[HN Gopher] My New Old Macintosh SE/30 Computer
___________________________________________________________________
My New Old Macintosh SE/30 Computer
Author : whatrocks
Score : 71 points
Date : 2022-03-03 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (charlieharrington.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (charlieharrington.com)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Does anyone know what kind of dev environment you can get on an
| SE? I guess assembly and Pascal are available.
| mwcremer wrote:
| http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/development-tools
| markus_zhang wrote:
| thanks!
| ksherlock wrote:
| Apple's dev environment was MPW - Macintosh Programmer's
| Workshop - which provided a Unix-ish command-line environment
| within a text editor, if that makes sense. Ot included Asm,
| Pascal, C (later C++) and Rez compilers as well as common
| utilities. Some GNU utilities were also ported over.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Think C: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1417-symantec-
| think-c-5-...
|
| QuickBASIC: https://winworldpc.com/product/quickbasic/10x-for-
| mac
|
| Logo, Smalltalk, Forth, ABC, Lisp, and others:
| https://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/program/index.html
| markus_zhang wrote:
| interesting. a lot than I expected
| mistrial9 wrote:
| score! Honestly I like BBEdit to this day for text, and the
| vector drawing programs. No mention of postscript printing, but
| that works well (pre-Level III postscript). Very fast interface
| for most things, even faster than many desktop computers today
| for native Mac software. I definitely kept my OS install disks
| and amenities, but it is somewhat humbling to read about entire
| ROMs and SCSI hacks here.. not easy! very nice to see it on
| YNews.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Mac/Claris Draw is still more usable than anything comparable
| today and therefore the effective power is almost as much for
| non-pro users.
| ge96 wrote:
| There was a video I saw a while back of one of these connecting
| to Google. It took a while but when it loaded it was surreal like
| wow, this old technology works today.
|
| Also if you like this stuff there's popular channels out there
| like Adrian's Digital basement or 8bit guy, etc...
|
| Side note: the movie Jobs (2013) was dramatized and all that but
| it had a cool scene, when those circuits drew something on a
| screen. I am aware of Xerox Alto and all that. But still the
| concept of making something so new... idk that's cool would like
| to be part of that. Also those chips seem more tangible than an
| i7 or something. You could almost mentally map which chip goes to
| what part of the screen.
|
| I will say I'm past it though, I don't really covet old tech just
| because of performance. I do to some degree like old Chromebooks
| using Linux.
| blable2 wrote:
| Mine was 6K USD new in 1989 I think.
| npunt wrote:
| SE/30's are the best. Here's a summary of some other modern and
| contemporaneous upgrades available:
| https://nickpunt.com/blog/se-30th-anniversary/
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Find a copy of the game, Crystal Quest. I think it was the best
| of the early arcade style games.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Quest
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Playable on an emulated Mac in your browser (along with loads
| of other demos), courtesy of the Internet Archive:
|
| https://archive.org/details/mac-demo-games
| bobpappas wrote:
| MacGolf is a must have in this article. I'm so sad it wasn't
| included.
| zargon wrote:
| My thought was Dark Castle is missing.
| sdoering wrote:
| The SE30 was the first real computer I was working on. The
| company my father worked for started to implement computers at
| the desks of most people. During the day they learned how to use
| them. In the late afternoon and evenings he did his regular work
| as a team lead. Me, being 14 was often at his work place (him
| being a single dad had me helping at the photocopy machine and
| stuff). And I was allowed to work/play on the computer.
|
| Shortly thereafter I got my own Macintosh Classic with 4mb RAM
| and 40 MB hard disk.
| buserror wrote:
| Ah, I also bought a SE/30 recently, as part of a batch of an
| upgraded 128->plus, an original SE, and my prize: the SE/30. All
| working too.
|
| The reason I bought the SE/30 is because it's the computer I had
| on long term loan for my very first "paying" gig as developer, I
| was 17: making the software that drove the audio system for the
| Lille (FR) brand new metro lines back then.
|
| Wrote the software in Turbo Pascal, to run on a smaller mac -- it
| had a GPIO card that drove 2 big REVOX tape reels, and was
| rewinding them in sequence while the other played elevator music.
| It also had a selector and an 'alarm' button to trigger _digital_
| announces from the control room, in case of problems on the metro
| line. The audio played on 10th 's of stations, for years.
|
| After a few mishaps (finding tapes torn to completely shreds in
| the computer room, because the 'beginning of tape' signal hadn't
| worked really well after rewinding!) it worked absolutely
| flawlessly until late 1999. I should have charged more :-)
|
| It also had an easter egg! It was playing an 'happy birthday'
| message to _myself_ every year, in every stations, early day on
| my birthday. Nobody ever complained :-)
|
| I eventually returned the SE/30, and was given a PowerBook 140,
| which wasn't as fast, but hey, _laptop_ baby, and, I still own
| that one!
