The Macintosh SE is slow. Let's speed it up!

This is the Macintosh SE that we had as a family computer since it was new in 1987. As a youth, I absolutely loved this machine but I always was bothered by how slow it was, especially after upgrading it to System 7. Today, I'm going to fix that be trying to install a mysterious vintage accelerator into it to see how much of a boost it can really get.
0:00 Intro
1:24 A little background on the Macintosh SE
7:36 Radius SE Accelerator
9:28 Radius Two Page Display card for the SE Accelerator
11:19 Orion by MacPEAK Systems
17:41 Testing untested Mac SE motherboard
22:56 Testing the Orion accelerator
24:16 Testing the Radius SE Accelerator
25:02 Troubleshooting issues with the Orion accelerator
26:36 Orion accelerator memory size jumper testing
30:15 Replacing Mac SE ROMs using EPROMS
36:04 Face off! Macintosh Classic vs the accelerator Mac SE
39:43 Sound issues with the accelerator
50:40 Conclusion
--- Video Links
Thread trying to identify the MacPeek Orion accelerator:
68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threa...
Macintosh ROM collection:
www.macintoshrepository.org/7...
Vintage Macintosh accelerator drivers:
vintageapple.org/macdrivers/
Spreadsheet showing Mask ROM to EPROM wiring:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Adrian's Digital Basement ][ (Second Channel)
/ @adriansdigitalbasement2
Support the channel on Patreon:
/ adriansdigitalbasement
-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/s.nl/it.A/id.16...
O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
amzn.to/3a9x54J
Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
amzn.to/2VrT5lW
Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
amzn.to/2ye6xC0
Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
www.rigolna.com/products/digi...
Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
amzn.to/3adRbuy
TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
amzn.to/2wG4tlP
www.aliexpress.com/item/33000...
TS100 Soldering Iron:
amzn.to/2K36dJ5
www.ebay.com/itm/TS100-65W-MI...
EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
www.eevblog.com/product/121gw/
DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
amzn.to/2RDSDQw
www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Logic-DS...
Magnetic Screw Holder:
amzn.to/3b8LOhG
www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-...
Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
www.ebay.com/itm/14-16-18-20-...
RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
www.retrotink.com/
Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-5-10PCS-...
Heat Sinks:
www.aliexpress.com/item/32537...
Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
amzn.to/3b8LOOI
--- Links
My GitHub repository:
github.com/misterblack1?tab=r...
Commodore Computer Club / Vancouver, WA - Portland, OR - PDX Commodore Users Group
www.commodorecomputerclub.com/
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino

[@odar420]

To have your actual computer from your childhood is awesome, pure nostalgia!

[@TheGlitchyMario]

I have one, but I wasn’t alive any ware near the system lifespan. I still use it though.

[@rich_edwards79]

I have my Amiga 500 from Christmas of 1989. Still take it out and fire it up from time to time. Aside from being in desperate need of some retrobrite, it's as good as the day my 10yo self took it out of the box (and then spent all afternoon playing Rainbow Islands on it!)

[@josch1710]

I still have my Atari 800XL from 1984.

[@the_kombinator]

I had a Compaq Deskpro 386/20e. It was a pile of crap. I have seen similar models on auction sites from $50 to $300, I passed each time. My second computer, some kind of East German NCR 386 16 MHz (DX, 4 Mb RAM) - now THAT I'd like to get back.

[@vaffangool9196]

*The Mac SE came out* just in time for my freshman year. Man I played sooo much Beyond Dark Castle on that thing. My little brother got it as a hand-me-down, for the life of me I can't remember what I had between that and my Micron Millennia tower. Kept _that_ thing through Windows 95 and Windows 98 and never installed the drivers for the Iomega Zip drive 🤦‍♂️😂

[@jondorthebrinkinator]

Fun fact: For the Mac II line, Apple would append the letter 'x' to the model to denote that it contained a 68030 processor. (IIfx, IIsx, etc) For some reason, they decided not to stick with that scheme for the SE -> SE/30 upgrade. I can't imagine why. 😉

[@jammi__]

There's no IIsx. The 030 model replacing the II was simply IIx. Then a compact model came named IIcx. After that using the original form factor, the IIfx, and the compact IIci and even more compact (and crippled) IIsi were introduced. The letters have nothing to do with 030 in particular, just that they're newer models and c means compact and s perhaps indeed means slow.

[@thomasburk3205]

@@jammi__ I may be wrong but I thought the ‘si’ in IIsi stood for ‘sound input’ or something related to that since it was the only one in the Mac II family at the time that had it. Similarly, I think the ‘i’ in IIci stood for ‘integrated video’.

