SE/30 ROM Question

[just.in.time]

I've read a lot about people swapping out their SE/30 ROMs with those from various Macintosh II computers, as well as a Romminator (spelling?).  With Mode32 and Apple's own extension supporting the maximum 128mb of RAM, it seems like there is no reason to change the ROM on the SE/30.

That said, there must be reasons to do so or else no one would swap them.  Educate me, what are the specific reasons to change ROMs?

 

[Reasons.]

Just a couple off the top of the my head:

- Versions of Mac OS after 7.5.5 won't run on 32-bit dirty hardware like the SE/30. With a IIfx ROM or a Rominator II, you can run through Mac OS 8.1 on the SE/30.

- Mode32 isn't awful, but having one less extension in the mix to clog up the system, especially for something as mission-critical as memory addressing, is nice.

- The Rominator II has a programmable, bootable ROM disk which allows booting without a hard drive attached. Useful for diagnostics or just saving a hard drive for another computer.

- The Rominator II adds HD20 support to the SE/30. This is very useful if you've got a FloppyEMU, as you can use it to mount images up to 4 GB in off of the FloppyEMU. Makes for much easier file transfers.

All in all, the reasons for swapping the ROM have much less to do with streamlined support for 32-bit addressing and much more to do with other cool features it adds. If you just want to use more that 8 MB of RAM, you probably don't have to bother. If any of those features sound compelling, however, give it a shot. I love my Rominator II.

 

[just.in.time]

The bootable ROM disk actually sounds awesome!  I didn't realize that was a thing (aside from the Mac Classic).  Maybe 7.6.1 would be cool as well.  I plan on upgrading my system to 32mb of RAM.

Which OS/RAM combination are you running?

I'm not very confident that 8/8.1 would run very well on the SE/30 and its stock 16mhz 030 processor.  Does anyone have any experience running that configuration?

 

[Reasons.]

I'm running 7.1.1 with 68 MB of RAM. It works really nicely, and I haven't really encountered anything that I'd like to run on it that can't. I've thought about going to 7.6.1 so I can use Transmit instead of Fetch, but 7.1.1 is the right blend of snappy and feature-full. 

The ROM disk is very cool. It ships with a 5.5 MB image with an install of 7.1 and a collection of older Mac games, but I've been thinking about kicking out the cash to buy the programmer tool and making the ROM disk a recovery image (with tools like LIDO, etc.). It'd make an already nice feature even nicer.