgrade it to 80 mb. To replace or upgrade the drives, you will need to find one with a SCSI interface. The Macintosh SE/30 can take up to a large 3.5 inch half height SCSI drive. 

There were 8 ram slots allowing it to be upgraded to a gigantic 128 mb through 16 mb 30 pin SIMMs. For the system to access more than 8 mb of ram, you will need to install a software patch from Apple called Mode32. The reason for this was that the ROMs in the SE/30 contained 24-bit code thus rendering it impossible to run 32-bit applications.

Although this computer had a black and white screen, there was an expansion slot. The PDS slot had 120 pins allowing the option of adding a network card or colour graphics card. This expansion slot is different from that found in the Macintosh SE.

As one of the most upgradeble and powerful compact Macintosh, many were used as servers or workstations. It’s usability sure makes it a must have for every Mac collector.

After work, I rushed down to meet the person who was giving away the Macintosh SE/30. There were three different compact macs available. The other two were Macintosh Classics. I went for the SE/30 as it was the most powerful compact mac.

Upon arriving at the address, I was greeted by the three macs sitting in a row on top of the shoe cabinet. They looked so cute together. The previous owner said they had been in storage for quite a long time and two were still working the last time it was tested.

 

 

 

The shell of the SE/30 has turned yellow with age as compared to the two Classics which looked cleaner. There were also no power cords, mouse and keyboard. There is a little sticker at the top with some numbers. It was probably an asset number and this vintage mac must have started life in an office or institution.