You’ll often see it posted on the internet that the Macintosh Color Classic II and LC / Performa 550 use the same logic board. They both have a 33MHz 68030 CPU, support up to 36MB of RAM, and implement a full 32-bit data bus. But here’s a little weirdness for you: Apple's official spec pages (along with the Color Classic II / Performa 275 Service manual) say there’s 256KB of onboard video memory optionally expandable to 512K by adding a 256K VRAM SIMM. So how could it be the same board as an LC / Performa 550, which come with 512KB of onboard VRAM? These machines are expandable to 768KB by installing a 256KB VRAM SIMM, just like the LC / Performa 520 and LC III and LC III+. People trust these spec lists as a source of truth—they’ve been in the Apple Knowledge Base for decades at this point. Wikipedia cites them, Apple history sites reference them, databases like EveryMac rely on them, and I’ve seen folks wonder about this discreipancy. Did Apple really leave the extra VRAM off of the Color Classic II’s logic board? Or do both computers use the exact same board, which would mean those spec pages and manuals were wrong for over thirty years? I needed to find out.

If you guessed that a recent purchase is what sent me tumbling down this rabbit hole, well… you’d be right. At the MIT swap meet last Sunday I found a logic board for a color all-in-one Macintosh which was in desperate need of a bath.

All this was mine for the cool cost of ten dollars thanks to the Rhode Island Computer Museum.

A quick inspection showed a 33 MHz 68030 hiding under the dust and grime and wondered if it was from an LC 550 or maybe something else. I did some on-the-spot Googling for LC 550 and Color Classic II boards, and sure enough it looked exactly like the board on Recap-a-Mac’s Color Classic II guide, complete with matching ROM and half-AA battery! ID number 820-0368-A was printed on the guide’s board and that matched up with the ID number pritned on my board. Meanwhile searching for LC 550 boards found a board with ID number 820-0595-A which looked similar but had a 4.5V alkaline battery. That lined up with some old memories of handling Performa 550 boards with an alkaline battery. I thought I’d found a diamond in the rough so I paid the ten dollar asking price and brought it home. After a rinse, scrub, and dry-down I popped it in my Color Classic and it booted just fine. But a curious thing happened when I opened the Monitors control panel: I could choose thousands of colors instead of 256! I thought Color Classic IIs only had 256K of VRAM, and I had yet to transfer over the VRAM SIMM from my old Color Classic board. So how was I getting thousands of colors? Did I actually get an LC 550 board, or was something else afoot? What, exactly, is a Color Classic II board anyway?

First, let’s establish a baseline. The original Color Classic definitely has 256KB of onboard VRAM. Just look at the original board from my own Color Classic here:

Macintosh Color Classic Logic Board with VRAM highlighted

There’s two 128Kx8 chips fabbed by Micron, and you can see the data sheet for these MT42C8128 modules here. Adding a 256KB VRAM SIMM brings it up to 512KB total. For another example of all-in-one color Mac’s VRAM here’s my Macintosh TV board.

Macintosh TV Logic board with VRAM highlighted

There’s four Mitsubishi M5M482128J 128Kx8 chips, bringing the total to the spec sheet maximum of 512KB VRAM.

Now here’s my freshly recapped Color Classic II board (or possibly LC 550 board, more on that distinction later).

Macintosh Color Classic II / LC 550 logic board with VRAM highlighted

And sure enough, there’s four Mitsubishi M5M442256AJ 256Kx4 dual ported VRAM chips for a total of 512K VRAM. I went back and double checked Recap-a-Mac’s guide, and that board also has 256Kx4 VRAM chips. I never paid attention to the chip markings before, but that’s what they are. Bruce at Branchus Creations runs Recap-a-Mac and he's a pretty smart fellow who’s refurbished his share of old Macs. He says on the Color Classic II page that he's recapped customer CC II boards, and I have no reason to doubt that because he’s recapped Color Classic II boards on a live stream! The board in the stream might even be the same one pictured in the guide.

