{"id":63096,"date":"1987-03-02T09:00:09","date_gmt":"1987-03-02T14:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lowendmac.com\/?p=63096"},"modified":"2025-05-06T09:05:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T13:05:58","slug":"mac-se","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowendmac.com\/1987\/mac-se\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac SE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduced along with the Mac II<\/a> in March 1987, the SE came with 1\u00a0MB of RAM, one or two double-sided 800K floppies, and space to mount an internal SCSI hard drive (the second drive bay held either a hard drive or second floppy \u2013 no room for both, although that didn\u2019t stop some people from creating a bracket to mount a hard drive in a two-floppy SE). The SE was the first compact Mac with a built-in fan.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Macintosh<\/p>\n

The SE is sometimes referred to as the SE\/20, SE 1\/40, 4\/80, etc. \u201cSE\/20\u201d is not an official designation, often leads to confusion, and should not be used. These are not different models, nor should an \u201cSE\/20\u201d be confused with the more powerful SE\/30<\/a>. These numbers refer to the amount of memory and size of the internal hard drive, so an \u201cSE\/20\u201d would have a 20 MB hard drive and an SE 4\/40 would have 4\u00a0MB of RAM and a 40 MB hard drive.<\/p>\n

Although Apple officially rates SCSI on the SE at 1.25 MBps, real world testing finds it to be considerably lower at about half the rated speed. This is also roughly 2.5x faster than the SCSI on the Mac Plus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In August 1989 Apple began to ship the SE with their high density floppy drive, known as the FDHD (floppy drive, high density) or SuperDrive (for its ability to read and write IBM-format floppies with additional software). Not only did this provide 1.4 MB capacity, but also the ability to read and write 3.5\u2033 DOS disks using special software.<\/p>\n

Older SEs with their original ROMs do not support high density floppies. However, they can be used with FDHD drives as long as the disks used are 800K floppies.<\/p>\n

The SE was introduced as the low-end cousin of the hot new 16 MHz Mac II. The SE was the first compact Mac with an expansion slot. One of the first add-in cards was an MS-DOS card. Over time, video, ethernet, and accelerator cards became popular accessories.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not generally known, but the SE supports color, although not on the internal display. It\u2019s only 3-bit color, but it supports output to the ImageWriter II printer\u2019s color ribbon, and as least one company made a SCSI video output device that let the SE display 3-bit color on an external color monitor.<\/p>\n

Color display? Aura Systems made ScuzzyGraph II<\/a>, a SCSI peripheral that provided 8-color video for people who didn\u2019t want to buy (or couldn\u2019t afford) a Mac II. 1989 cost was $995 to $2,495, depending on resolution.<\/p>\n

You can convert a non-working compact Mac into a Macquarium<\/a>. (Please, don\u2019t even think of converting a working one \u2013 you can always find someone interested on the Classic Macs<\/a> or Vintage Macs<\/a> lists.)<\/p>\n

Tips<\/h3>\n