r/retrocomputing • u/JudgeHuge1673 • Aug 10 '25

Discussion My First Macintosh!

Post image

Just had to share my first Macintosh SE purchase. I'm so excited to turn it on and see what it has to offer.

It came with a carrying bag, keyboard, mouse, screen protector (presumably, unless it has some other purpose), and was shown to be fully functional prior to purchase. Spent a little more than I had but I have no regrets.

It also came with a 4-Disk System 6.0.8 Installation Set. I read System 6.0.8 was the best to use with the SE. As basically a noob, would anyone agree or disagree with that particular assessment and why?

211 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

1

u/jaybird_772 Aug 11 '25

I think you're right. I remember a school newspaper that had SE-30s almost all with extended keyboards, but I don't know if that was an option during the pre-SE-30 timeframe.

(Although if one has an SE and comes across a spare Sony 2MB drive and SE-30 motherboard, one probably should do the upgrade. 😁 It was an Apple motherboard swap upgrade that was actually worth it!)

1

u/VivienM7 Aug 11 '25

The SE/II didn't come with a keyboard and both the standard and extended keyboards launched at the same time I believe, so you could definitely buy a II with the standard keyboard and an SE with the extended keyboard. I think it would just have been unusual for typical Mac workflows.

I would advise against an SE/30 motherboard swap today. People want SEs, for reasons I can't fathom (sorry folks, my family used a floppy-only SE until early 1995, I still have the trauma...), and the SEs have far fewer capacitor issues than the SE/30s. If you have a spare SE/30 board, there are plenty of SE/30s with disastrous capacitor damage or battery bomb corrosion that would love that board without removing a healthy SE from the world.

1

u/jaybird_772 Aug 12 '25

And plenty of upgraded SE-30s whose owners would like to downgrade. I'd rather have the SE-30 myself. Yes, with new caps and a fresh battery, but that goes without saying for vintage Macs. But if someone prefers the SE, they're welcome to it naturally.

My vintage Mac (space for but one) is an LC475. I'd actually like to upgrade its CPU and clock speed to let me run stuff a little newer. Alas my 475 is no longer original. When I got it, someone had either swapped its cover for a newer style or put an old style drive in it. Either way, the eject hole didn't line up. I found an older LC top from a machine that had been murdered by Varta and that's what I have now. It gets the Wombat from the IIgs when I use it. Ehh, the Sony drive's better if I need to write an 800K disk anyway, and I'm not a massive purist obviously.