| erickhill wrote:
| In that post he links to "the 6th most 'notable' Mac ever" over
| on Six Colors where they created a Top 20 of all-time list.
|
| How that list failed to include the "Jurassic Park" computer, the
| gorgeous Quadra 700, truly made me sad. It's a machine where, if
| you need to take it apart, you can remove every single component
| - even the PSU and motherboard - with only ever needing to remove
| a single screw. (You can even remove the PSU's fan w/o needing
| any tools.) The rest is so beautifully designed that you can pop
| release all of it: floppy drive, hard drive PSU, speaker,
| motherboard, etc.
|
| The 1 single screw holds the drive caddy to the case. That's it.
| And it's a design strategy that I'm willing to bet at least 50%
| of Quadra 700 owners back in the day didn't even realize was
| sitting on their desks.
|
| By the way, the mini-desktop machine could be stood vertically or
| laid on its side - it was up to the user. Simply breathtakingly
| incredible design.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Well, the list's author (Jason Snell, the former editor of
| Macworld) does write, "one of the most popular things about
| this series will be arguments about my terrible rankings and my
| unforgivable omissions." :)
| erickhill wrote:
| 100% - I totally get it. Lists like these are always going to
| have What Ifs thrown in every direction. And the Q700 wasn't
| exactly popular by the mainstream (honestly, it was too
| expensive for that kind of awareness). And the list they
| created is fine even though the ordering could be batted
| around by plenty.
|
| I was just opining about an anecdotal personal fave. :)
| runjake wrote:
| Link: https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/08/20-macs-for-2020-an-
| intro...
| Bud wrote:
| I still have my old SE/30. It's still working. Has the Ethernet
| card installed, so it's even marginally useful.
|
| I also picked up my old 512k "Fat" Mac from my aunt's house where
| I had it stored for 20 years. Powered it up. Bright white screen,
| perfectly sharp, works perfectly. Not bad for a machine that
| debuted in 1984.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| Which ethernet card do you have? I have a saved ebay search but
| nothing has popped up recently
| wwweston wrote:
| Would you say it's worth getting an ethernet card and fixing
| one with screen (likely leaky cap) issues?
|
| I've got one that I've wondered might be a good connected-but-
| not-TOO-connected device.
| floren wrote:
| If you haven't already, you should open it up and remove the
| PRAM battery. I've seen what happens when the battery bursts
| and then sits for a few years... not pretty. The caps aren't
| as big of a deal in comparison, they just need to be replaced
| when you want to use it.
| zargon wrote:
| The caps _are_ a big deal, just not _as_ bad as the
| battery. The caps leak corrosive electrolytic fluid which
| eats traces and corrodes component legs. Most un-restored
| SE /30s require trace repairs at this point due to leaky
| caps. The longer the original caps remain the more
| extensive the repairs.
| Bud wrote:
| If you're a real Mac lover? Definitely. I used to use mine
| all the time as a very fancy vt100 terminal for an old Apollo
| server I had, and also to telnet to a BBS I was running in
| the late 90s.
|
| It's a great conversation piece, too.
| parenthesis wrote:
| There is just something perfect about the original Mac series.
|
| When Steve Jobs saw the Xerox Alto, he thought "well, _obviously_
| all personal computers are going to be like this ", which is
| pretty much how I felt upon encountering the Mac for the first
| time (not until 1990).
|
| My opinions tend to be pretty weak these days (like a three-
| handed economist), but with a typical teenage passion, I could
| not understand why anyone would use Windows, or how Windows could
| even exist when the Mac was there.
|
| When I finally got my own (i)Mac in 2000, it was no longer quite
| so perfect. Although, I think the OS X 10.3 - 10.5 era got close.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > I could not understand why anyone would use Windows, or how
| Windows could even exist when the Mac was there.
|
| Replace Windows with Mac and Mac with Amiga and you're in my
| teenage passion years!
|
| Although I had the same feeling of "this is the future" when I
| saw a demonstration of the original Mac in 1984. But I just
| remember thinking, "no color?"
| jandrese wrote:
| Steve Jobs had a bug up his butt about machines that could
| play games being "toys for kids" and he did everything he
| could to have the Mac treated like a "serious business"
| machine, part of that included sticking with boring corporate
| monochrome graphics.
|
| I think he was mostly trying to avoid comparisons to the 8
| bit Apples.