But a sample size of one isn’t enough for me, so I searched for more examples of “real” Color Classic IIs. I remembered that Colin from This Does Not Compute imported a Performa 275 from Japan, and luckily he recorded a video about it. I scrubbed through the video looking for logic board shots and saw his board had all the same traits as my board. It was ID number 820-0368-A with four VRAM chips, a half-AA PRAM battery, and the ROM identifiers matched too. And since he imported this machine from Japan I’m pretty confident that the board is original to the machine. I also found another video where Tom // Drives unboxed a Japanese Color Classic II. Freeze-framing his logic board removal shows another board that matches Colin’s, Bruce’s and mine.

Now I needed to look at LC 550 boards. You might remember my earlier Googling showed an LC 550 board equipped with a 4.5V battery, and because I had handled similar boards I thought that’s what an LC 550 board was. Said board was posted on TinkerDifferent by user Fizzbinn and its model ID is 820-595-A. But when I could search at home with less time pressure I noticed a bunch of LC 550s with boards that looked exactly like the CC II board and ID 820-0368-A. There’s a Worthpoint eBay listing archive with photos of an LC 550 that match the Color Classic II boards. Same with Apple Rescue of Denver’s listings for recapped logic boards. Same with Ancient Electronics and their Color Classic which was equipped with a board pulled from an LC 550.

As it turns out there’s two versions of the LC 550 logic board—Fizzbin’s board has REV B printed on the serial number sticker. Rev B board differences are the ID number (820-595-A), the battery header, and a velcro pad to mount the alkaline battery. I’m betting these rev B boards were introduced around the same time Apple switched the LC 550 to tray-loading CD-ROM drives after the launch of the LC 575 in February 1994. It’s a reasonable guess to say that the closer your build is to 1995 the greater the likelihood your LC 550 will have a revision B board. I plumbed YouTube again and found videos where people pulled out or reworked their logic boards. CamelProd666 pulled a revision B board out of a tray-load Performa 550. Matt’s Workbench pulled an 820-0368-A board out of his caddy-load LC 550. Bruce at Branchus repaired an LC 550 Revision A board that looks identical to the Color Classic II. BigBadBiologist’s recent recap of a 820-0368-A board is also identical to the Color Classic II. And somehow there’s even Rev A boards that have what look like factory bodges to use a 4.5V battery, like this one seen in RetroTechIIfx’s video or on powercc.org.

Lastly I decided to look at LC 520s just to be thorough. An LC 520 logic board is supposed to be the same design as the LC 550 except a 520 board has a 25 MHz 68030. After investigating some examples of LC 520s I’d say that’s a true statement. LC 520 boards have the same board ID of 820-0368-A as revision A LC 550 boards. Garth Beagle restored an LC 520 for Marchintosh and his board looks exactly like a Rev A LC 550. The same goes for this new old stock Apple Service kit for an LC 520 logic board that was archived on WorthPoint. And a 520 board restored by CayMacVintage also looks identical to a 550. The only difference is the 25MHz CPU.

Lastly, ROMs aren’t a differentiating factor between all these boards. Every 520, 550, and Color Classic II board I saw had Hi and Lo ROMs marked 341-0534 and 341-0533 respectively. That renders the 520, 550, and Color Classic II identical from a software standpoint. So how can you tell an LC 520 board apart from an LC 550 or Color Classic II?

Apple’s June 1994 Service Module Identification Manual show the LC550 and CC II logic board as part number 661-1830, and a note is attached to verify that the CPU is 33 MHz. An LC 520 board with a 25 MHz CPU is Apple part number 661-0812.

Color Classic II / LC 550 Identification

But another way to tell LC 520 boards apart from LC 500 boards is the serial number schema. The LC520s I’ve seen have serial numbers formatted like EZxxxxxxDY7 and DWxxxxxxDY7 depending on the board revision, while Rev A Color Classic II and LC 550 boards use a DWxxxxxx1X9 schema. I checked all the boards I found on the web and in videos and confirmed that all the Color Classic II and LC 550 boards followed the DWxxxxxx1X9 schema. As for the rev B LC 550 boards with the 820-595-A board ID, they also used DWxxxxxx1X9. Given the same serial schemas and Apple replacement part numbers those are two more points in favor of the Color Classic II and LC / Performa 550 using the same logic boards with 512KB of VRAM.

