My Mac SE/30 Part I: Acquisition

In 2020 I decided to get into restoring classic macs. I started by acquiring a Power Macintosh 8600/200 and transforming it into a powerful crossover machine – a tool to help transfer files to and from older macs and my modern computers.

You can read the story of that restoration beginning here: Adventures in Macintosh restoration Part I.

That mac was the first of two classic macs I worked on that year, but I found that writing the posts for that 8600 restoration so time consuming that I never got around to posting about the second mac I worked on.

Well it’s March 2021 now, and some in the retro-computing community are calling it the first annual #MARCHintosh – a time for enthusiasts to celebrate their passion for classic macs. So I thought it was high time I posted about that second mac.

See, my goal last year wasn’t to restore a PowerMac – what I really wanted to do was to restore a 68k machine like the ones I had in my youth. Even better, I wanted to restore one of the compact B&W macs I’d lusted after but never owned.

So while I worked on the 8600 I kept an eye out on eBay for good deals on compact macs. With the 8600 up and ready to transfer files (along with a SCSI2SD and a FloppyEMU for good measure), the biggest challenge was finding a decent compact model at a reasonable price, not necessarily already working but at least with working potential.

Now the top of line, most sought-after compact model is the Macintosh SE/30. It’s the fastest and most expandable compact mac ever made – and the market knows it. You can (and I did) spend years trolling eBay trying to find one, and even if you do, they’re often upwards of $500 to $1000, especially if they include even harder-to-find upgrades.

So I kept my sights low, and aimed for a more reasonable Macintosh SE FDHD or Macintosh Classic. But to my complete surprise, in September I stumbled upon a listing for this:

The listing’s description read:

Apple/Macintosh SE/30 – Working Condition – Some TLC Needed.

Computer is in good cosmetic condition with some yellowing. I have personally recapped the motherboard. I have not yet recapped the analog board. The computer is complete and includes it’s hard drive, floppy drive, motherboard, keyboard, and mouse as pictured. The computer was nonfunctional when I bought it. After I installed new capacitors it boots from floppy but only recognizes the first four banks of ram. The internal hard drive spins up but is not recognized by the system. Computer will need some additional attention before being fully operational, but I am confident that it can be repaired. I simply do not have the time to work on it any further. I’ve included a picture of the motherboard to give you a sense of its condition. There is 4mb of RAM installed. Sold As-IS for further repair.

Shipped with care via FedEx.

I couldn’t believe my luck – a half restored machine would be a much easier project than starting with something completely untested. I eagerly put in my bid and won! I paid about $200 with shipping – more than I wanted on my first compact, but a steal given what it was.

With the computer in the mail, and already some idea of the upgrades I wanted to make, I started putting in orders for parts. When the box finally arrived, I couldn’t wait to unpack it and verify that everything had survived shipping:

You can see it there right next to the 8600, which I was still working on at this point. I hooked it up and powered it on – as listed, the SE/30 booted right up but the hard drive wasn’t responding:

The screen was also dimmer than I expected. At the highest brightness it was just usable, though things were a little out focus. But no matter, I connected my trusty FloppyEMU and started up a System 6 boot disk.

Again, 4MB of RAM, just as listed. Confident the seller had been honest and it had survived shipping, I turned everything off and started clearing the desk. I set it up as-is with the keyboard and mouse it came with.

It took everything I had to not get started right away. There was a good deal of cleaning ahead of me, and the parts I ordered were still on the way, but I simply loved how it looked on my desk.

That’s it for now! Stay tuned for Part II, where I start taking it apart and photographing everything.

/jon