Note that the “plus” is important – the AE HD will not do the job. They may be available from Que Computers for $99 (61).

To use HD floppies on a pre-SuperDrive SE, look into the Applied Engineering AE HD+ external floppy drive.

Memory permitting, set the disk cache to 128k.

You can often find pulled 1 MB SIMMs (removed from other Macs during upgrade) inexpensively.

If you have less than 4 MB installed, upgrade to 4 MB.

(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 You can convert a non-working compact Mac into a Macquarium. 1989 cost was $995 to $2,495, depending on resolution. 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.Ĭolor display? 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. It’s not generally known, but the SE supports color, although not on the internal display. Over time, video, ethernet, and accelerator cards became popular accessories. One of the first add-in cards was an MS-DOS card. The SE was the first compact Mac with an expansion slot. The SE was introduced as the low-end cousin of the hot new 16 MHz Mac II.

However, they can be used with FDHD drives as long as the disks used are 800K floppies. Older SEs with their original ROMs do not support high density floppies. Not only did this provide 1.4 MB capacity, but also the ability to read and write 3.5″ DOS disks using special software. 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). This is also roughly 2.5x faster than the SCSI on the Mac Plus. 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.Īlthough 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. These are not different models, nor should an “SE/20” be confused with the more powerful SE/30. “SE/20” is not an official designation, often leads to confusion, and should not be used. The SE is sometimes referred to as the SE/20, SE 1/40, 4/80, etc.

The SE was the first compact Mac with a built-in fan. 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).

Mac se emulator for windows