Copy and Paste, Sloppy and Waste

Given the evidence in front of me I think it’s safe to conclude that the same 33 MHz 820-0368-A logic boards were installed in both the LC / Performa 550 and Color Classic II. So there’s no difference between “a Color Classic II board” and “a LC 550 board” because they are one and the same. Apple didn’t make specific logic boards with only 256KB of VRAM for the Color Classic II, which means Color Classic IIs have always come with 512K of onboard VRAM expandable to 768K and that Apple’s official spec sheet and service manual are wrong and wrong.

I’m not surprised that such a goof-em-up happened because the Color Classic II and Performa 275 were only sold in Asia, Canada, and some PAL countries. Given the overwhelming plethora of slightly different models Apple was churning out at the time it’s no surprise that mistakes could be made when updating a spec sheet for a speed bump. I bet there’s other mistakes lurking in the spec sheets for other 1990s beige Macs. It’s also possible that Apple intended to make a variant of the logic board for the Color Classic II with two fewer VRAM chips but backtracked after realizing that producing another board variant with all the associated logistics was more expensive than the cost of two chips and then forgot to update the spec sheet. That seems unlikely to me, though—Occam’s Razor and such.

But the service manual is a different story. Almost all the specifications were clearly carried over from the original Color Classic manual and never updated to reflect its new capabilities. The processor speed is updated to 33MHz, but the bus width is still listed at 16 bits. It incorrectly lists the maximum amount of memory as 10MB, the data bus as 16 bits, and the PDS slot as 96 pins along with the incorrect VRAM specs. The RAM upgrade steps still show dual 30 pin SIMMs which would make an unfamiliar tech go “wait a minute.” More stale information is in the sound section. The original Color Classic logic board’s sound output jack only supports mono output duplicated across both channels while the Color Classic II supports true stereo sound with discrete left and right channels. I validated this in two ways. First, I checked the System 7 Sound control panel and the original Color Classic board shows mono, while the Color Classic II / LC 550 board shows stereo. Second, I played a left / right stereo test sound file with SoundApp. The original Color Classic board played a duplicated mono downmix in my headphones while the Color Classic II / LC 550 board played true stereo sound. Incidentally, this means that an internal stereo speaker mod won’t work with an original Color Classic logic board. If you plan to do a stereo mod you must also plan a logic board upgrade.

It’s obvious that whoever made this manual simply did a search and replace for Color Classic to change it to Color Classic II / Performa 275. But at least they updated the logic board part number to 661-1830, which matches the logic board part number for the LC 550 in its service manual.

Bit Depth, Resolutions, and RAMDACs

The LC 550 / CC II Logic Board with 768K of VRAM installed in my Mac TV is capable of thousands of colors.

The result of the spec sheet’s inaccuracy meant Apple actually undersold the Color Classic II’s video capabilities. Since it has 512KB of VRAM standard it can display thousands of colors without spending extra money on a VRAM upgrade. Installing a 256KB VRAM SIMM doesn’t actually do anything for a stock Color Classic II because of limitations in its Ariel RAMDAC. Introduced with the Macintosh LC II, the Ariel replaced the IIci and IIsi’s vampire video with dedicated VRAM. It’s found in many 030 machines with built-in video like the IIvi, IIvx, Performa 600, LC III, the DuoDock, and the 520/550. The Mac TV has a slightly different version called Ariel+.

Ariel only ever supported color modes up to 16-bit, so adding more VRAM only allowed higher resolutions and not greater bit depth.1 A LC III with 768KB of VRAM can display 832x624 at thousands of colors, but a Color Classic II or LC 550 can’t because their internal monitors aren’t multisync and the analog board’s sense connections tell the logic board what resolution to use. Yes, I know the Color Classic with a IIe card can switch to the 560-wide Apple IIe display mode, but that’s out of scope.2

Other contemporary entry level Macs like the LC 575, LC 475, and Quadra 605 were also limited to 16-bit color despite the logic board’s ability to accept 1 MB of VRAM. That’s because Antelope’s RAMDAC is also limited to 16-bit high color just like Ariel. Originally developed for the Quadra / Centris 610, 650, and Quadra 800, the Antelope was Apple’s attempt to cut cost while eking more performance out of the Direct Access Framebuffer used in the Quadras 700 and 900 which did support true color modes. According to Apple displays engineer Dale Adams, Antelope dropped the 32 bits-per-pixel true color modes because they had high VRAM requirements and added significant cost to the chip design. Customers who demanded true color support would skip right past the built-in video of the Quadra 700 or 900 and buy an expensive dedicated graphics card. Onboard video support for true color graphics wouldn’t return to Apple’s cheapest Macs until the Power Macs 4400, 5500, and 6500.

