What fun from a Macintosh SE

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Sat Aug 21 10:23:23 2004

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 07:36:58 -0700
Ron Hudson <ron.hudson_at_sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>
> On Aug 20, 2004, at 6:53 AM, chris wrote:
>
> >> I just landed hands on a Mac SE. It is currently running system
> >6, I> only have a bout 2mb of memory
> >> and a 20mb hard drive. I even have an imagewriter to go with it!!
> >:^)
> >
> > If you want to raise that to 4 MB (the max it can handle), give me a
> > mailing address (off list), I'll send you 2 more 1 MB SIMMs for it.
> >
> Thanks, but I don't have the required long torx screwdriver and case
> cracker
> tool, and I am a little scared to crack open the case, mean evil nasty
>
> high voltages live
> in there. Besides I might bust something inside and that would be bad.
>
>

Another thing to watch out about with the classic Mac systems is that
the CRT's nipple-seal on some models is a glass tube that runs out
through the middle of the connector end on the neck of the tube. Apple
kindly put a flat circuit board with the connector in the middle that
mounts on the neck. If you push on one side of said board enough (even
nudging it wrong while working with cables inside the system will do),
the leverage will snap off the glass nipple, which evacuates the vaccum
from the CRT tube, ruining it. It makes a medium-loud sucking sound as
the tube expires.

I know this from personal experience, having done so on a Mac Plus, back
when a Mac Plus was a machine of some considerable worth (don't raise
your hackles, it's still a nice machine in some regards, just not one
with mainstream market value any longer). I ended up having to seek out
a dead machine to swap the CRT with.

My current personal gripe: I go to the IUPUI auctions in Indianapolis
these days, and the dolts who run the auction have developed a habit of
shrinkwrapping all the older Macs onto a pallet and not allowing them to
be bid on as individual machines! Last time, there were two nice SE/30
machines, which I would have gotten for the miniumum $5 bid, but they
were embedded in a skid of uninteresting (late model) dumb terminals.
The auction management almost guarantees that those Macs will only go to
a scrapper.

They're doing the same crap with the Sun machines now. (did get one
SparcStation 20 which was off on the side for $5 though) It pisses off
anybody not enamored with late-model PC clones (which bid individually,
of course.)
Received on Sat Aug 21 2004 - 10:23:23 BST