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New to Macs with SE/30.. what games are compatible?

Hello! 

I have never had a Mac before and got a SE/30 with OS 7.5.5.  I'm hoping to play classic games and have been to Macintosh Garden but it is not clear to me how to sort games or determine which will work with my system.

How can I find a list of the games that will work with my system?  What games are recommended?

Is there any way to get older titles like King of Chicago, Load Runner, etc.. to work with my system?  It seems like they are made for OS 1-5.

Where is the best location to download games for the SE/30?

Thanks!!

 
Because the screen is so small, you really need to go look for games designed with this resolution.

When i was in college some 25 years‘ ago, I played Risk, Prince of Persia, SimCity, Crystal Quest, NetTrek, Galactic Conquest (I think), Shufflepuck Cafe, one in a castle whose name escapes me, on compact macs - SEs and Pluses mostly.

Look out for them on eBay, Craigslist or the local auction site.

If you are new to macs, then you should be aware that you have a 25 year old mac. They weren‘t designed to last this long and bits might start to fail soon. Of utmost importance to have your PRAM battery checked. Some of these batteries - the red and white Maxell ones in particular - have been known to leak and damage the motherboard. It is something that you can do yourself, but you must read up first about opening up compact macs and the dangers involved. You will need a mac cracker - a long Torx screwdriver. You may well need to get the capacitors on the motherboard and/or analogue board replaced. My external SCSI and internal floppy capability disappeared last year and uniserver (of this parish) did a good job of bringing it back to life again.

On that note, your mac should have at least 4MB SIMM RAM in it. It can take up 128MB, which is franky overkill but also very achievable, if not very practical. I have 80MB in mine and I use 60MB of it to create a RAM disk.

There are several ways to get software onto your SE/30. You can invest in an expensive PDS ethernet card and create a network with another mac with an OS before Mac OS X 10.5. You can also acquire a SCSI zip-drive and a zip-drive for your other computer. With teh aid of 95MB zip-disk, you can use sneaker net to get software across. You will probably need software like Basilisk II and Transmac to allow your other computer to read floppies, for there‘s a good chance that the floppy drive in your SE/30 will need cleaning (after 25 years‘ of dust etc). If you have another classic mac, you can connect the two with LocalTalk but Local Talk is very, very slow.

There is a lot of good info on this site. Do be sure to read it.

 
The cool thing about Mac Garden is that you can select a year and get a list of all the games made that year. Look for games around 1989,also, look for games with a black and white picture. Here's another website that has a small collection of neat games including one that is not carried by Mac Garden: http://www.applemachome.com/Downloads.html

To answer your second question, you should be able to dual boot 6.0.8 and 7.5: http://www.jagshouse.com/dualboot.html

 
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Thanks everyone!  I had the motherboard re-capped, cleaned and new battery so it should be good to go.

I also have the Mac Floppy Emulator from 'big messowires' and it works great.

Will pretty much all the old software work with 6.0.8 and my SE30?  King of Chicago and others say OS 1-5.

 
Don't forget:

The Duel

Dark Castle

Crystal Quest

On the site you mentioned, if it says that the vmac emulator is compatible, the game'll probably work.  Have fun.

Try it - it probably will work with a newer os.  Those are usually minimum requirements. 

Most of the games mentioned above will work on system 6.0.x

Thanks everyone!  I had the motherboard re-capped, cleaned and new battery so it should be good to go.

I also have the Mac Floppy Emulator from 'big messowires' and it works great.

Will pretty much all the old software work with 6.0.8 and my SE30?  King of Chicago and others say OS 1-5.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
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