The First Expandable Macs and the Mac Portable

1986 marked the replacement of Mike Murray as head of marketing with Jean-Louis Gassée. Gassée started Apple’s French division and drove it in a few years to become one of the most successful divisions in Apple. Unlike Steve Jobs’ vision of an information appliance, Gassée hoped that the Macintosh would turn into an open platform […]

16 MHz MicroMac Performer for Mac SE

Luca Fornari reports: About a year ago, a friend of mine gave me a Mac SE (you know the type: 68000 8 MHz, 2.5 MB RAM). A real snail, almost useless, but it was so cute I decided to keep it and put in 4 MB so I could run some software on it – mostly […]

Memory Upgrades: Mac SE

The Mac SE shipped from the factory with 1 MB installed in the form of four 256 KB SIMMs. It can be upgraded to 2 MB, 2.5 MB, and 4 MB configurations using 150ns or faster 1 MB 30-pin SIMMs.

Transparent Mac SE

As documented by Charlie Springer on his web page, the Macintosh SE in a clear plastic casing is a very rare find. Only a small number (reportedly 20) of the transparent cases were made from the SE case molds before they were textured – and only 10 of these were built into working computers.

Overclocking a Compact Mac

Many Mac models can be “chipped” to run at a higher speed, but none of the compact Macs can. That said, some can be upgraded with third-party accelerators, so you’re not necessarily stuck with the original CPU speed – although finding those upgrades nowadays may be difficult.

The Mac SE Experience, Part 2

This is part two of an epic saga about one man and his Macintosh SE. If you missed the first part or maybe you just need to get a quick refresh about part one, feel free to go back and enjoy it again.

The Mac SE Experience, Part 1

I had been on the lookout for another Mac to add to my collection. My wife had led me to believe that if I was so inclined to pick up another, that it should be free or very close to it. I posted some ads on the local buy/sell Facebook groups and even on the […]

Adoption Notice for an SE/30

2000 – No, Annie and I have definitely not adopted a child. We haven’t given one of our many up for adoption either, although, on any given day, we might rent any one of them out cheap. :-) This is the short tale of an abandoned Macintosh SE/30 that I found sitting on the floor […]

Mac SE Benchmarks

The Mac SE uses an 8 MHz 68000 CPU. The tested hard drive is a 40 MB Apple-branded Quantum LP40S formatted with Apple HD SC Setup. This was not the original hard drive, which had been a much slower 20 MB mechanism.