[@jammi__]

@@thomasburk3205 I think Slow Integrated video could have been an as good guess for an backronym. FX perhaps was meant to be be "Fast X". I don't think there are reliable sources for these and to me it feels like pretty random characters. Apple IIgs perhaps meant graphics & sound, but I think it's most likely yet another backgronym.

[@thomasburk3205]

@@jammi__ Yeah that seems plausible, but I really do think the letters stand for something but we don’t know exactly what that is.

[@solitairepilot]

Ah yes, my favorite Mac, the SEx

[@PatrickDunn13078]

Hi Adrian. Back in 1992 when I started with the company I’m still at now the SE was my desktop for about 2-3 years when I was upgraded to an LC III. We did put an accelerator card in this machine and the Mac Plus we had as well. The SE was not only a desktop but we also did faxing from it for sending out ski reports via fax. After I moved on to the LC III the SE then ran a BBS until 1995-6 when it was replaced by our 1st website. The SE ran sys 7 slow as you noted but I was doing office stuff however I also used MacDraw a lot and Ready, Set, Go! For creating our newsletter. It ran so slow then we got the accelerator card and it was so much better. Thanks for the trip down memory lane once again! -pd

[@milgeekmedia]

Funny story - I was at art school in the UK in 1984 studying graphic design when I happened across the Mac 512 while meeting a friend in the Engineering Department's CAD lab. After he gave me a quick look I was immediately hooked and spent every hour I could on MacDraw, so much so that I started missing my design classes. Anyway, I was eventually pulled up by my art tutors about my 'absences' and when I tried to explain what I had been doing my graphic's lecturer told me to (quote) 'stop wasting my time' and that these computers 'would never amount to anything'! 😂 ...Well, we all know what happened. And I found it amusing when years later (after I had completed a Degree in Design primarily on Apple Macintosh computers) that I found out that this lecturer had ended up head of the department at the college teaching new students graphic design on Macs! I always thought about going back to visit her. 😁 Thanks for a terrifically interesting video.

[@AndrewJones-tj6et]

I've still got Amiga 1000 & 2000 along with their packing boxes from when I bought them in my youth. Got some restoration work to do to bring them back to full life though.

[@VincentGroenewold]

Ok Adrian, this is by far the best video I think you ever made. Specifically because of the detective work and the personal connection to this computer. Loved it!

[@SonicBoone56]

Agreed, definitely one of the best videos he's made

[@gerald5344]

The first Mac I ever used was an SE with the internal 20 MB hard drive. It belonged to the history department where I was a graduate student. That was in 1990. A year or two later I bought my first Mac, an off-lease SE/30. I later sold the SE/30 to help pay for my first Powerbook. I still miss that SE/30!

[@CaliforniaEBRDude]

In 1987 I was working as an information systems analyst for a rapidly growing savings bank. Our manager agreed to buy ONE Mac SE when she saw what a beautiful job of formatting and printing it could do, compared to the IBM 3270 80-column green text-only terminals her staff all used, plus one sad IBM PC XT that was used mainly for Lotus 1-2-3 and sometimes as a 3270 terminal emulator. The graphical (almost "WYSIWYG") interface of the Mac was superb for using office applications like Word, Excel, MacDraw, etc. even in monochrome. But the several analysts were often competing for time on the Mac, and we were criticized for "composing on the Mac" and admonished to do our work on a 3270 or even a typewriter then re-key and format our work on the Mac so it would print out nice and pretty. The Mac was connected only to a laser printer, not into the IBM mainframe at all. I'm never surprised to see a Macintosh SE still running. They were very well designed and made, definitely a major step forward in personal computing interfaces.

[@BilisNegra]

40:14 Impossible not to get some CuriousMarc vibes on hearing that tune in that particular version.

[@stoojinator]

I love this channel. How you diagnose things is amazing to watch. Those EPROMs hooked up like that was incredible. Not only is it really interesting, but the content is really educational too. Thanks!

[@deniskurkin2198]

Adrian, you've nailed that in the intro: SE = Slow Experience 😀

[@mikespangler98]

The old Macs had two FPU modes. SANE used Apple's standard libraries that were guaranteed to give the same results with or without an FPU. The Orion driver specifically said it was using SANE. Going direct to the 68881 was much faster, but the results might be different when compared with the 68000 version.

[@marccaselle8108]

What about INSANE?

[@jsrodman]

Curious that they went to all this trouble when only the Mac II had a 68881. Or maybe you're grouping 68882 under the same umbrella.