There is a practical application for installing more VRAM in a Color Classic II, and it’s a VGA mod. After performing a VGA mod a Color Classic II with 768KB of VRAM can display thousands of colors at 640x480 just like an LC 550 driving its native monitor. I have a hunch that such a combination is rare, since the type of people willing to put in the effort for a VGA mod are also the same type to seek out a Mystic upgrade. Or if you’re like me and have a Hook-style chassis floating around you can leave the VRAM SIMM installed and just swap around as your mood dictates. Regardless, I think you can confidently say that the Color Classic II and LC 550 logic boards are in fact identical. Now who can I call at Apple to get that spec sheet fixed?

The following is technical bonus content that could be its own post but I’m including here because nerds might want to read it. You’ve been warned!

A Dive Into The Mac’s History of Onboard 24-Bit True Color Video

Footnote 1: To write accurately about the capabilities of the LC 550 and Color Classic's video modes I had to read about Apple's video chip and DAC history.

Other contemporary entry level Macs like the LC 475, LC 575, and Quadra 605 were also limited to 16-bit color despite their logic boards’ ability to accept 1 MB of VRAM. These systems used the Antelope RAMDAC—also known as the AC843 (Stripped) RAMDAC—which is also limited to 16-bit high color like Ariel. Antelope emerged from efforts to cost-reduce the video architecture of the Quadra 700 and 900 into something less expensive for the upcoming Quadra / Centris 610, 650, and Quadra 800. According to Apple video engineer Dale Adams, stomers who needed true color support didn’t use the built-in video anyway and bought expensive accelerated graphics cards instead. Adams also wrote that omitting the 24-bit true color modes and convolution support simplified the RAMDAC and reduced the amount of VRAM required which lowered the cost of a base system for those who didn’t mind 16-bit color while those who really needed true color could spend their money on an add-in card.

So what’s the timeline of support for true color on Macintosh built-in video? Let’s start with the Quadra 700/900, which supported 24 bit color and whose video was provided by the Direct Access Frame Buffer chip and the AC842 RAMDAC. The DAC’s even got a fun code name: AC/DC! The Quadra 950 updated these chips to the DAFB II and a revised AC/DC RAMDAC numbered AC843 (see page 6). These improved chips boosted performance, introduced support for 1024x768 resolution, and added more bit depth options to the existing resolutions. For the Quadra / Centris 610, 650, and Quadra 800 Apple integrated the DABF into the djMEMC memory controller and replaced the complete AC843 AC/DC with the stripped AC843 Antelope. The djMEMC was further simplified into the MEMCjr found in the LC 475, 575, and Quadra 605. One of the changes was removing extra VRAM bank connections in the djMEMC that were unused in the 610/650/800. Theoretically a Quadra 650 could be hacked with more VRAM and a full AC843 to get 24-bit video modes, but while it’s been discussed over at 68KMLA I don’t think anyone’s actually tried it.

To bring this back to the Color Classic II and the LC 550, their video setup is very similar to these Quadras from a high-level perspective but use 68030 generation tech. Video generation and memory timing are handled by the Ardberg ASIC (see page 20) which drives the Ariel RAMDAC to generate analog signals for display on a CRT. Since Ardberg is a derivative of the LC III’s Sonora ASIC, it also uses Sonora’s video architecture (see page 7). You can draw a straight line from the V8 gate array which handles video in the original LC and LC II to the VASP chip in the IIvx and IIvi, to Sonora in the LC III, then Spice in the original Color Classic, and lastly Ardberg in the LC 520, 550, and Color Classic II.

