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jasonyates · 03:34 PM

Well, after dealing with several issues (which I solved with the help of these forums, thanks) the SE/30 is finally functional.

128mb RAM, 2gb hard drive, internal ethernet, etc. Running Mac OS 7.5.5 and OpenBSD 3.1. Connected via 10BaseT LAN and 1.5 megabit DSL for internet.

I know a lot of you don't care about this or think I'm wasting my time, but I love working on old machines and I have wanted to experiment with a compact-Mac-based OpenBSD terminal for a while and now I finally can. Other than the slow processor (16mhz 68030) it is really a pretty capable system.

Taking the thing apart over and over to troubleshoot memory problems is quite tedious so now that it's done I just wanted to celebrate..

-Jason

CIA · Nov 8, 2002, 04:09 AM

Rock on! How much was that machine new back in the day? And people complain that today's G4 are overpriced! The setup you have probably would have been $9000 in the late 80's...

jasonyates · Nov 8, 2002, 03:41 PM

Originally posted by CIA:
Rock on! How much was that machine new back in the day? And people complain that today's G4 are overpriced! The setup you have probably would have been $9000 in the late 80's...

Yeah, $9000 is probably about right. I've got no more than $200 into it including my shipping costs through eBay..

-Jason

bradoesch · Nov 11, 2002, 12:52 AM

Originally posted by jasonyates:

...128mb RAM...

Apple says you can only have 32MB. Can the Mac see that much RAM with the Mac OS as well?

Brad

CIA · Nov 11, 2002, 05:04 AM

I think if you have the 32 bit enabler extension installed you can see more than 12(?) megs of RAM. (I forget the exact low end amount)

BrunoBruin · Nov 11, 2002, 09:42 AM

Those original SE/30s sold for more than $6,000 new. And that was with a 40MB hard drive and ONE MB of RAM, when RAM prices were astronomical. When my office went to Macs in 1989, we bought two SE/30s and two IIci's as the "high-end" machines!

Oh yeah, 16MHz and a megabyte of RAM, those were the days...

x user · Nov 11, 2002, 02:38 PM

I had 128MB in an SE/30 once. 8 16's right? Yeap, pulled those out of a Quadra 950

. Awesome little machines those SE/30's.

Big Mac · Nov 13, 2002, 03:45 AM

I don't know if I believe in the veracity of these claims, but if it is indeed true it is quite impressive. The SE/30 was a great machine, but those specs are quite far beyond the established limits of that hardware.

gadster · Nov 13, 2002, 08:44 AM

Makes you wonder how a similarly spec'd PC would fare nowadays, ahem� trolls, where are you? Talk about value for money.

jasonyates · Nov 15, 2002, 02:54 AM

Originally posted by Big Mac:
I don't know if I believe in the veracity of these claims, but if it is indeed true it is quite impressive. The SE/30 was a great machine, but those specs are quite far beyond the established limits of that hardware.

Well, as far as established limits of the hardware, I think I am pretty much establishing them.

I'm sure there is someone else out there with a similar setup but I haven't gotten in touch with them yet. Until then I have the most powerful SE/30 ever! Muhaha..

This is actually my second attempt at a compact Mac. Before I had a Classic II that I happened upon but I never really got it going. When I found out how expandable the SE/30 supposedly was I picked one up.

As far as software/drivers, I did a basic install of System 7.5.3, updated to 7.5.5, installed MODE32, and everything works perfectly. All the memory is recognized and available. The entire hard drive is recognized and available. When downloading in Fetch the transfer rate was fluctuating between 125-135k/sec which is pretty snappy.

I've switched from OpenBSD to NetBSD now, and everything seems to work in that as well.

As far as the Apple specs saying it is only expandable to 32mb of RAM, I think that is just because the biggest SIMM you could get at that time was 4mb. I have eight 16mb SIMMs in there and they are definately working..

-Jason

cutterjohn · Dec 5, 2002, 03:18 PM

Originally posted by jasonyates:

Well, as far as established limits of the hardware, I think I am pretty much establishing them. I'm sure there is someone else out there with a similar setup but I haven't gotten in touch with them yet. Until then I have the most powerful SE/30 ever! Muhaha..

sorry to resurrect this, but:
I've gotten my original IIcx back up and running. It originally had 1M RAM & 170M external SCSI drive(noisy!) & FDHD & a RasterOps true color video board, woohoo 640x480x24. (upgraded it to 8M a few mos. after getting it for, IIRC $300. Systems 6.0.4?/7.0/7.1)

Since then I've added a 1G internal SCSI, 96M RAM, Asante 10BT/AUI/10B2 etherboard NuBus, system 7.5.5. Sadly the FDHD has bitten the dust, as has the 170M SCSI drive.

freakboy2 · Dec 5, 2002, 04:24 PM

Originally posted by cutterjohn:

sorry to resurrect this, but:
I've gotten my original IIcx back up and running. It originally had 1M RAM & 170M external SCSI drive(noisy!) & FDHD & a RasterOps true color video board, woohoo 640x480x24. (upgraded it to 8M a few mos. after getting it for, IIRC $300. Systems 6.0.4?/7.0/7.1)

Since then I've added a 1G internal SCSI, 96M RAM, Asante 10BT/AUI/10B2 etherboard NuBus, system 7.5.5. Sadly the FDHD has bitten the dust, as has the 170M SCSI drive.