|
| The other reason being of course that VRAM was breathtakingly
| expensive at the time and you could save some money by going
| with 1 bit per pixel. All in all the Mac with its 512x342
| monochrome display tended to come out looking nicer than the
| contemporary 320x200 16 color EGA graphics.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > There is just something perfect about the original Mac
| series.
|
| Oh, come on:
|
| - tiny screen
|
| - one-button mouse
|
| - little memory
|
| - expense
|
| - poor tools
|
| - closed architecture
|
| - yada yada
|
| I remember when the Mac first came out, the guy in the next
| room had one. I asked him "How do I write some C code on this?"
| Blank looks.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| It's hard to quantify, but sitting at one of these upright
| Macs is a joy. The B&W screen was great for writing. It had
| this friendly-face look about it, and it took up so little
| desk space. A laptop is sort of similar, but you sit hunched
| over at those. The classic Mac allowed you to sit like a
| human instead of a caveman.
|
| I get that it's not great for everything we do today that
| requires acres of screen real estate, but if you want to
| concentrate on a single task like writing (or programming)
| with little distraction, it's really nice.
| parenthesis wrote:
| On the one hand, I can't disagree with you, but on the other,
| it's like saying that Fred Astaire isn't good looking enough
| to be a movie star.
| zabzonk wrote:
| But he could dance a little. The original Macs were not
| really useful at all.
| wwweston wrote:
| News to me as someone who used them to do things as a kid
| (music sequencing, sound design, software experiments,
| vector/bitmap art).
|
| Modern machines are incredible and do so much more but
| these were useful in their time.
| zabzonk wrote:
| My comment was on the original Macs - those with almost
| no memory, one floppy drive, and huge expense.
| technothrasher wrote:
| For me at least, WYSIWYG word processing was the killer
| app on the original Mac. The 8-bit machines and current
| DOS machines at the time just couldn't compare, although
| windows PCs caught up pretty quickly.
| flenserboy wrote:
| They really didn't catch up until much later, and much of
| that had to do with printing. Macs produced decent output
| out of the box -- fonts were a focus, and it showed.
| desiarnezjr wrote:
| I remember it took years for Windows to catch on - not
| until Windows 3.0 I'd say, so really a 5+ year gap.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.0
|
| There were other graphical desktops like Amiga and Atari
| ST around that time but nothing on either platforms had
| the finesse of the early Mac programs (as flawed as they
| could be).
| eweise wrote:
| Really? I had a mac plus. Loaded Think C on it. Worked fine.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Key bit is first came out. I don't think in 1984 there was
| any dev tools for the Mac or very little (MS Basic I
| guess?). Think C was released sometime in 1986. Mac
| software production at the time was done on Lisas in a
| kinda similar fashion to iOS and the Mac today.
| robterrell wrote:
| Aztec C was the first C compiler for the Mac I
| remember... I think it was 1985? It was self-hosted too,
| no Lisa required. But Think C (and Think Pascal) were the
| real game-changers for me.
| isx726552 wrote:
| There would have been a dev environment (MacBasic) for
| the average user, but certain forces had other plans:
|
| https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=MacBasic.txt
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| And to complete the story, the program itself:
| https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macbasic-10
| ndiddy wrote:
| More context: When Microsoft unveiled Windows, John
| Sculley threatened legal action against them for copying
| the "look and feel" of the Macintosh. Bill Gates
| responded by threatening to stop development of all
| Macintosh programs and not renew the license for Apple II
| Basic, so Apple backed down. As a part of the remediation
| process, Apple had to stop working on MacBasic and (more
| importantly) sign an agreement granting Microsoft a
| license to create derivative works of the Macintosh's
| GUI.
|
| https://www.filfre.net/2018/07/doing-windows-part-6-look-
| and...
| ndiddy wrote:
| More information on how early Mac development was done:
| https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=477
| coward123 wrote:
| You know what I miss from that era? The extension that would
| allow Oscar the Grouch to pop out of the trash can. What I mean
| is - Macintosh really had this different vibe back then. You
| could easily customize everything about your experience in a way
| that was very exploratory. How many hours of my youth were wasted
| screwing around in RezEdit or in making cool icons? Yes, it's
| super cool there are things like Swift Playground these days -
| I'm glad we live in an era where I don't have to pirate Symantec
| Pascal like I did when I was 13 and wanted to learn how to code.
| But, I wish the overall user experience were more the fun and
| creative feel we once had rather than a very slick but overly
| corporate one.
| gnu8 wrote:
| Besides all of the software listed, that machine would also be a
| prime A/UX rig with that amount of RAM installed
| whatrocks wrote:
| I'm going to add this to my to-do list.
