[NTLK] Off Topic: Macintosh SE/30 - to buy or not to buy?

[William Maloney]

So I bit the bullet on this one and feel I might as well tell the story:

After dropping my wouldbe/current girlfriend off so she could look at VCU
Art School in Richmond and catch the bus home, I called up this dude and
found his place. Together with his ladyfriend/wife, they owned this massive
warehouse filled with stuff. This was hoarders on a new level. To the right
were stacks of Atari 2600s while speakers, monitors while knick-knacks and
guitars filled the other side. Had anything fallen on me, no one would have
ever known I was there. Plus it was cold. No heating meant it was 45
degrees-ish inside the place.

The title of his online posting was "vintage Macintosh SE - mac in the
box". In my mind, this suggested the Macintosh had the original box and
other stuff too. I found out this was dead wrong in person. Talking with
him over the phone, he also assured me it booted up. The SE was in a stack
of about 5 other FatMacs and most certainly did not boot up. Instead, the
HD light came up but the screen only put out a solid white line in the
middle of the screen. Disappointed, I checked all the others. Only two lit
up the screen, both with checkerboard problems. While these had supposedly
worked before, it turned out he had last powered these up during the
summer. Thinking hard, I recalled seeing a YouTube video of a guy who
acquired a vintage PC but was unable to boot the machine. After letting the
machine warm up to room temperature, the hard disk expanded and became
readable in the warmer environment. Keeping in mind the comments in here
about caps and such, I took the plunge and acquired a Macintosh Classic, a
Classic II, two mice, and a single keyboard for $17. If this does not pan
out, at least they will become the greatest hipster doorstops of all time.
Thanks for your help guys. Will keep the updates coming on here as these
guys warm up and I find a torx screw set.

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 3:11 PM, James Fraser <
wheresthatistanbul-newtontalk at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> --- On Wed, 11/7/12, Chris Browder <kcfoxie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is an example of a cool Mac SE, but one that you will not be able
> to >use to connect to your Newton:
>
> You know, now that you mention it (and since this is NewtonTalk), it might
> be nice to see an SE/30 and a MessagePad paired up together:
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/66071596@N00/2789811500/
>
> (James Wages' photostream)
>
> Of course, he's "cheating" a little bit, because he does have a IIsi ROM
> installed in the SE/30, but you can't have everything. ;)  Seriously,
> though, it looks like he put a lot of work into that setup (and it must be
> nice to run NCU on a machine with a built-in serial port and System 7).
>
> Also, he's one of the few people I have heard of who have ever played
> around with Newton Keyboard Enabler:
>
> http://www.sarnau.info/software:newton_keyboard_enabler
>
> http://preview.tinyurl.com/acx2gu7
>
> ...which is something I keep meaning to try out myself.....RSN. :)
>
> Anyway, great stuff.
>
>
> Best,
>
> James Fraser
>
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