I got a lot of mail on my article detailing how
to use an old SE/30. Several readers pointed out you can use the
SE/30 just fine with
AppleWorks 5, which I didn't know. There were so many stories about how
you use your SE's, in fact, I decided to start a list of uses.
I am sorry to report that all the computers I have belong to the
district, and I am expressly forbidden from selling or trading them
with people outside the district. Long story. Anyway, there's more than
one way to skin a cat, so here are some other things that popped up in
my in basket.
I heard from a reader, Gregory, who is interested in buying an
SE/30. If you have one for sale, contact him at this email address: gregory@marsiglia.org. I don't mind
helping, Gregory, but buyers and sellers, you're better off going to
eBay than using me as a middleman - much more efficient.
Another reader described herself as "a 33 year old single mother of
a 6 year old girl. I have had a 4 year battle with terminal cancer, and
just recently was given a clean bill of health!!! I am on Disability
and don't have much income. I hope my daughter may be able to go to
PBS and Cartoon Network to play games. I
can pay shipping." She lives in Indiana, so if you're in that area and
have some spare hardware, it'll go towards a good cause. She may need
something with a little more horsepower than an SE/30 - it has to
support Flash 5 to play the games at Nick.com. If you're interested and can help,
contact me, and I'll put you in touch with her.
Here's the first pass at an extended list:
1 Adobe publishing computer: My SE/30
does have a Micron Xceed card, but
that is only because the suite of Adobe publishing software I use (all
older and thus compatible with a 68030) is so much more pleasant in
shades of grey. ClarisWorks 5 still functions in black & white just
fine. (Matt Olson)
2 Unix Workstation or 3 DNS
server: You can run NetBSD or OpenBSD on them, so they become Unix
workstations. Thus you can run, say, a DNS service or perhaps a email
server, or even a Web server. Right now I run a DNS (domain name
server) on an SE/30 for our local intranet. (John McIntosh)
4 Fax receivers. (Marion)
5 I am using an LC III with an external SCSI drive
attached to run NetBSD 68K version 1.4.2. Once NetBSD boots, the system
runs Bind 8.5.3 for tertiary DNS on our network. It has been rock solid
for almost two years now. It is a slave server which receives its'
updates from a QuickDNS Pro DNS server. (Peter)
6StarAtlas,
which is freeware, will run on a 68000 machine. I used to take my
PowerBook 100 out to help me view
the night sky - even once or twice wrapped red cellophane around the
screen and attached it with rubber bands, for night use at my astronomy
club's observatory.
The PB100 is pretty equivalent to your SEs. StarAtlas is painfully
slow in drawing a sky on a 16 MHz 68000, but it does work, and the
planets don't move too far while you're waiting. I think it wasn't
optimized for speed, but rather was a Mac programming exercise for the
program's author. (Bill Higgins)
7 Using iCab in kiosk mode: Just thought I'd let you know
that iCab has a nifty kiosk mode built in, and it doubles as a
file browser. You can open anything from directly within iCab
(sort of like Windows/IE integration). Now, I don't know diddly 'bout
SE/30s, since I've never been able to get my hands on one (If you feel
like shipping me a spare, feel free!), but I think iCab would
run on one with little trouble under [System] 7.1 or 7.5, then you
could set it in kiosk mode and run the planetarium software. Nifty. You
could also build simple web pages with timed redirects to produce a
simple slide show on it. (Tim Baxter)
Ten more things you can do with an old SE/30. (Gerald Wilson's list
originally ran from 1 to 10...I just continued the series from
above.)
11 BootP or DHCP server? Maybe, but I
don't know a package which will do this.
12 Web server. Copy the Web sharing
extensions from Mac OS 8. Run personal web-sharing on the SE/30. Might
need Open Transport, but that installs fine on System 7.5.3.
13 Software Library. All Mac network
support is made easier by having a machine dedicated to holding the
software library. That way, if software gets corrupted, it's easy to
reinstall over the network, instead of trying to reinstall from local
floppy or CD. An SE/30 can handle this load fine.
14LocalTalk
bridge. Got an old LocalTalk printer without an ethernet interface?
Plug it into the SE/30. Use Apple's old (and free) LocalTalk bridge
software and let the SE/30 share the printer on ethernet.
15 LPR spooler. Got an EtherTalk
printer that can't understand TCP/IP? Grab a copy of Print66,
which will accept lpr print jobs and reroute them to the printer. Even
better: grab the free lpr client for Win 95, and have your Windows
clients print on an old Apple LaserWriter via your SE/30 lpr spooler.
Crazy but cool.
16 DEC LAT router. A bit obscure this
one, but DEC used to supply in their PATHWORKS package an AppleTalk-LAT
router which worked a treat on an SE/30, linking MacTerminal sessions
to VAX hosts. No doubt other protocol routings are possible.
17 Run Unix. Try A/UX, NetBSD, or a
version of Linux. Weird but doable. Link two more SE/30s, running Mac
OS and a terminal emulator, via the serial ports (crossover, remember!)
to the host, and you have a three terminal setup for learning Unix
commands. Weirder still.
Some of these uses need AppleTalk, some TCP/IP, some both together.
Your mileage may vary: Not all combinations of software, system, and
hardware are stable, so you need to check out your planned use
carefully. But it beats throwing away any working kit.
18 Creative use of old Macs - the AV
department at my high school had (and still does I'm told) an SE/30 (I
think, although it could have been a Plus. The original motherboard died,
so we replaced it with functioning compact Mac motherboard was in
storage.) as a rolodex. Quite useful, really. Of course, most of the PC
people enjoyed using compact Macs as.
19 ... doorstops... (Patrick Pietrasz)
[That's what I use my old Dell for. JA]
20. Enjoyed the article. I have an
SE/30 that is used as a floppy disk and Zip disk "peripheral" for my
wife's PowerBook 2000
(Pismo). The Zip drive is one of those original dark blue external
units connected by SCSI. When she needs to read or write to a floppy or
Zip disk, she turns on the SE/30 and connects via ethernet (the SE/30
has a ethernet card). She can't access the drives directly over
ethernet (unfortunately), so she copies to the SE/30 hard drive first
(which has been upgraded to a 500 MB unit that used to be in my
Power Mac 8100).
If your school has or gets the more recent Macs that have no
built-in floppy drive, it may be useful to set up an older 68k Mac
(like an SE/30) in each room to act as a "floppy disk" station -
especially true if you are outfitting some of the kids with take-home
older Macs. An SE/30 would work well for this function because it is so
small. Floppy drives may be archaic, but they are useful and convenient
for moving small files between computers. (Ken Watanabe)
21 Maybe if you have a demo running of
an ancient game on one they'd think otherwise. You know, borrow the
"game machine" as incentive for something. Or maybe you could set up 5
in a circle and get an old networkable game going on them, etc. (David
Deckert)
David also confirmed that AW5 runs on an SE/30.
Wow, what a response. Thanks everyone for writing in. Your
suggestions are much better and more varied than mine!
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is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
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