| formvoltron wrote:
| This guy came from money. I had a Mac SE but couldn't afford that
| 30MB drive. I had two floppy disks instead.
| zargon wrote:
| > Write Apple-Script to automate turning on 32-bit addressing
| automatically and setting the correct date every time I turn on
| the computer
|
| Rob Mitchelmore wrote the Force32 extension which is made for
| Macs without a PRAM battery. It makes sure 32-bit addressing is
| enabled during startup. (Note that since a restart is required
| after enabling 32-bit addressing, it will automatically restart
| during the first cold boot).
|
| https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/force32
|
| https://github.com/cheesestraws/Force32
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| Can someone explain why removal (as opposed to replacement) of
| the PRAM battery is necessary? How is this different from any
| other CMOS motherboard battery? Is there a fault in the circuitry
| that causes the battery to fail catastrophically?
| torgoguys wrote:
| Those batteries fail and leak all over the board around them,
| destroying traces and components. These aren't your typical
| lithium coin cell batteries that are very good at not leaking.
|
| When a leak happens, even if you can fix/replace the components
| mounted to the boards, when you've got multi-layer boards it
| gets hard to figure out how repair the damage that happened to
| the internal traces and such.
|
| If possible, replacing those batteries with something less
| likely to juice all over is what you want to do. And since you
| don't really know when it will start to leak, getting those old
| batteries out NOW is the safest option.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| My understanding is that it just needs to be replaced, it's a
| standard 1/2 length AA battery.
|
| People recommend to remove them altogether though, I guess they
| figure the machines will be sitting in a closet for another 15
| years, best to remove the problem altogether.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > People recommend to remove them altogether though, I guess
| they figure the machines will be sitting in a closet for
| another 15 years, best to remove the problem altogether.
|
| This is the reason.
|
| At the repair shop where I've worked we do recycling, and
| there's a lot of electronics that get destroyed by leaky
| batteries.
|
| If you can do it without voiding warranty (and sometimes even
| if you do void the warranty), always take the batteries out
| of electronics when they go into storage.
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| It looks like this guy is actively using the machine so I
| couldn't understand why putting in a fresh battery and
| changing it regularly wouldn't be the preferred option and
| not dealing with a reset system clock every time you powered
| it off. As opposed to there was something on the logic board
| of the SE/30 that was harming the battery in some way and
| causing it to fail prematurely.
|
| This read more like "my gran says to always unplug the
| toaster else the house will surely burn down"
| zargon wrote:
| Even if it is currently being used frequently, there will
| come a time where it sits forgotten for an extended period.
| This isn't always a deliberate decision. Even if it is,
| it's easy to procrastinate removing the battery. This
| person is also afraid of opening the machine due to the
| CRT. In such a situation I think foregoing the battery is
| smart. Another option is wiring up an external battery that
| is much easier to remove (and won't be able to destroy the
| machine even if forgotten).
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| Seems like a great use for one of those "battery
| eliminator" things, with an empty plastic shell in the
| shape of the battery with a pair of leads that extends
| out of the case.
| zargon wrote:
| Yeah, definitely. I started designing one a while back
| but haven't done the external mounting system for it yet.
| This is the prototype (finished one would have longer
| wires and an enclosure that clips onto the back of the
| Mac someplace): https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?attachmen
| ts/img_20201213_191...
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'll never quite get over the fact that many of these computers
| could just be designed with the components (and exploding
| battery) facing down so that, when they leak their corrosive
| fluids, they will flow away from the board.
|
| OTOH, who'd imagine back then we'd still be using and
| cherishing these little machines?
| kristopolous wrote:
| I had one with a 10baseT network card about 20 years ago. I ran
| NetBSD on it and punched a hole open so anyone could log in. I
| think I posted about it in the NetBSD IRC channel back in the
| EFNet days.
|
| You started up System 7 at first and then clicked on the launcher
| and it would reboot into NetBSD. This was like 1.something ...
| might have been 1.5?
|
| I had some external SCSI drives for it in the low GB range and I
| believe a CDRW. I think the ram was at 128MB (might have been 96)
|
| I had compiled Mozilla 0.9 or so for it (whatever was current)
| and it actually ran (compiling took I think 4 days because I
| compiled it _on_ the SE /30). You could see the elements of the
| interface render to the screen in human time.
|
| I distinctly remember seeing each button come in to view and then
| slowly typed in "slashdot.org".
|
| I used it as an X terminal as well, using the -broadcast option
| to log into an HP-UX 10.20 machine. I ran sam and CDE on that
| tiny monochrome screen. So ridiculous.
|
| It was a glorious waste of time.
