The Zigintosh SE/47 lives!

[Huxley]

Hey all! It's now past 3:30am local time and I'm basically a zombie at this point, but I had to take a moment to share that after several hours of painstaking work, my Macintosh SE/30 has been almost hilariously upgraded: a new 4XDC power supply from @tt powering a tower of @zigzagjoe's upgrades: a 47MHz Booster 2.0 + NuCF storage card + 30Video greyscale rig, all stacked like some sort of retro-computing Turducken.

There were a few fiddly moments along the way and some odd glitches I haven't quite figured out yet (i.e., when I boot Mac OS 7.5.5, the menu bar colors are inverted and all the pull-down menus are grey, but none of this happens under 7.1), but overall I'm astonished by how smoothly it all came together.

As you can see in this short video, I'm partway through the process of copying everything from my SCSI2SD boot volume over to the NuCF - once that's done, I'll be retiring the SCSI2SD altogether, and probably replacing it with a ZuluSCSI just for the WiFi capability. I did initially experiment with trying to find a way to also preserve my MacCon ethernet card in the machine, but there's just no realistic way I could find to do it.

This is the culmination of literally decades of daydreaming, going back to when I was a kid in the '90s. Thanks to Joe and TT for making these remarkable upgrades available to someone like me!

Huxley
View attachment IMG_2522.jpeg

 

[naruse]

pretty pretty nice

 

[s_pupp]

Great machine!

In the late ‘80’s, I marvelled at the speed and performance of the SE/30 I was using in the lab for programming purposes (and to play Test Drive during lunch). To go home and work on the software using my Mac Plus was always a let-down.

An SE/30 with a 47MHz Booster and other upgrades you have would have blown my socks off! Test Drive with a grayscale card would have been so much more fun than it was in 1bit B&W.

 

[zigzagjoe]

Glad you're enjoying my stuff

Regarding the inverted colors, I seem to recall that happening when the card PRAM values didn't match system 7.5's stored monitor resource. On reboot, it'd synchronize and be fine on all subsequent boots. Do you have a PRAM battery?

 

[Huxley]

pretty pretty nice

How I'm feeling right now

Great machine!

In the late ‘80’s, I marvelled at the speed and performance of the SE/30 I was using in the lab for programming purposes (and to play Test Drive during lunch). To go home and work on the software using my Mac Plus was always a let-down.

An SE/30 with a 47MHz Booster and other upgrades you have would have blown my socks off! Test Drive with a grayscale card would have been so much more fun than it was in 1bit B&W.

Good call! Once I finish tinkering with the hardware I'll give Test Drive a try

Glad you're enjoying my stuff

Regarding the inverted colors, I seem to recall that happening when the card PRAM values didn't match system 7.5's stored monitor resource. On reboot, it'd synchronize and be fine on all subsequent boots. Do you have a PRAM battery?

I do have a fresh/modern PRAM battery installed and the odd inverted-colors thing persisted after a few PRAM reset cycles. I'll keep playing with it but if anyone else has a suggestion, I'd be grateful for tips!

I'm totally open to doing a fresh 7.5.5 install if that would help. As of now I've only done a "brute force" / drag-and-drop migration of my SCSI2SD System 7.5.5 System Folder and other files to the NuCF - all my attempts to use Norton Utilities or FWB Toolkit to do a more elegant backup of files failed, as they can't seem to make sense of the NuCF storage. Is it a SCSI device? Is it a volume? Who knows!

 

[jmacz]

+1 point for both the use of Zigintosh as well as Turducken (one of these days I will find the time to attempt to prepare one of these for Thanksgiving).

 

[zigzagjoe]

How I'm feeling right now

Good call! Once I finish tinkering with the hardware I'll give Test Drive a try

I do have a fresh/modern PRAM battery installed and the odd inverted-colors thing persisted after a few PRAM reset cycles. I'll keep playing with it but if anyone else has a suggestion, I'd be grateful for tips!

I'm totally open to doing a fresh 7.5.5 install if that would help. As of now I've only done a "brute force" / drag-and-drop migration of my SCSI2SD System 7.5.5 System Folder and other files to the NuCF - all my attempts to use Norton Utilities or FWB Toolkit to do a more elegant backup of files failed, as they can't seem to make sense of the NuCF storage. Is it a SCSI device? Is it a volume? Who knows!

If it doesn't sort itself out, you can try is open the monitors control panel and toggle color depth. Opening the options dialog and closing without changes may also force it. (I can't recall, it's been a moment)

 

[Huxley]

If it doesn't sort itself out, you can try is open the monitors control panel and toggle color depth. Opening the options dialog and closing without changes may also force it. (I can't recall, it's been a moment)

I'm at the point where I think I've tried everything I can think of and/or what you've suggested:

• Open / close Monitors Control Panel + reboot
• Open / close Monitors Control Panel > Options + reboot
• Change color bit depth + reboot
  • Menu bar and menus look correct in 1-bit (black & white) mode, inverted in all other bit-depths
• Change gamma profiles + reboot
• Change resolution + reboot
• Set different desktop patterns + reboot
• Zapped PRAM 237 times (more or less)

So far, nothing seems to put the menu bar + menus back into 'normal mode' under System 7.5.5. I actually dig the "quasi dark mode" I'm stuck in, but I'd really like it to be optional - especially because greyed-out menu items are almost impossible to read in this inverted mode.

