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Chances of finding an SE accelerator card

S

Stillwell

6502
I have the chance to buy a one owner SE w KB/mouse in good condition for $200. I want to use matlab on it and I think it requires a 68030 and I’d like to have more than 4mb ram. What are the chances of me finding an accelerator card and about what price range would be reasonable?
Even if I can’t find one, is $200 decent for that? I can post pictures if anyone wants.
 
I personally would think that for a plain-Jane SE, $200 is too much, especially if nothing has been done to it (Analog board recap, etc). That is just my opinion.
 
Are you actually looking to do work with Matlab, or is this just for fun? If (for whatever reason) you need to run an old version of Matlab for work and need real performance, I would suggest trying it under Basilisk II first (be sure to use a ROM from something in the IIx or higher range).

Otherwise, I would hold out for an actual 030 or 040 machine to run it on. And don't buy a IIvx like I just did! (ha... for my purposes I don't care how dog-slow it is, I just needed the NuBus slot, and the machine itself wasn't terribly spendy... shipping however - ouch!)

As to the SE itself, eh... yes, it does seem a bit high... check eBay for some comparables. Note that eBay does tend to run a bit high on these, but there are listings right now with lower buy-it-now prices (including shipping).

:)
 
I concur with the advice so far... $200 is on the high side for a "plain" SE...

Have you considered a Classic II? It's got a 68030 (16Mhz I believe) and can take up to 10Mb RAM. The only missing bit (which you may want for MatLab) is an FPU. I did see recently someone selling a FPU 'board for it. The Classic II has an expansion slot for a supplemental ROM/FPU, but the original ones are somewhat rare/pricey.
 
Concur with all the above: getting an SE and wanting to upgrade it to an 030 is probably, in practice, a really bad way of getting an 030 machine. Expensive, difficult and won't work work as well as just getting an 030 machine to start with.

If you really want a compact, a Classic II is a perfectly decent choice for an 030; people complain about them a lot for the terrible crime of "not being an SE/30" but unless you actually want the extra stuff an SE/30 brings, for your use case, the C II sounds like a good choice, and a lot cheaper.
 
cheesestraws said:
Concur with all the above: getting an SE and wanting to upgrade it to an 030 is probably, in practice, a really bad way of getting an 030 machine. Expensive, difficult and won't work work as well as just getting an 030 machine to start with.
Click to expand...
I can absolutely confirm all of the above.

At one point I owned both an SE and SE/30 and the SE ended up getting upgraded ahead of the SE/30 based on what I could find. In the end the SE was topped out at a 68030 @ 40MHz with 16MB of RAM, compared to the SE/30 running a 68030 @ 50MHz with 128MB of RAM. The SE certainly felt as fast, if not faster than the upgraded SE/30 but it also came with several annoying problems. I couldn't go past System 7.1 because that was the max the accelerator supported, sound "mostly" worked but there were errant distortions/pops/clicks every now and again, and very occasionally I'd get bus errors.

The biggest reason to skip the SE with an accelerator route (in my opinion) is the cost. To get this particular SE and pick up one of the increasingly hard-to-find 68030 accelerators you'd likely be looking at a similar cost to just picking up an SE/30 and getting it recapped. There were a handful of recapped SE/30s that just rolled through eBay for ~$300-400.

Any particular aversion to say a Quadra 650 or a Performa 63x? While you'd have to upgrade the Performa to a full 68040 you can find them cheap enough that you'd still probably come out ahead in terms of cost.
 
Thanks for all the advice! I have a modern computer and access to the newest version of Matlab, so I am just messing around with compacts and old versions for fun. I am trying to buy the computer locally, so that limits me. I would hate to buy something online and have it arrive smashed up. I did look again and someone very recently put up version 2 of Matlab and that actually runs on my 512k, but it's pretty bare when it comes to features.

I think I will take everyones advice and wait for an SE/30 to eventually pop up or cave and get one on eBay. I really don't like how Classic IIs look, but if I find one cheap I'll probably go for it. I'm going to stay away from non-compacts to rein in my hoarding desires. I'm kicking myself for not picking up the working SE/30 that was listed around here for cheap when I started getting into this.
 
As far as shipping, basically all of the original-form compacts are near bulletproof: with even a nominal amount of padding in a shipping box, it should arrive just fine.
 
Ask the seller to use two layers of heavy cardboard on the outside when packing the machine… and perhaps a piece of wood (thin plywood, chipboard, particle board, etc) or something similar on the face of the machine to protect the CRT from anything sharp (like the corner of a crate being shipped in the same load) from poking thru and cracking it. Something just big enough to cover the front of the machine shouldn’t be heavy enough to make a significant difference to the shipping cost.
 
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