[@williamsquires3070]

One thing you can try to do for the noise on the speaker is to put a “pi-network” low-pass filter in series between the computer’s “audio out”, and the speaker. You’ll need a small solderless breadboard, some 22-24 ga. hookup wire, a 100 ohm resistor, and two small capacitors (of the same capacitance). Cut the wires from the audio-out, strip and tin them, then put one wire into the “bus bar” on the breadboard. For convenience, I’m going to refer to this as “ground.” Now insert the other lead coming from the computer in one of the “normal” holes on the breadboard. Wire one of the capacitors from there to ground, and take the 10- ohm resistor and insert one lead at that junction, and the other lead to another of the normal holes. Now wire the other capacitor from the 100 ohm resistor to ground. Finally, strip and tin the wires from the speaker, and insert one to ground, and the other to the junction of the 100 ohm resistor and the second capacitor to ground that’s not used yet. Start with a 47 nF cap, and work up in value until it sounds the best when playing Tetris. The filter will attenuate the volume slightly (that’s why I suggest a 100 ohm resistor), but that’s to be expected with a passive filter.

[@BCProgramming]

Fun fact: redrawing of hidden areas of Windows was a thing until Windows Vista and Mac OS X. Before that- in XP and earlier and OS 9 and prior, all drawing was done to a single framebuffer and therefore window contents had to be redrawn. There were some capabilities to save the Device Context info in Windows even in 3.1, (and presumably an equivalent on Mac) but it still needed redrawn from said buffer and was basically a faster way for the responsible program to redraw the window contents, rather than the OS "knowing" what was in the revealed area.

[@DamianMontero]

Like always. Listening to this while working means I don't get anything done and I end up watching all of this. Wonderful stuff!

[@theapplechronicles9863]

Hi Adrian, I found a working Gemstart 3.0 Control Panel on the Mac GUI and tried it out with an emulator. The files are not corrupted if you extract them directly on your SE. The control panel loads up as the system starts, but a real accelerator is required in order to open it. Maybe it'll fix your sound problem? I tried uploading a link to the image file I made but YT deleted the comment. Let me know if you want me to email it to you.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Thanks, yeah a few people have sent links too. :-) THere is also a missing Applied Engineering control panel that also claims to fix the sound -- the one I ended up using in the video was the second link ...

[@CommodoreFan64]

KZbin in the past few weeks has gotten really paranoid, to the point you can't even tag someone in the middle of a comment anymore without it getting deleted, and even in other videos on various Linux, and retro computers topics about 1/2 my comments are getting deleted for no good reason for something as mondaine as simply listing the name of a Linux distro, or alternative web browser that's not Chrome, or Chromium.

[@BrainSlugs83]

Same. My comments are constantly getting deleted. If you just put a dollar sign, or a URL it loses its bananas.

[@wolvenar]

@@CommodoreFan64 It's getting about to that time that big tech is getting scared of politics.

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@wolvenar It's more than that, it's they are afraid of the common person finally getting tired of their BS, and starting to fight back. That's why I say all creators should be posting them content on alternate platforms as well that don't disable their like buttons, and don't remove content unless its just flat out illegal like nasty "K.P." stuff that the poster should get an automatic trip to the firing squad for!!

[@jammi__]

The SE is actually a bit faster than 128K/512K/Plus, *because* it does have a co-processor for video. The co-processor draws the frame buffer onto the display independent of the processor, unlike the earlier models. That's why the earlier models are only 78% of the SE speed, or in other words, the SE is 28% faster than the Plus/512K/128K, because the CPU doesn't have to spend time bit-banging graphics to the CRT.

[@PatientXero607]

I was curious to what made the SE better than a Plus, besides the internal hard disk option and memory expansion to 4MB. Thanks for giving me more insight into that.

[@MagesGuild]

I am pretty sure that you need the MMU to use the other RAM bank on the Orion board. You should try that with the other jumper settings in the future.

[@JeffBreyer]

Never had a mac growing up. Ive had a few laterish macs including an older intel iMac, a few G4 minis and and the last optical disc model of the mini. But yeah, I always thought those old macs were neat once I saw one on Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. Scotty speaking in the the mouse as a microphone was priceless.