Onboard video support for 24-bit true color modes would return with the launch of the Quadra 660AV and 840AV thanks to their CIVIC chip (see page 34), but those were expensive machines that replaced the top end Quadra 700 and 900/950. The Power Mac 6100, 7100, and 8100 used a funky DRAM-based system for onboard video which was limited to 16 bits per pixel, but most 6/7/8100 series Power Macs had either an Apple PDS VRAM expansion card or an AV option card which carried over Civic and other chips seen on the Quadra AVs. Depending on the amount of VRAM on the expansion card the system could support true color output. The AV Option card added 2MB of VRAM and a Civic chip for true color support along with video capture hardware. When desktop Power Macs moved to PCI they ditched the PDS and DRAM setup entirely for new chips that supported true color at a variety of resolutions, provided you installed enough VRAM. The 7200 and 8200 used the Platinum and Iridum combo with the DACula RAMDAC (see page 14) while the 7500, 8500, and 9500 use a duo called Chaos and Control to drive the RaDACal RAMDAC (see page 20).

Meanwhile clone makers were using off-the-shelf video controllers from the likes of ATI and were blowing Apple away in terms of resolution and color capabilities in less expensive machines. Apple’s in-house clone, the Power Mac 4400, also used an ATI chip and has 24-bit true color capability(see page 38).

Consumer and education Macs were a different story. Ariel and Antelope were used in LCs and Performas until the launch of the Performa/LC 580 and 630. These Macs introduced the Valkyrie chip which I would consider to be a complete “video” chip. Apple separated the frame buffer and memory controller functions out of the system ASIC and combined them with the RAMDAC functions to form the Valkyrie. It wasn’t a particularly good chip, mind you, but it did have a neat acceleration that gave Marathon a performance boost. It also adds support for scaling and overlaying video for the Apple TV/Video System. Because Valkyrie is a consolidation of the MEMCjr DABF implementation and the Antelope DAC, it shares the same limitations of 1 MB of VRAM and a maximum color depth of 16 bit.

Valkyrie was eventually replaced by the Valkyrie-AR, and that chip’s RAMDAC does support 24-bit color modes according to its design documentation. But it needs 2MB of VRAM to display 24-bit color at 640x480 resolution and as far as I know it never shipped with that amount. The models that used that chip—the Power Mac/Performa 5400, 6360, and 6400—only ever had 1 MB of VRAM. Apple eventually put ATI graphics chips and 2MB of VRAM into the Power Mac 5500/6500 which finally closed the door on Mac desktops that couldn’t support 24-bit true color.

The Hidden Apple IIe Video Mode

Footnote 2: This bonus section delves into the special Apple IIe monitor mode.

The Apple IIe mode is handled differently on the Color Classic and LCs with the 12-inch RGB Display versus the all-in-ones with a 640x480 display or a Quadra 605/LC 475. According to page 23 of Apple’s Color Classic developer tech notes the IIe card generates a video timing signal for the Apple II display and sends it through pin B31 of the PDS slot when installed in an LC, LC II, or original Color Classic. Starting with the LC III the Apple II video mode timing signal is generated on the logic board by the Omega clock chip (see page 32). Omega’s clock functions were moved into the Spice ASIC on the Color Classic and the Ardberg ASIC on the LC 520, 550, and Color Classic II (see page). The 68040 machines—the LC 475, 575, and Quadra 605—rely on a separate clock generator chip called Gazelle (see page 45). So how does each computer’s video system handle that timing?

For the Color Classics it looks pretty simple: the IIe video mode has a faster horizontal clock to get the extra horizontal pixels. The vertical timing doesn’t change because the Color Classic already runs at 384 vertical pixels and 60Hz (see page 23). It isn’t explained why the user can’t manually select this mode on the Color Classic (or CC II) despite its ASICs having the ability to generate the timing signal without the IIe card, but I have a hunch as to why. The Apple IIe uses non-square pixels, and since the geometry of the monitor doesn’t change when switching between these two modes the result is narrower pixels that look “correct” for Apple II video in the same geometry. If you used the 560x384 mode for a Mac desktop you’d need to reduce the vertical size of the display to maintain square pixels. The Color Classic’s monitor is small enough that some users might not care for the resulting empty space that would leave on their monitors. The Color Classic's geometry controls are also hidden inside the case, which makes it difficult to adjust them on the fly! IMO the user should be able to make that choice, but Apple made it for them.

