warmech
Well-known member
Woke up yesterday morning and scrolled through marketplace posts on Facebook while enjoying my coffee and came across a post that caught my eye: "Antique Macintosh Computer - Make Offer" I figured, "Oh great, a $1000 Mac Plus that's yellowed to all hell," but was stunned to see an SE form factor... with the name on the left side of the bezel. That wasn't the part that really had my attention, though. The photo of the back just barely caught the expansion port, which was populated with a DA15 connector - that had my attention.
"Screw it," I thought, and made an offer for $100. I figured "they knew what they had" and were going to ask a fortune for it, but they said okay and asked when I could be there; I told them I'd be there in an hour, the amount of time it would take me to walk to my car and book it across the county. One trip to the boondocks later, and I was talking to the lady who made the post. She said she hadn't tested it because they were just clearing out some of her mom's old things and were about to just toss it out, but decided to throw it on Facebook just to see if anyone was interested. I realized I may have offered too much once I saw the state of the thing, but she offered to find a cable to test it with. Against my better judgement (never test in person) I accepted and, as should have been expected for the environment it came from, it didn't power on - no chime, no CRT charge up, no nothing. The lady was super nice and offered to lower the price to $75, a price I was more than happy with. I brought my toolbag with me and (once I paid and walked back to my car) took the back cover off. Lo and behold, my diligence paid off: inside the case was something I'd been waiting to come across for years now - a Radius 030 Color Pivot card. The logic board was not battery bombed, but had a lot of capacitor gunk to mitigate. The corrosion doesn't look terrible, but will need some work.
Once I got home, I pulled the card and hard drive dropped them into my working SE/30 and fired it up. Behold, the glory of an external color display on a compact Mac...
Now to embark upon something I've wanted to do for years: get MYST running on an SE/30.
"Screw it," I thought, and made an offer for $100. I figured "they knew what they had" and were going to ask a fortune for it, but they said okay and asked when I could be there; I told them I'd be there in an hour, the amount of time it would take me to walk to my car and book it across the county. One trip to the boondocks later, and I was talking to the lady who made the post. She said she hadn't tested it because they were just clearing out some of her mom's old things and were about to just toss it out, but decided to throw it on Facebook just to see if anyone was interested. I realized I may have offered too much once I saw the state of the thing, but she offered to find a cable to test it with. Against my better judgement (never test in person) I accepted and, as should have been expected for the environment it came from, it didn't power on - no chime, no CRT charge up, no nothing. The lady was super nice and offered to lower the price to $75, a price I was more than happy with. I brought my toolbag with me and (once I paid and walked back to my car) took the back cover off. Lo and behold, my diligence paid off: inside the case was something I'd been waiting to come across for years now - a Radius 030 Color Pivot card. The logic board was not battery bombed, but had a lot of capacitor gunk to mitigate. The corrosion doesn't look terrible, but will need some work.
Once I got home, I pulled the card and hard drive dropped them into my working SE/30 and fired it up. Behold, the glory of an external color display on a compact Mac...
Now to embark upon something I've wanted to do for years: get MYST running on an SE/30.