[@retrogamer33]

Scotty say: A keyboard, how quaint

[@ghramsey1681]

*uses mouse like a microphone* "Computer?!... HELLO COMPUTER?! ..." - Scotty, Star Trek IV

[@The_Ballo]

My father used a MacSE with the Radius two page display at work, but would bring back the SE (sans external display) home so I could play with it. The Mac had 4MB of RAM, SCSI, and an optical mouse. The Radius display worked in conjunction with the built-in display to make one large oddly-shaped desktop. You could change the relative positions of the displays in the Control Panel using the Radius extension. This was working in the 80s many, many, many years before multiple monitors worked on any other system. There may have been some multiple monitor setups in the UNIX world, but they were always using matching resolutions and there was no real concept of a "desktop". Most programs just seemed to work, including the Multi Finder hack. Sadly, I don't see a video anywhere of this setup working, which is of historical significance given it was the first of its kind. He eventually replaced this setup with a Mac IIFX which screamed.

[@jazbell7]

How generations matter. I never even saw a computer until I was in graduate engineering school in the 60's and these were large room sized units fed with punched cards. you guys had it a lot easier with your Apple IIs, Macintoshs et all.

[@bradleybenson916]

I recently refurbished a few SEs and upgraded them to 4mb, but I was constantly getting random lock ups. Turns out the SE hates 2 & 3 chip simms. I swapped in 9 chip simms and it worked perfect.

[@zvisger]

I remember having these at my old school library. Then there were the teal see thru ones.. maybe even Kid Paint Studio or whatever it was, Oregon Trail, and even typing practice! Lol. Back then my computer teacher came to my friend and I a few times to learn about computers, or have us teach a lesson lol. Those were the days you could proxy out of a firewall. Before the teacher could see everyone else's screens from his screen.. but then again now kids probably have their own laptops. I'm only 30! Why do I feel so old!

[@brentboswell1294]

I never saw a Mac SE in the wild. Our university had SE/30's in the Mac lab (next door to the PC lab that was all IBM PS/2's) 😉 Even later, when I helped my sister (high school journalism teacher) set up the AppleTalk network for her students to do desktop publishing, most of the Macs were SE/30's (from a very cheap, very poor public school district!)

[@Transit_Biker]

It really is telling how much R&D went into these things to get them to work "just right". Amazing. Great video!

[@CommodoreFan64]

I feel ya on have one of your childhood computers, as I still have my Zenith Datasystems 286e Supersport laptop being the first laptop I ever had, and only one for a good while. yes it still works amazingly aside from the external battery pack, and having to replace the PSU several years back, and despite having newer retro computers like my Pentium 4 build that boots 98se, and XP, I still go back to that old laptop sometimes when I just want to get some office work done without modern distractions.

[@kawiluver25]

I wanted to say I personally miss long videos like this!! Thank you for the hour of entertainment!! Happy holidays

[@parrottm76262]

That nest of jumpers just made me so happy to see. Well worth the effort though. I so appreciate the way you troubleshoot things. Great job.

[@MrDarchangelomni]

I just realized I was not subscribed, I have assumed I have been subscribed for a year or two because of how often these videos appear in my feed, sorry for that, now I feel like I have shoplifted all your work, I corrected the problem.

[@andyjackson3891]

As a Scotsman - I doff my cap to your choice of wallpaper on your PC. Aberlour is a phenomenal whisky, especially A'Bunadh. Love the channel, sir!

[@MoraFermi]

I wonder if the "non functional" memory slots would work if you had actual MMU in that socket instead of a jumper.

[@youtube-ventura]

One of you best episodes. I learned so much and love following your troubleshooting process. Cheers!

[@MrJohnBos]

I had a MacIntosh SE/30 as my office computer. That baby was very fast for the day. I loved it. Next computer was the MacIntosh II ci. That was my favorite.

[@emorelama]

I did my studies at the University with an SE. The upgrade to SE/30 was too expensive for me. If the internet had existed at that time I guess I would have bought one of these accelerators. Thanks for the video.

[@ultraviolettp3446]

I love your channel as you take old tech and save them and upgrade them. I was a teenager in the late 1970's and remember seeing computers come to life. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair (black with a membrane keyboard and a cassette deck as a drive); I bought my first computer as a Commodore 64 (still have it and several 1541 drives and a commodore monitor and a ram expansion model that plugged in the back which was a godsend in college). Please keep doing what you do. I know this hardware is obsolete, but it nonetheless paved the way for modern equipment. Great channel!

[@wun1gee]

I have a Mac SE I picked up at a swap meet back in like 1999 for $15.00. It still works flawlessly to this day. I also have my PowerMac 5260/100 that my parents bought me in 1996 when I was 13. That computer got me through the early internet. I have fond memories of AOL 3.0 on a 33.6k modem. I still have the ZIP drive too. The 800mb HDD died a few years back but I brought her back with an SD card. It amazes me to this day the color quality on that CRT, even though it's got tens of thousands of hours on it. I wish the plastics were holding up as well as the CRT and electronics.

