Macintosh SE/30

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A Macintosh SE/30
Macintosh SE/30
Manufacturer Apple Computer
Introduced January 19, 1989
Discontinued October 21, 1991
Price US$6500
CPU Motorola 68030, 16 MHz
RAM 1 MB, expandable to 128 MB, 120 ns 30-pin SIMM
OS System 6.0.3 - System 7.5.5

The Macintosh SE/30 was a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1989 until 1991. It was the fastest and most expandable of the original black-and-white compact Macintosh series.

The SE/30 was essentially a Macintosh IIx in the same case as the Macintosh SE, with a black-and-white monitor and a single PDS slot (rather than the NuBus slots of the IIx) which supported third-party accelerators, network cards, and even a display adapter that supported 8-bit grayscale on the internal monitor. Although officially only able to support 8 MB, the SE/30 could expand up to 128 MB of RAM, and included a 40 or 80 MB hard drive. It was also the first Mac to include a 1.44 MB high density floppy disk drive as standard (late versions of the SE had one, but earlier versions did not).

Apple had indicated the presence of a 68030 processor by adding the letter "x" to a model's name, but when the Macintosh SE was updated to the 68030, this posed an awkward problem, as Apple was not willing to name their new computer the "Macintosh SEx". Thus, "SE/30" was the name chosen.

Although sold as a 32-bit computer, the SE/30 ROM included some 24-bit code, rendering the ROM "dirty". This limited the actual amount of memory that could be accessed to just 8 MB. The solution was to use a program called MODE32 which enabled access to the extra memory (if installed). Alternatively it has been found that replacing the ROM SIMM with one from a Mac IIsi or Mac IIfx makes the SE/30 32-bit "clean" and thereby enables use of up to 128 MB RAM. With some software hacks, it also becomes possible to run OS 8.0 or OS 8.1 (whereas the SE/30 normally can only run up to System 7.5.5).

This machine was superseded in 1991 by the Macintosh Classic II, a machine which was only 60% as fast as the SE/30, supported no more than 10 MB of memory, and lacked an internal expansion slot.

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