Macintosh SE/30

Where the Obsession Began

My obsession with vintage computers started with a few YouTubers I really enjoyed. Namely, LGR and Adrian's Digital Basement. From there, my love for fixing vintage computers grew. There is something incredibly rewarding in cleaning old hardware, fixing it up, and giving it a new lease on life.

There are a few reasons why I like vintage Macintoshes in particular. First, Apple lost. There was a non-zero chance, back in the 80s, that the Apple Macintosh could have set the standard for personal computers. Instead, IBM's PC won out and we live in a world where personal computing is dominated by the legacy of the Intel 8088 and Microsoft's DOS. To that end, I've never had much of an interest in vintage PCs. Anything I would want to run on those systems, I can run on modern hardware. Vintage Macintosh, on the other hand, are like time capsules, allowing you to run software that only works on the hardware of its time (ignore SheepShaver and Basilisk).

Reason two for loving vintage Macs so much is that they come in stock configurations. Each model was shipped with a specific set of hardware, so when it comes to repairing and restoring, there's goal to reach and a limit to how much modification I can make. If I had a vintage PC, there would be no limit to the hardware modding I could do. I could keep upgrading the platform till I ended up with a modern PC.

Why the SE/30

Before getting my SE/30, I had a few other Macintoshes, a Mac SE, a Quadra 610, and a PowerMac G3. However, the SE/30 is my magnus opus. The SE/30 is considered the greatest of the monochrome Macintoshes for a few reasons. The 16MHz 68030 makes the Mac incredibly fast when running Mac Classic System 6.8. Furthermore, the SE/30 has a 32-bit address bus and a replaceable ROM. So, one can replace the Mac to enable 32-bit clean addressing (original SE/30 uses some of the addressing bits as flags) allowing the Mac to address a whopping 128 Megabytes of RAM.

So, what's the catch

The big downside when comes to the SE/30 is twofold. One, nowadays, its popular. That makes it hard to get. Second, the capacitors used in the SE/30 are incredibly prone to leaking (capacitor plague of the 90s). So, even if you are lucky enough to get your hands on a SE/30, you still have your work cut out for you replacing the capacitors. The SE/30's 4-layer board wicks away heat very quickly, making the process especially difficult.