From: kanefsky@halcyon.com (Steve Kanefsky)
Subject: Re: SE to SE/30: Worth It?
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 23:05:57 GMT

In article <5759@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> nick+@pitt.edu (Nick C De Mello) writes:
>In article <BuDpMG.239@news.cso.uiuc.edu> tlt38517@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Terry Thiel) writes:
>>silvers3@husc9.harvard.edu (Jolyon Silversmith) writes:
>>
>>>I'm considering upgrading my Mac SE 4/40 to an SE/30 ($799 + $35
>>>installation = SE/30 5/40 in college student mathematics). Is it
>>>worth doing this rather than buying a new LC II or II si or one
>>>of their successors this fall, both in terms of price and future
>>>utility? At some point in the future, for example, I might want to
>>>add a color monitor; would the fact that I would need a card for the
>>I think it is well worth it since the SE/30 is considerably faster than
>>an LCII and even a little faster than the IIsi.  On the other hand the 
>>SE/30 is no longer made so unless you have a warranty with the upgrade
>>you may not want to do it.  The IIsi is slower than dirt unless you
>>put a card in it anyway so I don't think you're losing anything by
>>putting a card in the SE/30 for color.
>
>   I have an SE/30 + 8 bit vid card, and would not trade it for
>a LCII.  You'd also have to make me a pretty good offer to sell me
>a IIsi.  Unless you plan to do something that requires a few
>nubus slots (multimedia, etc) the SE/30 is comprable to the IIci
>(yes with the cache card it's faster, but for 90% of everything
>that extra speed is unnecessary), and the IIci goes for roughly
>$3k, academic prices.  The upgrade looks like a good deal to me...

Actually, I've seen the IIci for $2500 at a local store (i.e. no
educational discount).  That's for 5MB RAM and no hard disk, but you could
get a reasonable hard disk for just a couple hundred more.  That also
*includes* the cache card, and it's probably twice as fast as the SE/30
overall (the 25mhz processor vs 16mhz plus the cache card plus faster
SCSI) And don't forget you have a processor-direct slot and 3 NuBus slots
left open and you have built-in video, power on from the keyboard, power
off from the Special menu, from the keyboard, 32-bit clean ROMs, and much
easier access to the guts of the machine (for RAM upgrades or whatever).

Until very recently, I'd also have said the LCII was better than the
SE/30, because you have built-in color video *and* for an additional $600
you can accelerate it to a 33mhz 68030 with 32K 25ns RAM cache and wipe
the floor with the SE/30.  But Daystar recently came out with a similar
accelerator for the SE/30 which doesn't use the PDS (you have to have a
socketed CPU though, which few SE/30's do.  They may be able to install
one for you like they do with the IIcx accelerator).  That way you can
squeeze in an accelerator and color video on the SE/30 at the same time.

I'd definitely take the IIsi over the SE/30.  It's got a faster processor,
built-in color video (it's not great, but it beats the heck out of no
built-in video at all), sound-input, a full 32-bit data path like the
SE/30, power on from the keyboard, power off from the Special menu, much
better expansion capabilities, 32-bit clean ROMs, and easier access to the
guts.  The only disadvantage I can think of is the "limited" RAM expansion
(65MB vs 128MB with 16MB SIMMs).

Having said all that, there's something kind of strange about the LCII and
IIsi (in addition to the Classic and Classic II).  Until these machines,
Apple always seemed to introduce new machines which advanced the state of
the art.  The SE/30, at the time of its introduction, was truly a marvel.
The LCII and IIsi are each significantly *less* powerful than many of the
older Macs in the lineup (look at the IIci -- it's actually the *oldest*
Mac in the lineup now and it's still a lot better than most of the newer
models).  It's probably a good marketing strategy for Apple to introduce
these low-cost machines, but I can't help missing the days when each new
Mac was more powerful than the last.  Nowadays one has to wonder if a new
machine is going to advance the state of the art, or be some low-cost
crippled version of old technology.

--
Steve Kanefsky
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware