Ultimate DOOM... on a Mac SE/30?

Thanks PCBWay.com - Ultimate Doom for Mac requires 256 colors and a minimum 68040 processor. Well today, we're playing on a 1989 monochrome Macintosh SE/30.
All thanks to an incredible new graphics solution.
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VIDEO LINKS:
🍎 The 68kMLA thread: 68kmla.org/bb/...
🍎 Ultimate DOOM for Mac: macintoshgarde...
🍎 JDW's video on the real Micron XCEED: • Micron Xceed Grayscale...
🍎 The Cursed Mac: • Opening a CURSED Macin...
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#Macintosh #DOOM #MARCHintosh

[@JARVIS1187]

SERIOUSLY Sean? Just 2 days ago, my fiancé saw a Macintosh SE30 and asked me, if I would want to have one, too and if Doom can run on it. I told her, there's no way and literally 2 days after that you prove me wrong...... Thanks!

[@CasualSpud]

If you think greyscale is an upgrade.. You've come to the right channel 😋👍

[@UNSCPILOT]

Greyscale certainly has it's place, sometimes a picture can be better without colour

[@BilisNegra]

@@UNSCPILOT Yeah, as far as the most artsy side of photography goes, that's right. Not so sure about a GUI or computer games. But for sure it's a heckuva of a better experience than 1-bit actual B/W if the software has been made with that option in mind.

[@CasualSpud]

@@UNSCPILOT I didn't even know you could do that.. 30 years a LOT has changed

[@smashingintoyou]

Nice one lol

[@nneeerrrd]

Remember %username, doing CCPway ads you are helping Chinese communists finance military build up for the invasion of Taiwan.

[@CyberTimYT]

Man, your videos are truly nerd heaven. It brings me so much joy just seeing the title of what crazy old mac adventure we’re having today. Thank you so much for making this amazing content!

[@nicholasjulianriley]

Really kicking myself for getting rid of my SE/30 with Grayscale 30 card installed, but so awesome there's a replacement. I removed the associated Color 30 card when I got an Ethernet card since there wasn't a way to use them both together unlike what you're doing (and at that point my SE/30 had been relegated to server duty so didn't need a grayscale or color display). One thing I remember it did is have a virtual larger screen available.

[@pseudotasuki]

I hate myself for trying to turn my sister's old SE/30 into a Macquarium.

[@chadmasta5]

Glad to see the Cursed Mac is still around. It's really putting the "compact" in compact Mac.

[@tobiwonkanogy2975]

very true all the new hardware stuffed in there is astonishing . and it still works .:)

[@txe1nd]

I’m 69 like nice. I love these channel he should make more of those cursed computer

[@daishi5571]

I expect the Doctor to walk out of it at any moment.

[@MaggieKeizai]

Holy MOLY, dude. It's absolutely mindblowing how clever some people are to cook this stuff up. Lucky for us dumb'uns!

[@TheLeggedOne]

The only logical next step would be to hack a color CRT into one of these

[@TravisTubbs]

The end result is such a monstrosity and I love every bit of it.

[@knightsun2920]

one of the funny things about the SE 30 was that it shared so much with the Macintosh IIx that some would add the x to SE. it was the ultimate SEx Machen.

[@sjgrall]

Rumor has it that’s why they named it SE/30. The prudes would freak over SEx.

[@retropuffer2986]

I always fantasized about greyscale on a classic Mac so I could see ImageStudio in all it's glory! This is just awesome.

[@hicknopunk]

My old box Mac had one and a whopping 2.5 megabytes of ram!

[@1BitFeverDreams]

I played DOOM on my 386SX25 back in the day and I wasn't far from the smallest postage stamp size, this feels like it can use that size as well! Would totally have played it like so too!

[@circattle]

Seen

[@kargaroc386]

The difference is that nowdays you can get fastdoom for systems like that - no such project exists for Mac because the mac apparently repels retro computer programmers.

[@eggnorman]

Ngl, I would never have known of half of the crazy effort that these people put into things if it weren't for you. You do the chaotic geniuses of the Mac Community proud by popularising them!

[@gumbyx84]

You are a madman and I love it. Keep making crazy videos like this.

[@Jdbye]

I found a video of Doom running on an e-ink screen and it's very close, performance wise. The contrast seems to be a little better on the e-ink, so things are easier to make out, as long as you're standing still. There is pretty bad motion blur any time you move from the slow refresh of the e-ink display. I think this might actually be slightly more playable. It certainly has a similar look to an e-ink display, it's just a lot darker which hurts the contrast ratio. But that is probably down to how the graphics card converts color to grayscale, and could be solved.

