Mac SE/30 Revisited
Today’s “Zscaler Logo on a Weird, Old, or Obsolete Device” revisits one of my favorites… in a whole new way!
You might remember this machine from back in November of last year: the iconic Macintosh SE/30. This was the final entry in the original lineup of Mac desktops - every Mac after this was either a more traditional “box with separate monitor” or an all-in-one with a built in color screen. The SE/30 is the final Mac with a built-in 9" monitor, and like its predecessors it’s limited to “1-bit color” - pixels can be either black or white.
Along with its nostalgic design, the SE/30 is still a beloved collector’s item due to its expandability. Apple included a single internal expansion option: the PDS, or “Processor Direct Slot.” As the name implies, this is a single slot which connects to the original 16MHz Motorola 68030 processor, almost begging for interesting upgrade cards. Even cooler, they can pass-through, meaning that you can stack them, one on top of another…
When I previously shared this machine, it had two powerful PDS cards: an Interware Booster which bumps the CPU up to 50MHz, and an Ethernet card. However, I recently had an opportunity to acquire one of the coolest upgrades: an internal grayscale adapter!
Upgrading the SE/30 to support 256 shades of gray on its internal monitor was a very uncommon option back in the day, requiring the user to purchase a “Micro Xceed” card and a special replacement “neckboard” that attaches to the rear of the CRT itself. Unfortunately, Micron kits are super rare and often sell for $1,000+ today.
Thankfully, a hardware engineer who goes by “ZigZagJoe” has reverse-engineered the Micron cards, and has re-released them under the name “30Video.” I was able to buy a kit from him, along with an upgraded power supply from another hardware hacker who goes by “TT Engineering.”
After a few hours of very delicate work (seriously, it’s WAY too easy to snap the fragile glass ‘neck’ at the back of the CRT display!), my SE/30 is now displaying 256 shades of glorious grayscale on the internal display!
Unfortunately, installing the 30Video board meant there was no space for the old internal ethernet card, but I didn’t want to lose networking… so I also installed a “ZuluSCSI,” a modern device which can emulate a SCSI Ethernet adapter, pairing it to WiFi via an onboard Raspberry Pi 2 W.
My SE/30 is now rocking the following upgrades:
30Video grayscale adapter
ZuluSCSI WiFi bridge
Interware Booster CPU @ 50MHz
NuCF (connects a CompactFlash card directly to the CPU, bypassing the slow SCSI chain)
4XDC upgraded power supply (needed to power all these upgrades!)
68 megabytes of RAM
ROMinator II (a ROM upgrade that fixes some bugs in Apple’s original ROM)
Full disclosure: I have one more major upgrade planned for this machine - one that’s just crazy enough that I will probably feature it again sometime next year. Stay tuned!