[@videomentaryproductionschannel]

That's great video, not really into Mac, but as you say, it's what you like, and it was enjoyable watching you updating it, and it almost fully working the way you wanted, great video.

[@blackwolf9748]

LoL @ 10/10 for sketchiness... Yup but I Love it. This is why I love this channel.

[@minty_Joe]

Adrian, the SE and Macintosh II were both introduced at the same time. There's a great Computer Chronicles episode devoted to both machines from 1987 and you can find it here on YT. Not nearly as entertaining as watching John C. Dvorak take apart an IBM PS/2, but still informative.

[@bryanreed107]

love love love this video sir! never owned a classic style mac but still a nostalgia overload!

[@msuc5vette]

Another great video Adrian. Grab an ATX harness extension and you can move the logic board away from the Mac! The atx harness is wider, but the pin pattern lines up fine. It’s just shifted to one side.

[@Toby_Q]

This. I learned about this from Mac84 and Branchus Creations. You don't even really need to cut or modify the ATX extension cable.

[@charlesackerknecht7321]

Great video as always. FYI, you can use a portion of a standard ATX power supply extender to go from SE/SE30 motherboard to analog board. Helps me out tremendously when testing these boards.

[@jameslewis2635]

This shows why back in the day some people said that the fastest way to run Apple software was to emulate with an Amiga since that machine had the native 68k CPU as well as a supporting chipset which took a lot of the load off the CPU, especially in later Amiga models such as the A3000 and A4000 which could be fitted as standard with 68030 or 68040 CPU's as standard with accelerators available featuring 68060 or PPC CPU's..

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

The only fly in the ointment was if you were trying to run color Mac software, the conversion from chunky data to bitplanes for the Amiga's display might slow things down a bit... of course, RTG solved this nicely. And you'd still end up cheaper than an equivalently-equipped Mac (because Apple charged too much for them).

[@MrMarianoamigo]

@@SeeJayPlayGames with good video driver, using MMU (030/040/060) there was no problem with speed. Only interlaced modes were trobles for eyes.

[@SeeJayPlayGames]

@@MrMarianoamigo which can be fixed with a scan doubler...

[@youbecha64]

Occasionally I have had luck pasting either the old thread, or the image link into the wayback machine...it is worth a try.

[@mndlessdrwer]

The Way Back Machine and their entire preservation project is just absolutely amazing. I'm so glad that someone thought to archive all of those old sites and BBS for posterity. Now they're even archiving other forms of media. It's truly one of the best kinds of projects out there. If you've got old software libraries and you need to downsize, definitely hit them up and see if they need any of them. I think they're also digitizing a bunch of old manuals and magazines about tech.

[@pelgervampireduck]

I totally get why you are doing this, it's for the same reason I replace parts or mess with my 286 or pentium 1 computers. "wow, I wish I had that stuff back then". when I was a teenager and the pentium 1 was my main computer it had 16mb of ram and a 1gb hard disk and a 1mb pci cirrus graphics card. now I use it with 64mb of ram, a 10gb hard disk, a better s3 2mb graphics card, dvd drive instead of cd, and a lan card instead of diaul up modem, so I feel like I maxed out "my real computer". it's not the main one anymore, but it feels more like "my computer" than the newer ones, specially because I've used the same cabinet since it was an XT clone, the same keyboard since it was a 286, the same VGA monitor since it was a 386, and so on, so that thing is the one I have "burned in my mind" as "my computer" the most.

[@drywinddotnet]

Love this! I too started with the SE and was blessed in the 90s to be able to install various accelerators including the Radius 16mhz 020 and the Mobius 030 25. I think the earlier 020 accelerators like you have were extremely good (and expensive). They seemed better made with well designed CDEVs.

[@HammondDirk]

We had a Mac SE FDHD when I was a kid, my father was also not so satisfied with it's speed so he bought an Irwin accelerator for it (and breaking the crt while installing it...). I can't remember exactly how much the difference was, but surely that System 7 made it a lot slower... My father even took the card to his work and installed it temporarily in a Mac SE there (a small business, completely Macintosh SE based) to try to convince the boss to buy some accelerator cards for the machines there. Later I got an identical SE FDHD myself, without accelerator, just for fun (looked nice next to my B/W G3 with 21" crt 😛), I played around with different Systems, figuring out that with System 6 (and Multifinder) it ran perfectly and felt actually quite usable, even then around 2004, but with System 7, it was too slow...