[@debugdud]

Everyone: frames per second Doom: seconds per frame Loved the video 👍

[@PotatoFi]

Sean, you've outdone yourself. Again. Amazing work, and super entertaining. I laughed out loud multiple times.

[@orektez]

wonder if someone could port fastdoom to mac, that build can even play doom on CGA and hercules graphics cards, i know it's optimized for 32bit intels, but i mean more the graphical modifications they've done.

[@IntegerOfDoom]

That's turribly awesome. First time I played DooM was on a 486DX2-66 with pc speaker audio.

[@waydegutman7339]

If you can mod out a SE30 to that level, can you push a 2009 Mac Pro the same way ? Great stuff as always.

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

Yes, I maxed mine out with dual Xeon processors, 64 GB RAM, an SSD on a PCIe card as the boot disk, another SATA SSD for data storage and a relatively modern AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics card. Works great with macOS 10.14 Mojave.

[@AMPROEngineering]

As someone who grew up with a used 512 from grade school all through highschool that I still have…this is the greatest think to happen to the tech world since the gameboy.

[@mjenkinson]

Nice! Next do the LCD swap. I have a SE30 with a Lapis PDS video card with the CRT swapped out for a Mitsubishi 8.4" LCD panel, built by the incredible @BillyTheKidCENTURION. It runs at 640x480, in thousands of colours, and with SCSI2SD and the 128MB of RAM enabled by the ROM-inator II, it can handle a lot more than it was designed for. With the Asante SCSI to Ethernet Adapter with Vonnets Wifi Bridge, it can wirelessly connect to the internet, albeit slowly, and with many limitations specifically related to SSL and such, but FTP works great as a quick way to move files on and off the machine. You should reach out to Billy if you're interested in more about that build. He is always a delight to chat with about all things retro mac.

[@novimatrem]

I was waiting to see you press F5 to toggle the graphics detail between the default, and low detail mode, but perhaps that's not a feature in Mac Doom? Might have given you a couple more FPS.

[@Pentium4Proto]

Great scott, doom on a classic mac, i dont know why i didn't see this coming.

[@Vaskomyr]

Still love that clear case. Would be cool to take all the mounting brackets and give them a shot of color to make them pop, probably just me but a plum crazy purple would look pretty sweet lol.

[@minty_Joe]

@Action Retro Sean, in addition to the shirt worn in the video, try and find one that says, "I ❤ Toxic Waste ☢". That was a shirt worn by Val Kilmer in the movie "Real Genius".

[@crispymm12]

We really need a breakdown of what all of the upgrades in this unit are and to see what the probable cost this would have been in the period if possible.

[@iiidiy]

Great upgrades here... but I really lost it when you started ripping the Doom theme on guitar! Fantastic.

[@TheSulross]

if this was a plot to lure us away from playing Doom on the refrigerator, am afraid it failed

[@Jimmy-Miami]

I remember we used to use this in my high school in the late 90s . Those good days 📺

[@relutzzzu]

Now you need to find a color CRT for this, and then it will truly be to World's Most Upgraded Mac SE/30.

[@AlphaEchoFoxtrot]

We need a “It chimed!” T-Shirt

[@DavstrWrexham]

Hmmmm, I wonder if the b/w crt in this could be replaced by a small colour LCD? 🤔

[@avadondragon]

It absolutely could!

[@circattle]

"Play Doom in a postage stamp" at 11:43. So, exactly the same as my 386SX / 20 PC with SVGA graphics card in 1993

[@RussianSevereWeatherVideos]

Perhaps you'd be able to compile an optimized source port to run with decent frame rates and true grayscale support. Would be nifty to see for sure!

[@annika6081]

I'm getting some real Kowloon Walled City vibes from that clear SE/30! Nifty!

[@ThorLite]

Now it needs the CRT to be upgraded to a color CRT.

[@IrisGalaxis]

What ever happened to the volume knob and amp on the cursed mac?

[@dennisud]

THAT is why I got an LC-II within 2 years after my School (I was a Teacher)! I hope VCF-South is revised as I can't make it to the VCF-East show this year. Hope next year is more financially viable! 😉

[@trentnicolajsen3731]

those curved TV display like tubed monitors almost have a lost tecnology that seemed to have like a magnifying curved lens window that makes such a illusion in our mind as we work close to the display it is bigger then it seems. with the flat LED displays we lost that curved magnifying screen. while such old tubed screens always had some curve to flat lines, it still be interesting to see how we could use such fine resolution now and put it in a small curved magnifying screen. if such is possible then the old retro Mac shape could be a come back of the balance of portability and usability.

[@Fifury161]

I remember "playing" DooM on my IIx back in the day - 32" screen, colour, 6 installed graphics cards and 128MB RAM - I managed to get a frame or two when I made the screen view the size of a postage stamp! It was playable on my PB5300ce - I even used the superior level editor to make quite a few levels!