His se/30 kicks your IIcx's ass.

FB2 not FB1

FB2

So with 128 megs in the SE/30 can you open EVERY app that works on it? :-)

waffffffle · Dec 7, 2002, 07:42 AM

Very cool. I've been interested in getting some sort of *nix running on my LCII. I admit having a compact Mac like an SE/30 is much cooler though, but the LCII is pretty small. What bothers me about the LCII is that it's been sitting downstairs in my house turned off for so long and I have nothing to do with it. I don't want to throw it out because its a Mac. I would give it away to someone but shipping it would cost too much and I don't know anyone who would want it. I even spent $35 a few years ago to put an ethernet card in the sucker to put it on my home network. I installed a fresh installation of 7.1 but using it was just too frustratingly slow. I still wonder about the usability of a terminal but I think that it would be a great experiment. I could write some software to show news from the internet, weather, maybe show some other useful information, all in ASCII. For that purpose a compact Mac would be better though. It would be great to have it sitting the kitchen or other conventient location, chugging away without needing any input from the user so no space would be taken up by a mouse or keyboard.

My LCII has 8 MB of RAM and an external 520 MB SCSI drive that I've put inside (the internal 40 MB drive won't work in the external case, I think because it's permanently set to ID 0 or 1, whichever is the internal HD on a Mac). How is the process of installing BSD? Do you do it all from floppies? How big is the OS? What kinds of stuff can you get to run on it? Will X11 run?

Thanks, and again, very cool system.

jasonyates · Dec 8, 2002, 04:40 AM

Originally posted by waffffffle:
Very cool. I've been interested in getting some sort of *nix running on my LCII. I admit having a compact Mac like an SE/30 is much cooler though, but the LCII is pretty small. What bothers me about the LCII is that it's been sitting downstairs in my house turned off for so long and I have nothing to do with it. I don't want to throw it out because its a Mac. I would give it away to someone but shipping it would cost too much and I don't know anyone who would want it. I even spent $35 a few years ago to put an ethernet card in the sucker to put it on my home network. I installed a fresh installation of 7.1 but using it was just too frustratingly slow. I still wonder about the usability of a terminal but I think that it would be a great experiment. I could write some software to show news from the internet, weather, maybe show some other useful information, all in ASCII. For that purpose a compact Mac would be better though. It would be great to have it sitting the kitchen or other conventient location, chugging away without needing any input from the user so no space would be taken up by a mouse or keyboard.

My LCII has 8 MB of RAM and an external 520 MB SCSI drive that I've put inside (the internal 40 MB drive won't work in the external case, I think because it's permanently set to ID 0 or 1, whichever is the internal HD on a Mac). How is the process of installing BSD? Do you do it all from floppies? How big is the OS? What kinds of stuff can you get to run on it? Will X11 run?

Thanks, and again, very cool system.

I think once you get into it BSD can be useful on an old Mac, however the install process takes very long, and any sizable compiling or file compression/expansion is also quite slow. That is my experience with the SE/30. If you had a faster system such as a 33mhz 68040 it might be better.

As far as the install goes, it is pretty simple. You have to partition your drive, get a basic Mac OS system set up to boot from, then install the BSD packages to your other partitions from within Mac OS. After that you configure the boot program and hope for the best. I am now running NetBSD and would recommend it over OpenBSD. I simply downloaded the basic packages from Mac OS then did the install from there. It doesn't require too much memory or hard drive space. I think it will work with a 68LC040 processor but it is best to have one with an FPU/MMU. X will run, it has limited potential depending on your monitor size and video card though.

If you are interested in getting a setup going I can probably help you out with questions. I know I ran into several problems that took me a while to work out on my own just because the information wasn't exactly readily available..

-Jason

samslaves · Dec 12, 2002, 11:18 AM

jasonyates,

if you can list the specs of the HW you used (RAM type/man., HD type/man. and so on) to do this i'll try to do the same on my dusty SE/30. Than we can have some bench

Feel free to email me privately.

Bye
Sam

jasonyates · Dec 13, 2002, 09:27 AM

Originally posted by samslaves:
jasonyates,

if you can list the specs of the HW you used (RAM type/man., HD type/man. and so on) to do this i'll try to do the same on my dusty SE/30. Than we can have some bench

Feel free to email me privately.

Bye
Sam

Well, I don't know any of the specifics of my parts since they are all closed up in the case right now. As far as I know the memory is basicly just generic 30 pin SIMMs. I have eight 16mb SIMMs, 2 matching sets of four each, I don't know the brand though. The hard drive is an Apple-branded (Seagate I believe) 2gb from my 8500. The ethernet card is an Asante MacCon 30 or something along those lines. I really hate opening this thing up so unless I have to for some other reason that is about as much as I will know about it for now.

-Jason