|
| Just looked in my old email archives --- this was indeed from
| 2002. Right, 20 years it is then.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Had one with the PDS Ethernet card as well. With Mode32 you
| could put in 128MB of RAM without swapping the ROM, or you
| could snitch a IIsi (IIRC) ROM and be 32-bit clean.
|
| I put NetBSD on mine as well, and used it as a mail server for
| a time. With a little jiggery-pokery of a Wifi AP you could
| even be wireless.
|
| Great machines.
| rsync wrote:
| Just a note related to the SCSI2SD device mentioned in the
| article ...
|
| I recently bought four of these for use with various SGI and ran
| into a minor difficulty and the maker of these devices went _well
| beyond the call of duty_ to assist me and provide suggestions,
| etc.
|
| On a Saturday.
| lolive wrote:
| I have spent most of my early computer years playing Sierra games
| and (Beyond) Dark Castle on a Mac SE.
|
| Still a marvellous memory!
|
| [my father brought one day a CD300. It was supposed to be a
| revolution. Well ok, I used it to listen to Pink Floyd CDs while
| playing King Quest ;)]
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| We had The Oregon Trail as part of teaching materials in our
| school in the 1980s.
|
| In the _UK_.
|
| Most of us in my class didn't know where Oregon is, really did
| not care about a story of woefully unprepared people who chose to
| make a journey for reasons of absolutely no consequence to a
| British nine year old, and to this day likely bear a grudge
| against an entire US state.
|
| I got into an awful lot of trouble for submitting the minimum
| possible homework on that. Other kids: fifteen pages of detailed
| drawings and stories. Me: two A5 sides of completely
| disinterested made-up diary.
|
| It was my only real rebellion.
| Aloha wrote:
| I'm about a decade younger than you - and I have the exact
| opposite memories of the Oregon Trail.
|
| It was a break from school where we got to play video games.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Was the Mac version fun then? :-)
| zabzonk wrote:
| > We had The Oregon Trail as part of teaching materials in our
| school in the 1980s.
|
| > In the UK.
|
| You may be misrembering - a Mac would be very rare in a UK
| school - it was probably an Apple II.
| skissane wrote:
| > You may be misrembering - a Mac would be very rare in a UK
| school - it was probably an Apple II.
|
| Getting even more off-topic, but I remember being a kid/teen
| in 1980s/90s Australia, and the diversity of machines we got
| to use at school impresses me in hindsight: Apple IIs,
| Commodore 64s, classic Macs, Acorn Archimedes, IBM PC JXs
| running DOS, Atari STs, no-name IBM PC compatibles running
| Windows 3.x/9x and Netware. (Not all at the same school, that
| was across four different schools I attended K-12.) My own
| kids don't get exposed to anywhere near as much technological
| variety.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| We had a room of BBC Micros, a room of RM Nimbuses, and a
| room of Macs at school (UK). The Macs were evidently the
| coolest. Pretty much the first thing I did when I got to
| university was buy a IIsi (funded by the articles I was
| writing for an 8-bit magazine).
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I didn't say anything about a Mac. Though I accept I am
| taking it way off topic with my little grumble. Really I'm
| just still smarting at being told off :-)
|
| It absolutely wouldn't have been an Apple II; I never saw an
| Apple II in the UK until they were retro. It would have been
| a port to the (similarly 6502-based) BBC Model B. We had
| loads of those in schools [0].
|
| A bit of a google suggests that it was likely based on code
| from a 1978 computer listing, though it would have been 1983
| when it was inflicted on us.
|
| Funnily enough I don't think we spent more than half an hour
| with the computer. A week or so with the assignment.
|
| [0] the Apple II would have been more expensive, and didn't
| provide the opportunity for schools-television-related
| content or a loan of the county's (truly groundbreaking)
| Domesday Book laser disk system:
|
| https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co83846.
| ..
| zabzonk wrote:
| > I didn't say anything about a Mac.
|
| True, but this is a post about Macs - see title.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Yes -- edited my comment. I'm really just dragging it off
| topic and should be ignored :-)
| soneil wrote:
| I went to a .. I want to say not very affluent school in
| Scotland, but that'd be an understatement. But we were taught
| to type on classic macs. I don't remember exactly what model,
| but definitely these ones with the little offset grin.
|
| All I really remember is a shufflepuck game. That's it.
|
| Just to confuse things, this would have been about 1995. That
| awkward gap between the beebs, and Tesco taking an interest
| in the matter.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| We played Oregon Trail as part of school here in the US, and
| probably had a similar sense of US geography at the time, but
| we were just happy to get to use the computers.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-03-03 23:00 UTC)