So in the same vein as my LCIII => Q605 "mega upgrade", I decided to "dig in" and "get dirty with my SE/30!"

I got an 18 gig SCA half-height hard drive with a Narrow header adapter. Swapped this in for better storage.

Currently I have 16 megs of RAM. Enough to work with for now to get things running. After that, I'll max it up to 128.

I have a IIfx board that died, so I scavenged the ROM for SE/30 transplant duty.

Put everything in, and tried to boot off a 7.6 CD. No-go.
Tried to boot off a 7.5.3r2 CD. No-go.

Went back and read the details for installing with a IIfx ROM. Oh hey, that's kinda tricky! I'll do that later! So I swapped the SE/30 ROM back in. No boot off 7.6 CD (Oh yeah, requires 32-bit clean Mac!) -back to 7.5.3r2 CD . . . Boot SUCCESS!

Had an EVIL trip down memory lane, recalling how HDSC setup and Drive Setup don't work with non-Apple-firmare hard drives, had to actually FORMAT A FLOPPY (gasp!) and copy over Intech Hard Disk Speedtools. (Hey, it's 1.2 megs and runs back to OS 7.0!) That saw my hard drive. Had another EVIL trip down memory lane, recalling how the max hard drive size on an SE/30 under 7.5.3r2 is 4 gigs. Ugh. Now I have 5 partitions. :-(

Ran the installer, did the "Easy Install" and . . .walked away.

TIP: If you hold down "Option" when double-clicking the installer for 7.5.3r2, you get a great easter-egg at the end of install, with scrolling credits for the whole OS 7.5.3r2 team (I'm in there!) and proclamations of how great the OS is and some Windows-bashing, too! -And on a color Mac you'll even get happy bouncing rainbow-striped apples!

(Alas, you need the actual 7.5.3r2 CD to do this, most people get there by running an updater over 7.5.0. But if you have the 7.5.3r2 CD, this is soooo coool!)

Oh and if you've ever cursed OS 7.5.0 for making you babysit the installer to tell it you don't want Quickdraw GX and such, you can thank me for OS 7.5.3r2 "one click and walk away" install. I personally entered that request and championed it through!

Watched a movie, came back, and it was done! Just sitting there quietly, scrolling credits.

So now it's all up and running, and my next step is to upgrade it to the IIfx ROM. Does anyone know if this will let me format the drive HFS+ and use a single 18 gig partition?

Also, I just bought an Asante ethernet card on eBay for it, so that's the next upgrade. It's so cool, it's so . . . RETRO. Awesome little computer!

I never knew there was someone in our midst who worked on 7.5.3!
is the version you're talking about the one that came with PowerMac 7200,7500,7600,8500 and 9500? I have that CD
if thats the CD I'll see what I can do to hold down "option" while installing... I have 7.6 floppy disks that might work for booting my IISi one day because the 6500 and 7300 need 7.5.5 and later IIRC

wow... 18 GBs in an SE/30

are you going to put A/UX on it?
OR! that OS 8.1 on a 030 thingy!

I don't plan on putting A/UX on the SE/30, but I do indeed have my eye on putting 8.1 on it. I'd love to get one of the Micron Exceed cards to run grayscale on my SE/30, but they seem to be either really hard to find, or really expensive. I'd also consider an `040 upgrade if I can find one cheap, but they all seemed to have some bugginess to them. I tend to think that an SE/30 runs best with its original processor.

7.5.3r2 was an awesome product to work on at Apple. I had the thankless task of testing the installer on the Mac Plus among other things. It's a real series of catch-22's on a Plus, because the 7.5.3r2 installer has to be run from a booted minimum of 7.5.0, which won't fit on an 800K floppy, and a Plus doesn't have a built-in hard drive, and there's a bug they refused to fix where the 7.5.3r2 won't boot a Plus. You basically need to have a spare hard drive that already has a Universal bootable 7.5.0 or better to boot from, then you can install from either the CD or . . . (wait for it. . .) . . .over Localtalk network. It takes HOURS but it actually works!

I LOVE LOCALTALK!!!

I've done several 7.6 and maybe even 8.1 installs over networks... (10 megabit)

I'm not sure if I've done any over serial though...

quote:

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Ever installed OS 8.6 over LocalTalk?

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I used to set each mac to appletalk ip manual, each would have an IP, then one runs a server, and the other one downloads the files. Saves time because appletalk for installs can really be slow and if something buggers up during the install, you are toast.

you know what bugs me?
I coudlnt' partitiont he 20MB drive that was in my SE when I had that I was going to go 5 MB for system and apps, another 5 MB for more apps, and 10 MB for documents and 'other junk'

had I upgraded the RAM, I would have installed OS 7.5 over the network...

you know... I think i've installed OS 9.1 over tcp/ip appletalk ethernet

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