[@BCProgramming]

According to my copy of The Macintosh Bible, Third Edition, from 1991, Radius accelerator cards retailed for around $800.

[@TheBitPunch]

Just popping in to tell you this is my favorite KZbin channel. That will be all. Carry on.

[@mar4kl]

Nice video! My parents 2nd personal computer was a Mac SE, purchased in 1989. (Their first computer, an Apple II Plus, was retired, still working, after 10 years of service.) I don't remember much about the Mac SE, though, because by the time they bought it, I was out of their house and on my own, so I only saw it when I came to visit. I think Dad ran it off an Iomega Zip drive after its hard drive failed, and I seem to recall that he replaced it with one of the Mac clones that became available in the mid 1990s and handed the SE off to one of my sisters when she graduated college. But it didn't fare so well after that, and I don't think she had it long before she disposed of it (not sure how). I think maybe she got the Mac clone from Dad when he bought his 4th computer, a PowerMac G4 Cube. (Now, THAT was a cool Mac! You turned it on just by waving your hand over it.)

[@gregkelly2145]

I learned to use DOS on my Mac SE. I had a copy of Virtual PC and it was ridiculously, pitifully slow, but I was able to learn and had a 22 year career in IT as a result. It also had Photoshop 1...1 loaded. I installed a robo-dialer and found the back door to my university's mainframe so I could dial in and enroll in classes from my dorm room. Loved that computer!

[@joeturner7959]

I remember that the Radius Accelerators were priced at $800 for no FPU, and either $950 or $1000 with the FPU. They were missing the 68851 PMMU, so they did not support virtual memory. The software verified the CPU/FPU, and had an instruction/data cache switch. ( and when I found a 68882 with a broken leg, soldered one on, and put it in, it recognized it accurately as a 68882. ) I had the one for the MacPlus, and later for the Mac II (Rockets) The MacII plug MMU only tied two lines low, it did not do anything. The 68851 which replaced it was a PMMU necessary for both Virtual Memory, and Running A/UX. The Apple SANE is Apple Standard Apple Numeric Environment. Most accelerators had their own replacement, such as Radius had Radius SANE. If you had a Mac Classic, You could boot into the easter-egg, ROM OS, Cmd-opt-x-o and it would boot a 6.0.7 OS from the roms.

[@SireDragonChester]

I missed the old Mac classic days. When was going high school. Our school mostly had Mac classic and later upgrade colour classic. My shop teacher let me borrow his SE/30 his office from shop class. (Which he had external HDD for his SE/30 and taught me a lot about Mac and computer.) so I could do this school project at home at my parents farm. Cus at the time. All I had was crappy old Tandy 1000 SL2, which has intel 8088/86 that ran around 8-10 mhz and had no HDD and I think it only had 720 kB 3.5 floppy drive. Where all macs at least had 1.44 mb 3.5 floppies and Macintosh had hard drives. HDD imo were such huge step compared slow floppies hah. SE/30 had HDD what 40 MB HDD? and Se/30 was leaps and bounds faster then my crapy old Tandy pc with old 8088/86 cpu. Lol. Se 30/colour classic were my fav around what 1994+. Wanted one so badly back then but up here in Canada they very expensive. $1500+ to $2000 Canadian. ( I think). Never did get one. I think end up build 80486dx/dx4 near end of 1999. End up loosing interest in Macintosh Cus everybody was more involved with PC after 386/486+ days. Wanted LC575 but never got one. For long time even remember reading Mac books that use order and read all the time. Drool I’ve cus all had at time was crazy Tandy pc. Wasn’t till end 1990’s was finally able buy or build 486dx/dx4 pc. I often wonder why Motorola died out so quickly and why Apple quickly switch to power PC then later intel. I wonder what might have happened if Motorola cpu become the standard and if power pc and intel had failed. Good video :)

[@retropuffer2986]

I never used System 7 on those classic era macs. I stuck with 6 which ran faster and there were plenty of inits/cdevs to obtain some of the features of 7.

[@LouieCartoon]

where could one find these inits/cdecs? just refurbished a macintosh classic, willing to learn more about this

[@retropuffer2986]

@@LouieCartoon macintosh garden has some of the old software.

[@mikeslattery7371]

We had a Mac SE in our college. The graphic artist used it for a while for print layouts and catalogs. I remember upgrading the 700k floppy to a newfangled 1.4k drive and having to swap the ROMs in the unit. Courier the 20MB Bernoulli box to send the catalog layouts to the print shop!

