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The Macintosh SE computer was introduced by Apple in 1987. It turned out to be one of the most popular black and white Macintoshes ever. In the "olden days" of 1988, I worked at an ad agency where we used 2 Mac SE's to churn out a lot of projects. These Macs ran early versions of Pagemaker and Illustrator. They were slow, but the work got done. The standard Motorola 68000 processor rated at 8mhz was included with the SE. Early models came with either a 20 or 40 MB internal hard drive. Some models came with 2 800k built in floppy drives, sans the hard disc. The SE has a SCSI port which allows for the connection of an external hard disk and other devices. They also come with a PDS slot which allowed users to hook up external monitors or networking cards.
Today used Mac SE's can be found for next to nothing, depending on configuration. I was very lucky to pick up a rather worn (on the outside at least) but working Mac SE that came with a 150MB hard disc, 4 MB of ram and a built in 1.4MB Super Drive floppy (later Mac SE's came standard with these). Originally when I got this SE the hard drive was quite a mess. It was working but software titles and incomplete folders were everywhere. There were 3 system folders on the internal hard drive. To remedy the problems I wiped the internal drive clean and installed Mac System 7.01 (which is available from Apple's website and ftp server). After that I installed some of my old applications and a few games. I also installed (using instructions from Jag's website) a full suite of internet software which enables 68000 class Macs to connect to the web. Everything works. Besides the running the legacy software, this Mac can surf into websites, retreive email and ftp files while my other Macs are busy doing something else. Quite nice to have this little guy around! Apple stopped producing the SE after the Mac Classic was introduced in 1990. The Mac SE's high performance cousin is called the Mac SE 30, which uses the same external case but contains a faster 68030 Motorola processor rated at 16mhz. UPDATE 2007: This Mac was loaned to a friend for a few years before she moved away and given back. This year it was given away to a man who needed to run an old mailing list data base. Farewell Mac SE. Your continued service will be appreciated.
Motorola 68000 @ 8mhz 4 MB of RAM memory on 4 1MB 30 pin SIMM chips 150 MB Internal Hard Drive Built in 9 inch black and white monitor 1 internal 1.4 MB Super Drive Macintosh ADB keyboard and mouse Built in appletalk networking Ports: SCSI, RS 232 parallel port External Peripherals
Apple 800K floppy disc drive MORE INFORMATION
Article: Sold On the Mac For Ten Years Make a Bootable Floppy Disc For Your Mac SE
Visit Mel's MacPaint Gallery Other Classic Mac Links: Profile: Low End Mac - Macintosh SE
Article: How to Download Mac Files With a PC Links: Low End Mac | Jag's House | Mac 512k | System 6 Heaven
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Copyright 1998-2007 | Last update April 12, 2007.
Mac SE's retailed for around $3,000 when they first came out. Naturally I never had that kind of money to sink on a small black and white computer (though I did fork over $2000+ for a Mac Plus). Still I always knew that the SE (and its later cousing, the SE-30) were far superior to the sometimes trouble-prone Mac Plus.