Anyone else have any ideas on how I can get back to normal? Maybe some old shareware app for tinkering with display settings beyond what Apple's allowed (and perhaps thus resetting the 'hidden' attribute that seems to be borked)?

 

[zigzagjoe]

I'm at the point where I think I've tried everything I can think of and/or what you've suggested:

• Open / close Monitors Control Panel + reboot
• Open / close Monitors Control Panel > Options + reboot
• Change color bit depth + reboot
  • Menu bar and menus look correct in 1-bit (black & white) mode, inverted in all other bit-depths
• Change gamma profiles + reboot
• Change resolution + reboot
• Set different desktop patterns + reboot
• Zapped PRAM 237 times (more or less)

So far, nothing seems to put the menu bar + menus back into 'normal mode' under System 7.5.5. I actually dig the "quasi dark mode" I'm stuck in, but I'd really like it to be optional - especially because greyed-out menu items are almost impossible to read in this inverted mode.

Anyone else have any ideas on how I can get back to normal? Maybe some old shareware app for tinkering with display settings beyond what Apple's allowed (and perhaps thus resetting the 'hidden' attribute that seems to be borked)?

Mind posting some pictures? Also of the extensions loading screen, as that is the one I remember also having inverted colors on the window.

There was some discussion around the screen resource in the system file in another thread, it could be possible it's unable to be updated for some reason. Might need to manually remove that. Also, can't hurt to run a disk check.

 

[nathall]

Anyone else have any ideas on how I can get back to normal? Maybe some old shareware app for tinkering with display settings beyond what Apple's allowed (and perhaps thus resetting the 'hidden' attribute that seems to be borked)?

“ClickChange” is a control panel I use under System 6 to modify the look of the UI on my IIsi. It allows for all kinds of customizations, including UI controls and menu bar/menu color. I tend to create new “themes” for myself every season. I have no idea if it works under System 7, but you could try it. ”Summer 2025”:

 

[Huxley]

Mind posting some pictures? Also of the extensions loading screen, as that is the one I remember also having inverted colors on the window.

There was some discussion around the screen resource in the system file in another thread, it could be possible it's unable to be updated for some reason. Might need to manually remove that. Also, can't hurt to run a disk check.

Good tips - I'll see what I can do...

“ClickChange” is a control panel I use under System 6 to modify the look of the UI on my IIsi. It allows for all kinds of customizations, including UI controls and menu bar/menu color. I tend to create new “themes” for myself every season. I have no idea if it works under System 7, but you could try it. ”Summer 2025”:

View attachment 90570

Great suggestion - I'll give this a shot!

 

[Huxley]

Update: I’m very pleased to report that the suggestion from @nathall worked - installing ClickChange let me set the menu colors to their proper values! I haven’t tried it with ClickChange uninstalled yet (I quite like this app!) but it’s a perfectly good solution for me. Hooray!

 

[zigzagjoe]

Oh, I see now in that first post you did have a picture of the loading screen and it was normal. I guess something else was afoot after all. Interesting?

 

[Huxley]

Oh, I see now in that first post you did have a picture of the loading screen and it was normal. I guess something else was afoot after all. Interesting?

Yeah, whatever the glitch is, it really does seem to only impact the menu bar and drop-down menus - everything else has been smoooooth so far!

 

[nathall]

Awesome! Glad to hear it worked with System 7.5.5.

 

[adespoton]

+1 point for both the use of Zigintosh as well as Turducken (one of these days I will find the time to attempt to prepare one of these for Thanksgiving).

I vote for preparing the Zigintosh!

 

[superjer2000]

Greatest retro computing quote ever: "like some sort of retro-computing Turducken."

 

[Huxley]

Greatest retro computing quote ever: "like some sort of retro-computing Turducken."

Please have that engraved on my tombstone

 

[iantm]

Hey all! It's now past 3:30am local time and I'm basically a zombie at this point, but I had to take a moment to share that after several hours of painstaking work, my Macintosh SE/30 has been almost hilariously upgraded: a new 4XDC power supply from @tt powering a tower of @zigzagjoe's upgrades: a 47MHz Booster 2.0 + NuCF storage card + 30Video greyscale rig, all stacked like some sort of retro-computing Turducken.

There were a few fiddly moments along the way and some odd glitches I haven't quite figured out yet (i.e., when I boot Mac OS 7.5.5, the menu bar colors are inverted and all the pull-down menus are grey, but none of this happens under 7.1), but overall I'm astonished by how smoothly it all came together.

As you can see in this short video, I'm partway through the process of copying everything from my SCSI2SD boot volume over to the NuCF - once that's done, I'll be retiring the SCSI2SD altogether, and probably replacing it with a ZuluSCSI just for the WiFi capability. I did initially experiment with trying to find a way to also preserve my MacCon ethernet card in the machine, but there's just no realistic way I could find to do it.

This is the culmination of literally decades of daydreaming, going back to when I was a kid in the '90s. Thanks to Joe and TT for making these remarkable upgrades available to someone like me!

Huxley
View attachment 90264

Fantastic. I'm just starting this journey, but I feel that 90s kid vibe. I could have never afforded an SE/30 back then, but I got the middle school giggles when I recapped the analog board and it booted with clean video. I love being on this precipice of learning and not knowing exactly wtf I'm doing — I'm just doing it. Congrats on the restoration!

 

[is2scooby]

What a great way to put it! I’m also stoked there are such great engineers/creators that allow me to muck about above my weight class and succeed in pulling off an upgrade/repair that I probably have no business performing. ;-p