[@paristo]

I feel bad seeing old machines being ripped off by various mods, as they have historic value. But, it is as well cool to see that someone is manufacturing parts for those things!! And if it does run doom....

[@bad_collector]

that is a really nice kit. love the nod to sonnet with the purple

[@jorisw_]

Amazing what's possible with the same CRT. I never quite got that. Looks great.

[@kargaroc386]

this has got to be the endgame for this particular SE30

[@shmehfleh3115]

I wonder if it would be possible to drop a color CRT in a Mac SE case. Given how much the Color Classic sells for these days, it might actually be cheaper. This reminds me a lot of when I used to play DOOM on a 386 with a paper-white monochrome monitor with a ton of burn-in. Back then, I had to make do with whatever I could get my hands on for cheap.

[@kode4food]

That was my first Mac. I won it in a high school programming contest. I'd love to get my hands on one again.

[@aswxwing]

You and Veronica Explains need to start a band!

[@InitialiseDisk]

As as soon as I saw your reddit post I was beyond excited for this video.

[@bryandrobny7690]

You should try to put a color LCD in the cursed mac if you can it would make more room etc.

[@evaDrepuS]

When your game has a similar rating to suntan lotion, Seconds Per Frame (SPF)... :D

[@tfelder]

You always break the fourth wall with your direct address to the camera/audience. When we know something you don't, it's called dramatic irony.

[@RetroGamerBB]

@09:40 ran about that fast on my old 386 back in the day

[@johneygd]

Another way to run doom on a 1bit B&W screen is to convert those 256 shades of gray to 256 different patterns sothat it’s rendered graphics could be displayed on a non-upgraded 1bit monitor,no dangerous monitor neck replacement needed.

[@MatthewCobalt]

I knew “Cursed Mac” was gonna enter the picture somehow. Doing the ridiculous on a Stock SE30 doesn’t suit it.

[@magdcs]

Damn it. I watched the entire video. I'm just as messed up as you. 😢😢😢. Really enjoyed the video.

[@andrewdunbar828]

Doom doesn't require any specific number of colours. A specific port or version of Doom might. I for one welcome any monochrome Doom hack. Extra points for Floyd Steinberg dither!

[@LaskyLabs]

Part of me is tempted to get a compact Mac, but the only one I'd want would be the Color Classic... And those aren't cheap. And besides, for the moment I'm too busy getting raked over the coals as a photographer and feeding my iPod addiction to be able to afford machines like these.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

That is one crazy piece of hardware.

[@Xenotypic]

Hey Sean (if you ever see this), where did you get that pds riser card with built in ethernet? Is that an old card or is it made today?

[@jeremycayea7541]

Great video, always enjoy your content!

[@75slaine]

This is absolutely ridiculous Sean, ridiculous. I love it, it's exactly why I subscribe :)

[@frankwc0o]

With that ethernet card, how much of the internet can you get without a modern browsers? Or are there some people still making software for this era machines?

[@westtell4]

Have you thought about or could you replace the CRT with a small colored LCD?

[@MistahMatzah]

No color CRT ever made will fit. Sony made the one that's closest, and it's a good five inches too deep to fit into this case.

[@westtell4]

@@MistahMatzah i didn't say color CRT i said color LCD

[@sneekeruk]

I love the cursed mac, but Im amazed how much better Doom runs on an amiga 1200, even with an 030 it ran about as well as the cursed mac with an 040, with an 040 I guess the amigas around a 486/33 speed for doom. Are there any other doom ports for the mac? I know theres several for the amiga and all are slightly better then each other depending on the hardware its run on.

[@snp1200]

I had 040/40 in my Amiga1200. Doom ran pretty smooth on it. I still have a 486DX4/100 and it didn't feel faster than 040/40. With Win95 and 12MB of RAM it's a quite of a snail.

[@turbinegraphics16]

Macs are weird, my ppc 200 mhz seems to run duke 3d better than a pentium 200 but wolf 3d runs well on a 386 or even a 286 but is slow on an 030 mac which is a bit like a 386 where now amigas can have the 060 which is like a pentium. But supposedly macs were better at desktop publishing, maybe because there was no games to distract them.

[@urielohim]

Blessed by the Doom Guitar riffage

[@TranscendentalAirwaves]

Can those bolle upgrades only be used on an SE30? Could I stick them on a Classic or Classic II?

[@onigvd77]

weird i thought classic compact macs screen rez was 512x384 across all the models, i’m surprised it was 512x342 after all this time. would it run wolfenstein?