[@TheSteveSteele]

Macs did have a sweet spot. For me, at that time it was a Quadra 650, with a 68040 running at 33 MHz and 16MB of ram. You knew your workstation was well balanced when you weren’t complaining abbot general workflow speeds. Thanks for the video!

[@SeabreezeRJ]

I have a collection of Mac 512k, SE, and SE/30 units in last-working condition, but all original and have been received from a mutual collector and expert. Need to unload for personal reasons, but I do want them to be loved and cared for as they have been since manufacture. Former apple employee 1988-89

[@fennecbesixdouze1794]

My family had one of these from before I was born, by the time I would be using computers my dad had brought home a first edition LC from work, but I still used the SE often because the LC would typically be in use by another family member. I remember we downgraded the SE back from System 7 because it ran so slow. My parents never let me try any programming for fear I'd mess up the system. I wasn't to keep any files on disk, I was to save my files to 3.5" floppy disks, and later to Zip drives. My use was basically relegated to KidPix, Mavis Beacon, some sort of animation software that I don't recall the name of etc. I wish I were born a few years earlier so I would have learned BASIC or something useful growing up, or an Apple II where you were actually encouraged to go in and tinker with the electronics. I didn't end up learning to program or really use computers in a way beyond as a naive consumer until I was a teenager and installed Linux on my first computer. I feel like this era of computers, with everything sanitized and locked down and GUI'fied, has a lot less magic to it. I'm glad things like Raspberry Pi and Arduino exist for kids these days.

[@devil5051000]

Another ADB video I watched from beginning to end without a break. :)

[@Bakamoichigei]

CRYSTAL QUEST! 🤩 Oh man, that takes me back to the family 512k! I've got a Mac SE I got from somebody years ago, battery ate through the board while it was in storage, and I had to toss the corroded board because I didn't have time to deal with it...still have the machine, though! I should try and find a board for it some time. 🤔 btw, a trick I use any time I encounter a dead download link like that, is to try opening the page in the internet wayback machine and click the link. It doesn't just save the pages. (Might also be worth trying that on the forum threads and see if the wayback machine cached the images!)

[@Fifury161]

I have a 7GB repository of pre OS8 era software (it's in a 14 disk SCSI RAID array). I must fire it up and archive it for you! I also have quite a collection of accelerator cards, I must get around to creating my own videos!

[@danriches7328]

I thought GEM, which ran on the Atari ST and early Mac's, was the creation of Digital Research and not Apple. Great video by the way and always love anything 68000 based as it was just an amazing processor with the best mnemonics ever to have been devised to this day. I wish it had been revived to be honest as writing assembly on the Atari ST was easy compared to the likes of the 8086 and friends. Keep the vids coming Adrian, love em!!

[@chloedevereaux1801]

it was, apple as usual stole it....

[@davidlarson2534]

System 6.04 was a wonderful OS. I miss it, along with my dual-floppy SE. I’d love to have another one.

[@MickeyMishra]

The last time I even touched one of these was back in 8th grade. What I do remember is having to "Park the heads". Pretty cool.

[@stevejohnson1685]

Love the 68000 instruction set - cribbed from the orthogonal PDP-11 instruction set. Nice!

[@HamsterSnr]

I used the SE when at college and there was also one at the office for writing documents. And when I got enough $ Tigray get, my 1st MAC was an LC-II, purchased in ‘92. I still have it in the storeroom.

[@armandorivera186]

Nice video. Those Macintosh Classics were pretty quick by that time......

[@softdorothy]

Had a Mac Plus for years. Wrote many shareware games with that machine. Like you, I still have it. Unlike you, I had to recap the analog board decades ago. The last time I powered it on it was flaking out the video so time to try to fix it again.

[@DrTofu83]

My retro daily driver is my childhood unit :) Mostly unchanged, save for more accessories, that's a nice thing to do, showcasing the oldest piece of your collection

[@jem2017]

Finding this video was like discovering that I am not the only survivor of the cataclysm that destroyed my home planet when I was a teenager.

[@rodhester2166]

I totally understand.. It is so fun just to see what happens using upgrades of the day..

[@JohnSmith-zw8vp]

Tim Taylor: You're saying it needs more power? Let me open it up, I can make it go faster! Randy Taylor: Well why don't we just save it the trouble and throw it up against the wall?

[@SPARTAN_Cayde-26]

I have always wanted to have a Macintosh SE. Havent found one yet, but still trying to find one. Nice video still. Other Mac I would love to have is the OG iMac G3.

[@MillwalltheCat]

Used to love my Mac Plus running on 6.0.8. Gone more than thirty years now though.

