My recent find: 1 SE, 2 SE/30s

[sje]

From their twenty year stint in a New England barn, I procured one Mac SE and two Mac SE/30s.  I was mostly interested in the SE/30s, as I had worked with one back in the day when one cost US$6,000 and was affordable for my employer but not me.

The SE was missing its second floppy drive, and as expected, the soldered battery was as dead as a door nail.  I am undecided if I should get an internal HD for the machine or just send it to the junk yard.

Of the two SE/30s, the first has no sound and we all know what that means.  Its 80 MB Quantum HD has unrepairable stiction.  I'm undecided as to what to do further with this machine.  Keep it for parts?  Buy a re-cap kit?

The second SE/30, also with an 80 MB Quantum HD with unrepairable stiction, is in better shape.  I bought a decent 40 MB HD with 6.0.8 installed, replaced the SE/30 battery, and just for amusement, replaced the eight 1 MiB SIMMs with eight 16 MiB SIMMS.  Everything works, although the SIMM carriers were quite brittle and several broke.  I made repairs with zip ties and shims.  Hey, it works.

I would like to get OS 7.5.3 or some such installed on the SE/30 HD so that I can run the MODE32 extension to access all 128 MiB RAM.  Suggestions?

I also need to get decent LocalTalk connectivity to a Power Macintosh 7600 which in turn can talk to my TCP/IP LAN via 10baseT cabling; I've already got the PhoneNet adapters and wiring, but am unsure as to software specifics.

 

[Elfen]

You can run Mode32 on a system as low as 6.04. As for the three machines I say fix them all. Recap both SE/30s and replace the weak parts on all three analog boards. True that the SE is weaker than the SE/30 because it's a 68K and not a '030, it still has its usefulness.

I tend to set my machines to do specifics task until completed while I go to another machine and do work on that as well. An example of this was when I was with BizInfoPlus in 2000 - 2008 (a now long-since-dead business to business search engine), where I has up to 10 Macs (G4s & G5s) index segments the known internet to filter out for its search engine database, another to stitch the database together from the indexed files and one more Mac for other things I was doing including monitoring all the machines.

Networking the older machines is not that hard to do, but items might be difficult to acquire. The cheaper option is to get "Phone-Net" modules and some phone lines to string the machines together. The more expensive option is to get Apple's LocalTalk modules and wiring.

For what ever reason you do not want the SE, you can fix it up and clean it and then sell it. It will fetch you a pretty penny, especially in the UK/Europe where things are higher priced.

 

[Sherry Haibara]

I guess somebody could be interested in that SE!

Sure, it needs an hard drive, but it's not a huge problem... It might need a precautionary recap, though, as we all know those caps like to fail. 

So I'd say - don't throw that SE into the recycle bin, it can still be good for someone! If you don't really want to fix it, I'm sure someone will (at least I'd do that, if only shipping wasn't such an overkill). 

 

[CompuNurd]

Usefulness? SE? Wow, I didn't think those went together in this decade; I just collect em for their historical significance, and that I enjoy repairing and collecting vintage hardware.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Hard to say, some things are just useful. I get more use out of my Newton eMate than any other old Apple product I own. Amazing for keeping a journal in.

That being said, I try to collect Macs that I think I could use, be it for games, a spare desktop, writing, etc. My Cube serves as a music server.

 

[CC_333]

I thought MODE32 required a minimum of System 7.0?

...checking...

Nope, MODE32 was for System 7.0 trough 7.5.5 ONLY. However, there exists Connectix Maxima, which enables 32-bit mode under System 6.

c

 

[Juror22]

If you aren't ready to recap the first SE/30 (the one with no sound) I would at least uncap (de-cap?) it and clean the board so it doesn't suffer further damage.

Just my two cents.  Nice conquest by the way.  A barn - wow!

there exists Connectix Maxima, which enables 32-bit mode under System 6

I had no idea that existed!  That is pretty cool

 

[sje]

Thanks to all for your replies.

At present I'm waiting for four 128 MiB RAM DIMMs to show up for my PM 7600 to bring its memory up to 1 GiB.  The VRAM and cache are already maxed.  Once I get the final RAM chips installed, I can close up the machine and proceed with using it to make some OS 7 boot and utility diskettes for the now revived SE/30.  (Not exactly sure which files are best here.)  Once OS 7 is on the SE/30 HD, I can use a pair of PhoneNet connectors to network the SE/30 and the PM 7600.

I will need to set up two software bridges: one for the AppleTalk/PhoneNet connection from the SE/30 to the PM 7600, and one for the TCP/IP/Cat5 connection from the PM 7600 to the home LAN.  Might need some help here as I haven't done much with either AppleTalk or PhoneNet network since my Mac Plus era (1986-1998).

I have gotten the PM 7600 to connect to my router to get an IP addresss via DHCP, although I'd rather have it have a fixed address.  I have proven this to work by havng the PM 7600 running OS 8 to synchronize its clock with Apple's time server.

I want to get all of the above done before deciding what to do with the SE and the other SE/30.  I would like to revive both, but this will mean buying two more hard drives for internal mounting.  Getting these in good shape and with a warranty is not cheap.

 

[sje]

I might mention how all this got started; a sort of cautionary tale.  It was a few months ago that I came across several boxes of 800 KiB floppies, entirely unreadable by any of my hardware and which contained a lot of my stuff from the Old Days.  Having had a lot of electronics experience including repairs and upgrades of classic Macs, I didn't hesitate to buy a bunch of old Apple gear which included the aforementioned three computers.

Perhaps I was too confident that I could fix any stiction problems.  And maybe I should have gotten just the PM 7600 (purchased after the three Macs) instead.  But I kind of like the old 68K Macs from having used them so long that I felt I could make space for at least one of them in my home (and in my budget).

Anyway, among my old diskettes are some software development tools including a Think C compiler.  I've been busy writing some totally new software and I'd thought it would be interesting to host it on a classic Mac just to prove the portability of the code.

 

[MJ313]

Might I inquire which New England state you reside in? Or was it just the computers that resided in New England?

 

[sje]

Ah, my location is not important; please allow me to retain an air of mystery.  Thank you.

====

I've gotten the four 128 MiB DIMMs for my PM7600, so now I can return to working on making some OS 7 installation diskettes.

 

[sje]

On a second examination of the SE main board, I've noticed that the replacement of the soldered battery was performed at least once.

I'm having no luck with getting a good attachment of any wiring to the terminals of a 3.6 V 1/2 AA battery.  If I'm going to take the SE revival any further, I'll need to get a battery holder which will fit both the battery and the board.  Does anyone have a source for one of these?

If I can't get a holder, then I'll just dump the SE and redirect the effort towards getting the second SE/30 fully working.