This is also the situation when using the Apple 12 inch RGB display with the LC, LC II, and LC III. When using that display those computers output a 560x384 at 60Hz mode for the Apple IIe card, just like the Color Classic (see page 20). What if you’re using something other than the 12 inch RGB display? Keep reading!

The 14 inch all-in-ones are slightly different. Their normal display mode is 640x480 at 67 Hz. On the LC 520 and 550 the monitor and analog board support switching to a 560 x 384 mode at 60 Hz. The LC 520 technote describes the timing for this secondary display mode in diagrams onsee page 27.

I have to imagine there’s some kind of geometry compensation on the 520/550 analog board for this mode, but I don’t have an Apple IIe card to validate this. The Macintosh TV would have the same rectangular pixel conundrum when converting television video, but I don’t have the skills to test how this ends up working on the analog board side of things.

This differs from the LC 575, where the developer technote says the following on page 30:   “When the Apple IIe Card for the Macintosh LC is installed in the expansion slot, the computer generates an Apple IIe video display with 560 by 384 pixels. The Apple IIe display uses the standard video timing but displays only a 560-by-384-pixel area in the middle of the display.”

That’s definitely different than the 520/550. So how does that work? If the video timing doesn’t change, how does it display the lower resolution? The solution is a bordered mode. The LC 475/Quadra 605 technote gives us a clue on page 28 and the LC 575’s architecture is largely the same as those machines:

“The Macintosh LC 475 and Macintosh Quadra 605 computers can provide a 560-by-384 display on any size monitor; only the 12-inch monitor requires modifed [sic] timing parameters to provide the 560-pixel display width.”

Ah, that’s the ticket! It’s only sending native 560x384 at 60Hz video if it knows it’s using the 12 inch RGB Display. Other monitors get what amounts to a bordered mode running at 67Hz. This even seems to be the case for the earlier LCs if you use a IIe card and a monitor other than the 12 inch RGB. mg.man on Tinker Different posted as much showing an LCD connected to an LC II running the Apple IIe mode at 640x480 at 67 Hz. I’m not sure how running at the 67 Hz refresh rate affects the speed or playability of the IIe card; someone who’s an expert on this could help fill me in.

What does this mean for modified Color Classics? It probably depends on how you modded your machine to run 640x480. If you did the traditional 60Hz VGA mod and used a LC 575 logic board you get the bordered screen behavior like the LC 575 as mentioned by JDW on the same TinkerDifferent thread. I don’t have a Mystic board to test but I’m curious if unmodified systems that run at 512x384 still switch to the native 560x384 60 Hz mode.

But how about users who upgraded a Color Classic II or installed an LC 520/550 logic board? I haven’t found any examples of anyone doing this on the web. My gut says if you do the 60 Hz VGA mod, you’ll still get the bordered display behavior. But if you did the 67 Hz high voltage mod—basically telling the logic board you’ve installed it in an LC 520/550 chassis—perhaps it would behave like the LC 520/550 and switch to the 560x384 60 Hz mode. I’d love to validate these scenarios and update this as necessary if I ever get a hold of such a machine.

They say never meet your heroes, but every once in a while they live up to the hype. Here in Userlandia, let’s welcome the first inductee to the Computer Hall of Fame: The Macintosh SE/30.

It’s rare these days to find a computer that expresses some kind of philosophy. One example is Framework, whose primary design focus is upgradability and repairability. Compare that to a sea of lookalike and workalike laptops from competitors who can’t articulate why you should buy their machines over another’s except for price. Of course, there’s another manufacturer that makes computers with some kind of guiding philosophy, and that’s the trillion dollar titan: Apple. You might say said philosophy is “more money for us,” and you wouldn’t be wrong! But on a product level, there’s still some Jobsian “Think Different” idealism at Apple Park. To wit, the rainbow-colored M1 iMac still channels the soul of its classic introductory commercial narrated by Jeff Goldblum—“Step one: Plug in. Step two: Get Connected. Step Three… there is no step three.”

