SE Questions

[Aoresteen]

Note: I did a search for "SE" and "SE/30" and got no hits. I think something is wrong with the search function (no way could it be an operator error : )

I never had an SE back in the day and I have a few questions:

1. With the orgininal SE Dual Floppy (800k) and single floppy w/hard drive, were the cases the same? Did the hard drive model have a piece of plastic that blocked the floppy slot or was the case made for a single floppy?

2. Will a later (SDHD 1.4 mb) motherboard support two internal 1.4 mb floppy drives?

3. Will an SE/30 motherboard work in an SE case with the SE power supply?

Thanks!

 

[II2II]

1. The only difference between the cases of an SE with a hard-drive and one without a hard drive was a removable piece of plastic covering the upper floppy drive slot (and maybe some print on the front of the case and rear label).

2. It should support dual internal 1.44 MB floppy drives if it has support for 1.44 MB floppy drives. (Any SE mother board can do so if you replace one chip (the SWIM?) and the two ROMs.)

3. Yes. AFAIK, the power supplies are identical (though I can be wrong).

 

[gobabushka]

anybody kno where u can find the replacment chips. i want to upgrade my se to superdrive status

 

[Mac128]

1. Actually, aside from the stylistic differences there are three significant differences in the chassis. The original SEs metal chassis is too low to accommodate the SE/30 board. There was a revision to that chassis at some point for the SE and a third revision to it for the SE/30 to accommodate the larger PDS cards.

2. Apple claims in their technical manuals that the SE FDHD motherboard was made with only one FDD connector like the SE/30, however I have never seen one of these. All of the SE FDHD boards I have seen have had two connectors. Most likely all of the SE logicboards will have the two FDD connectors and yes it should support 2 1.4MB FDDs. I am told they sold this as a standard entry-level configuration.

3. Yes but there are some issues, namely which chassis you are using.

I know this has been discussed numerous times on here, but I just tried to search for SE/30 in Compact Macs and it turned up no entries. THen I tried SE and again nothing. SE30 produced about 6. Does this seem odd to anybody else?

 

[Scott Baret]

The SE FDHD has two FDHD connectors on its logic board. I would know because I once bought an SE FDHD at a garage sale with twin FDHD drives and it was an original FDHD model--not some upgraded regular SE.

 

[II2II]

I guess the first thing to figure out is which chassis you have. Personally, every SE that I've seen had an chassis that appeared to be identical to the SE/30. But I have also heard that some SE chassis did not have a hole to accomodate the vertical PDS cards found in the SE/30. (I've only seen one SE PDS card, and it was parallel to the SE mainboard IIRC.)

Does that mesh with what you know?

 

[Unknown_K]

I have an SE that is different from my SE FDHD and SE30 metalwise. The SE FDHD is pretty much the same as the SE/30 inside, the slot where the PDS card would go is the same and the riser where you would screw an ethernet card input is screwed to the sheetmetal. On the SE the bracket for holding the network is spot welded, and the PDS slot is different in length. The motherboard also seems much tighter to the sheetmetal, so a SE30 MB would probably not fit because of the SIMMS sticking out too far.

The SE top floppy opening on mine is closed and hole where the HD led shines through, thic can be removed if you want to do a 2nd internal floppy.

 

[Aoresteen]

Thanks all! Good info.

Question: Can the SE/30 motherboard support two internal floppy drives?

I know the SE/30 has a single floppy connector on the MOBO but can a dual floppy cable be used like in a PC?

 

[Mac128]

Question: Can the SE/30 motherboard support two internal floppy drives?

I know the SE/30 has a single floppy connector on the MOBO but can a dual floppy cable be used like in a PC?

No. The SE/30 does not physically have the ability to decode a second drive. It does this via a specialized GLU chip which splits the ENBL1 signal from the IWM/SWIM. The Macintosh Portable is the only other Mac with the custom GLU which allows support for 3 total FDDs.

I have an SE that is different from my SE FDHD and SE30 metalwise.

Here is the step-by-step for the official Apple OEM SE-to-SE/30 upgrade kit, which involves replacing the chassis and the front bezel. It is likely by the time they issued the SE-FDHD that Apple decided to include the identical internals so all one had to do was slide in the logicboard upgrade.

http://home24.inet.tele.dk/ccadams/se/se30.html

 

[Aoresteen]

The Macintosh Portable is the only other Mac with the custom GLU which allows support for 3 total FDDs.

What happens if you hook up three USB floppy drives on a USB equiped Mac? I've only had one on an iMac.

 

[Quadraman]

The Macintosh Portable is the only other Mac with the custom GLU which allows support for 3 total FDDs.

What happens if you hook up three USB floppy drives on a USB equiped Mac? I've only had one on an iMac.

This is what happens

http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

 

[Mac128]

What happens if you hook up three USB floppy drives on a USB equiped Mac?

Wow. You guys are so literal. The last time I checked this was the Compact Mac forum, the last one of which was discontinued in 1994 and I'm pretty sure it didn't have USB.

 

[~tl]

Note: I did a search for "SE" and "SE/30" and got no hits. I think something is wrong with the search function (no way could it be an operator error : )

IIRC, the search function doesn't index words shorter than 3 characters, and I'm guessing it counts "SE/30" as being the same as "SE 30". Bit of a pain, but that's just the way phpBB does things!

[)] ]'>

 

[Aoresteen]

Wow. You guys are so literal. The last time I checked this was the Compact Mac forum, the last one of which was discontinued in 1994 and I'm pretty sure it didn't have USB.

Yes, it was a bit lame Sorry! But inquirering minds want to know!

I'm a floppy guy! I bought IBM PC DOS 7.0 and found out it didn't work with 4 floppy drives. IBM advertised it to be compatable with DOS 3.3 so I made them fix it under warrenty (DOS 3.3 has no problems with 4 floppy drives). It was the LAST fix they ever did to PC DOS! I know it cost them far more than the $60 I paid for PC DOS. I reported it on the day before support expired on PC-DOS 7.

I'm thinking of building a hot rodded SE box with dual internal floppies.

 

[Charlieman]

I know this has been discussed numerous times on here, but I just tried to search for SE/30 in Compact Macs and it turned up no entries. THen I tried SE and again nothing. SE30 produced about 6. Does this seem odd to anybody else?

Try searching for the string "SE//30" to see if it is a Unix regular expressions glitch.