Macintosh SE dual floppy

Compact Macs

Macintosh SE

code names: Plus Plus, Maui, Aladdin, Chablis, Freeport

Overview

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Introduced along with the Mac II in March 1987, the SE came with 1 MB of RAM, one or two double-sided 800K floppies, and space to mount an internal SCSI hard drive (the second drive bay held either a hard drive or second floppy - no room for both, although that didn't stop some people from creating a bracket to mount a hard drive in a two-floppy SE). The SE was the first compact Mac with a built-in fan.

The SE is sometimes referred to as the SE/20, SE 1/40, 4/80, etc. "SE/20" is not an official designation, often leads to confusion, and should not be used. These are not different models, nor should an "SE/20" be confused with the more powerful SE/30. These numbers refer to the amount of memory and size of the internal hard drive, so an "SE/20" would have a 20 MB hard drive and an SE 4/40 would have 4 MB of RAM and a 40 MB hard drive.

Although Apple officially rates SCSI on the SE at 1.25 MBps, real world testing finds it to be considerably lower at about half the rated speed. This is also roughly 2.5x faster than the SCSI on the Mac Plus.

In August 1989 Apple began to ship the SE with their high density floppy drive, known as the FDHD (floppy drive, high density) or SuperDrive (for its ability to read and write IBM-format floppies with additional software). Not only did this provide 1.4 MB capacity, but also the ability to read and write 3.5" DOS disks using special software.

Olders SEs with their original ROMs do not support high density floppies. However, they can be used with FDHD drives as long as the disks used are 800K floppies.

The SE was introduced as the low-end cousin of the hot new 16 MHz Mac II. The SE was the first compact Mac with an expansion slot. One of the first add-in cards was an MS-DOS card. Over time, video, ethernet, and accelerator cards became popular accessories.

It's not generally known, but the SE supports color, although not on the internal display. It's only 3-bit color, but it supports output to the ImageWriter II printer's color ribbon, and as least one company made a SCSI video output device that let the SE display 3-bit color on an external color monitor.

You can convert a non-working compact Mac into a Macquarium. (Please, don't even think of converting a working one - you can always find someone interested on the Classic Macs or Vintage Macs lists.)

Tips

  • If you have less than 4 MB installed, upgrade to 4 MB. You can often find pulled 1 MB SIMMs (removed from other Macs during upgrade) inexpensively.
  • The SE cannot use two-chip 1 MB SIMMs.
  • Memory permitting, set the disk cache to 128k.
  • To use HD floppies on a pre-SuperDrive SE, look into the Applied Engineering AE HD+ external floppy drive. They may be available from Que Computers for $99 (612-623-0903). Note that the "plus" is important - the AE HD will not do the job.
  • Because of limited SCSI throughput, older hard drives with no data buffer should usually be formatted with a 2:1 interleave for use in the SE. (Unfortunately, other Macs may find it difficult or impossible to work with this interleave.) This is not an issue with newer drives that have a data buffer.
  • If you need to create the smallest possible System file, you can delete Chicago 12, Geneva 9 and 12, and Monaco 9, since these fonts are in the SE ROMs.
  • To remove the hard drive: find the two screws holding the drive bracket in place. They will be facing the rear of the computer and underneath the drive itself. You'll need a fairly long Phillips screwdriver to reach them - and you'll need to disconnect the power and data cables before you can get to them. Once the screws are loose, lift the back and it should come out easily.

The Upgrade Box

Details

Accelerators & Upgrades

Some accelerators have onboard SIMM slots, allowing them to use more than 4 MB of RAM.

Discontinued accelerators (68030 unless otherwise noted) include the Applied Engineering TransWarp (16, 40 MHz), Dove Marathon Racer (16 MHz), Extreme Systems Vandal (50 MHz), Harris Performer2 (16 MHz 68000), MacProducts Railgun (33 MHz), Mobius (25 MHz), NewLife Accelerator! (16, 25, 33 MHz), Novy ImagePro (16, 25, 33 MHz), and Total Systems Mercury (16 MHz), Gemini Integra (50 MHz), and Gemini Ultra (33, 50 MHz).

Color? Aura Systems made ScuzzyGraph II, a SCSI peripheral that provided 8-color video for people who didn't want to buy (or couldn't afford) a Mac II. 1989 cost was $995-2,495, depending on resolution.

Online Resources

Cautions

Go to Vintage Macs Index or the Compact Macs Index.

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