[@zairadile]

512x384 was only for the Color Classic and Color Classic II. The black-and-white machines had the 512x342 display resolution.

[@JohnKiniston]

This is the most impressive thing you have built yet!

[@superpacman256]

Would love to see Marathon running on it.

[@demonprincess5634]

that clear mac s very colorful

[@stevenjlovelace]

Is there anything left of the original Cursed Mac? You should call it the Mac of Theseus.

[@peteramstutz]

I went searching just to see if anyone made this exact comment. If you upgrade every part of it, is it still a Mac SE/30?

[@MrDzakuhaIV]

Doom Guy raises his eyebrows because he cannot believe what he is inside of. And this guy has pretty much seen it all...

[@juanmacias5922]

You can tell you enjoy what you do! Thanks for being funny, and true to yourself. :D YAS cursed mac is back!

[@XeonProductions]

Did you just call me a neckbeard? No I said neckboard.

[@cyberblah]

9:40 Looks like running Doom on a 386/SX under Linux with floating point emulation.

[@kelli217]

Now Bolle needs to make it run 640x480. 😂 Oh, and a 50 MHz 68060. 🤣

[@michaelmarks1391]

It makes me smile that something like this would have probably cost $80,000 in 1985.

[@RetroDawn]

68030 wasn't even released until 87. SE/30 in 89.

[@brian_voll]

How many more upgrades can that cursed Mac get?

[@Dracauphone]

I wish such cool mods were available for the macintosh classic, those really are boring in terms of upgradeability aside from ram and storage... SE/30s are so expensive here

[@walmartcartpusher]

It can run Ultimate Doom…but can it run Marathon?

[@zacharyschwanke7160]

now you just have to get a color tube for it :)

[@duncansnowden6857]

I first played through Doom on my 50 MHz '030 Amiga. It wasn't bad. Can't recall the framerate, but it was playable. (I don't want to be That Guy, but it was definitely better than your '040 Mac. Of course, it was the Amiga's display hardware that made the port difficult in the first place; presumably whoever eventually did the port really optimized it. And, to be fair, I probably played in “low detail” block-o-vision mode. Again, I can't remember, but it seems likely.) And it's been ported to the Sansa Clip MP3 player (because of course it has), which has a 1-bit OLED display. Greyscale is simulated with PWM; i.e., flashing pixels. It makes your eyes bleed, and it's still only barely recognisable as Doom. But the point is it might be possible to run it on 1-bit-display Macs if anyone's prepared to do a source port. It would be absolutely awful, trust me, but maybe possible. And definitely hilarious.

[@drsal]

The SE/30 was a platinum box. :p

[@Iordlangford]

ISTG linus must be giving away those screwdrivers.

[@jnzooger]

I need that upgrade for my se/30

[@mmalyshev]

Amazing what you can pull out of the old hardware, still, an amiga with same 68K cpu from that era could run DOOM in colour and with sound and music much much faster and given a better clocked 030 it would be very smooth and playable. Hell, you can even run MacOS version of DOOM under emulation on amiga faster then on the real MAC.

[@TeionM83]

"that should not be able to run doom" Considering it's "running" doom with 1 frame per second at best, I wouldn't say it's actually running Doom.

[@37Kilo2]

By the power of grayscale!

[@tarstarkusz]

I have an AIO PPC Mac with, IIRC, a 603 or 601, I really don't remember and it's put away at the moment and it cannot run Doom very well. AND it's a PPC version of Doom, so it's not like it's running in emulation mode. It runs it better than this, but not really the best way to play doom. IIRC, it has like 40 or 80 megs of RAM.

[@joncrawford3485]

One of these days a Mac is going to complain about all the Thonking they take during the making of these videos!

[@joopidema]

I love these Seananigans 😂 👍👏

[@Realaudiosith]

Incredible. Love this mod!

[@Sb129]

This sounds weird but I like how purple that mod stuff was, Lol.

[@the_jcbone]

14:18 I cringed hard, when you twisted the neckboard… ufff

[@Francois_L_7933]

I'd really love to see how loaded the PSU really is 😂

[@jeffyp2483]

at that framerate....this is the original doom eternal

[@msx6800]

I had a Performa as a kid and the monitor broke somehow so when in color mode it was just tinted green so I had to play Doom (and marathon) in gray scale. Not a good time, but at least the performa was able to run it decently.

[@olek4182]

Nice video :D :D But, why Doom runs so slowly?? I've got Amiga 1200 ( MC 68020-28MHz and 10MB FAST RAM) and Doom runs much, much faster then on this 040 Mac .

[@oidpolar6302]

Can it be upgraded to the color CRT or even TFT?

[@Sargentwhitey]

I love the cursed mac, what a beast.