Macintosh SE

The Macintosh SE was released by Apple Computer as an all-in-one successor to the Macintosh Plus with additional capacity for expansion as a workhorse computer. The original version was sold from March 1987 to August 1989, when it was offered with upgrade ROMs.
Its design utilized parallel grill bars from the Snow White design language introduced with the Apple IIc. It included the option of an internal hard drive with a floppy drive, or two floppy drives. Each supported a double-density 800KB disk; support for 1.4MB FDHD floppies came later. Additional storage could be added through a SCSI port. Unlike its predecessors, the SE (and Macintosh II) adopted the ADB port for connecting the mouse and keyboard.Classic Macs #2: The Mac SE by Neale Monks, MyMac Magazine. 2005-05-11. Archived 2005-05-24.
==Specifications==
*CPU: 7.8336 MHz Motorola 68000
*Built-in monitor: 9-inch (512x342 pixel) monochrome
*RAM: 1 MB (expandable to 4 MB) in 4 SIMM slots
*Hard drive: optional 20 MB or 40 MB hard drive (in top floppy bay)
*Floppy drives: 1 or 2 internal 800 KB floppies and 1 external floppy (supports 1.4 MB with ROM upgrade)
*SE slot: a processor direct slot for the 68000 processorPDS: The Processor Direct Slot by Daniel Knight, Low End Mac. 2000-01-13.
==Development==
Apple prototyped the SE in transparent plastics to visualize how the components would fit together in a compact package.Transparent Mac Prototypes Reveal How Apple Builds its Iconic Products by Usman Qureshi, iPhone in Canada. 2014-01-23. This also allowed smoke testing to view how air would travel through the system for cooling. According to collector Hap Plain, 20 units were built, with 8 to 10 of them fully functional as bootable systems.Prototype Transparent Mac SE by Hap Plain, 68k Macintosh Liberation Army. 2013-04-20. Photos of the engineering team were later found hidden within the ROMs.Ghosts in the ROM by Trammell Hudson, NYC Resistor. 2012-08-21.
Macintosh SE prototype.png|Transparent SE prototype
Macintosh SE engineers 0x22F3C.png|Photo of the engineers
==Revisions==
In January 1989, a version with a newly designed logic board was released as the Macintosh SE/30 with a 16 MHz 68030 processor that offered about 4 times the performance of 68000-based compact Macs and support for a new floppy drive high density (FDHD) mechanism, known as the "SuperDrive".Classic II vs SE/30 by Adam Engst, TidBITS. 1991-09-16.
The ROM of the original SE was updated in August 1989, requiring a minimum operating system of System 6.0.3 to support the new FDHD drives. The ROM ugrade was available to existing SE owners, or in new units marked Macintosh SE FDHD. Later that year, they were renamed Macintosh SE SuperDrive. It was discontinued in October 1990, when it was superseded by the Macintosh Classic and LC.Macintosh SE “Superdrive”, The Apple Fool. Accessed 2021-01-06.
==References==
==External Links==
*Macintosh SE and SE FDHD: Technical Specifications at Apple
*Macintosh SE and SE FDHD at Apple-History
*Macintosh SE at the Apple Museum
*Macintosh SE and SE FDHD specs at EveryMac
*Apple Macintosh SE at ForeverMac (archived 2013-12-31, 2012-10-04)
*Apple Macintosh SE at Old Crap Vintage Computing (2018-01-27)
*Mac SE at Low End Mac
*Macintosh SE at Wikipedia
===Articles===
*Inside the Macintosh SE at Hardware Secrets (2013-02-06)
*Original Mac SE Ad Artwork from 1987 by Arnold Kim at MacRumors (2008-09-06)
Category:1987 introductions