[@pyrotempestwing]

I remember we has a Macintosh SE (which was a couple years older than me) as a kid. 4MB of RAM, 2 800KB Floppy Drives. No Hard Drive, but we had a Zip Drive (100MB) plugged in to boot off of.

[@VintageTechFan]

21:30 .. I think that's the RAM unable to be written. I know this pattern from building retro graphic cards, uninitialized DRAM tends to look like that. There are areas of 0x00 and areas of 0xFF. Since it cant be written, the mouse cursor can't be drawn on it, too. The "Mac" Symbol seems to be superimposed and not written into the memory.

[@kd5byb]

Love the cover thumbnail with Rami! :) "It's too slow!!!" :) :) :)

[@catriona_drummond]

I kinda like the distorted sound. "Tetris, The Metal Years"

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

DayStar ruled the roost in this area back in the 90's.

[@randallsmith2521]

Those boards were awesome. There were also some similar kits that axed the SE period and repackaged the board for this.

[@bradhayes8294]

I had a Mac SE. I paid $2,400 for it new. I had it maxed out at 4 Mb SIMMS which disabled the 1 Mb of on-board RAM. I even had the Mac version of Mathematica installed on it. I used it for two years and sold it for $2,000 right before MS Windows 3.0 came out.

[@werdnativ]

You could do MultiFinder on System 6 too. Still only one application at a time, but you could switch between them rather than quitting out to the Finder.

[@nynyny7]

48:45 - Note the a 68020 only has an instruction cache, in contrast to the 68030 which has instruction and data caches.

[@NozomuYume]

Yup. Also the 68020 does not support burst mode.

[@tetsujin_144]

36:19 - Dangit, wish I had one o' those six-dollar compact macs...

[@marcelhh2101]

Adrian, did you check the wayback machine for those pictures?

[@BrainSlugs83]

I wonder if the wayback machine has a version of that forum page with images.

[@pyrotechnick420]

In the private school I went to in Kindergarten in 1989 we had these Mac SE's. Had no clue how lucky I was

[@jeffreyholtmyer5012]

well done as always

[@trebormills]

The SE was a great little unit. I really liked the se30 with its 030 cpu in the same form factor

[@scharkalvin]

The 68000 has a 32 bit programming model, though its ALU and data bus are only 16 bits wide. The 68010 supported virtual memory, in much the same manor as the 80286 did. Operating systems that took advantage of these chips never did come out, that had to wait for the next generation of both CPU's that had full 32 bit support, and full memory management. (Well, there was Coherent a pseudo Unix clone for the 80286. And various DOS extenders did allow use of the extra memory that the 80386 could support. Maybe there were similar utilities for the Mac with the 68010?)

[@joefish6091]

DOS/4GW as used by a lot of PC games in the late 90s.

[@rezafouladian6817]

On those small 68kmla images, you actually can see a larger version, you just need to be signed in for whatever reason. Unfortunately the other images appear to be Gallery images, which seem to have been lost in forum crash this year. Though I’m sure the admins have a backup somewhere…

[@SidneyCritic]

Is there a Way Back Machine that might have an old copy.

[@rezafouladian6817]

@@SidneyCritic I checked the Wayback Machine, but didn’t see that specific gallery archived.

[@Almrond]

Math Munchers was the only software this was designed for. Anything further was doing calculus with a GUI. Still one of the fastest computers for what it was designed for. It's why they lost the Apollo contract, though.

[@SonicBoone56]

God I hate how images break on forums. This is why archiving sites are needed pretty much all the time.

[@darrenwendell1723]

It is great that you don't have a window down in the basement. I would have thrown the Mac out of the window after messing about with it for 2 hours. I admire your patience....

[@yourikhan4425]

The sound issue is reminiscent of the sound buffer not being filled on time.

[@BAgodmode]

OH WOW I KNOW THAT ADDRESS ON BEE CAVE ROAD WHERE THEY SOLD THESE! Ol’ Austin, man.

[@LKonstantina915]

really irrelavant but I noticed when he read these forums about ORION that the date was 2015 and its crazy to think that that was 7 years ago...

[@andybasstbn]

Love the Animals wallpaper!

[@ironreed2654]

Always knew you were a badass in the 80's/early 90's if you had stacked motherboards.

[@tarstarkusz]

I had a ton of compact macs. I had an SE with a daystar digital accellerator, an 020 or 030, I forget which. But it didn't need any drivers. It just worked. But this is the problem with Macs. Maybe not so much today, but back then Apple did EVERYTHING to get in your way. You need special RAM. You need special hard disks. On non-compact macs, you need special monitors. Of course, all of it has an Apple tax.