2024 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the Macintosh. Not just the Macintosh as a platform, mind you, but the fortieth anniversary of the all-in-one Macintosh. Today’s iMac is vastly more powerful than the original 128K, but both of their built-in displays say Hello in Susan Kare’s iconic script. Another thing they have in common is a love-it-or-hate-it reaction to the all-in-one form factor. A compact Mac, for all its foibles and flaws, sparked something in people. It had personality. But while the Mac was fun and whimsical and revolutionary, something always held it back. Even die-hard fans couldn’t ignore its insufficient memory or inadequate storage, let alone its lack of expansion. Apple crossed off these limitations one by one with the 512k, Mac Plus, and SE.

Only one limitation remained, and that was performance. Inside the SE was the same 68000 CPU found in the original Mac. Sure, it was slightly faster thanks to slightly speedier memory, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Mac users who wanted a more powerful Mac without spending five and a half grand on a Macintosh II. They turned to third party upgrades like DayStar Digital’s accelerator boards to give their Macs a turbo boost, and Apple took notice. Why leave that money to a third party when they could take it up front?

Apple announced an upgraded SE on January 19, 1989: the SE/30. This upgrade didn’t come cheap—the SE/30’s suggested retail price of $4,369 was a considerable premium over a vanilla SE. But underneath a nearly identical skin was a brand new logic board based on the range-topping Mac IIx. With a 16MHz 68030 processor and 68882 floating point unit, the SE/30 crammed phenomenal computing power into an itty-bitty chassis space. It’s a rare example of Apple actually giving some users what they wanted. An SE/30 could be a writing buddy, a QuarkXPress workstation, an A/UX server, or even a guest role in Seinfeld as Jerry’s computer.

Although I missed the SE/30’s heyday, I experienced it after the fact through books, magazines, and websites. The argument that the SE/30 is the best version of what Steve Jobs put on the stage in 1984 is a persuasive one. Prominent Mac writers like John Siracusa and Adam Engst proclaim the SE/30 as their favorite Mac of all time. They’re joined by decades of Usenet and forum posts from people all over the globe who love this little powerhouse. All this praise has inflated prices on vintage SE/30s, even ones in questionable condition. So when I was given the opportunity to pick one up, complete in box, for free? Now that’s an offer I couldn’t refuse.

One Person’s Mac is Another Person’s Treasure

You never know what treasure’s buried in somebody’s basement. Back in September I was at a work function catching up with a colleague, and I mentioned my trip to VCF Midwest. “Oh, I didn’t know you collected old computers,” he said. “I’ve got an old Mac from the 90s in my basement. It was my aunt’s, and she barely used it. It’s still in the box. Do you want it?” Do I?! Of course I wanted it! A day later he sent me some photos of the box, and I couldn’t believe what I saw: it was an SE/30! It was like somebody told me I could take a low mileage Corvette from their barn. I stopped by his house the following Saturday and picked up the SE/30, an Apple Extended Keyboard 1, and an ImageWriter II all still in their boxes. I couldn’t in good conscience take all this for free, so I gave him one of my vintage Mamiya film camera kits and a case of beer in return.

I’d love to tell you that I brought this Mac home, took it out of the box, powered it on to a Happy Mac, and partied like it was 1989. But you and I both know that’s not how this works. Schrödinger’s Mac might have succumbed to a multitude of maladies during its many years in the box. Even new old stock or barely used gear suffers from aging components, because a box isn’t a magical force field that halts the passage of time. SE/30s are notorious for using explosive Maxell batteries. Surface-mount capacitors have the capacity to leak their corrosive electrolyte all over the logic board. Spindles and heads inside the mechanical hard drive could be seized in place. The only way to know for sure was to open the stasis chamber and bring this Mac out of hibernation.

Outside the box was a shipping label that said this machine was sold by the New York University bookstore, which was one of Apple’s pilot universities for selling Macs to students and teachers. Inside the box is the SE/30 along with a complete set of manuals, some software, and a mouse. Up first is the open me first packet, containing the system software and tour disks. Bill Atkinson’s HyperCard comes standard for your stack-building pleasure. All the manuals and extras are there too, like the QuickStart guide, quick reference sheet, Apple stickers, and even the “Thanks for buying a Mac” insert. There’s even a a bonus copy of Microsoft Word.

Manuals and accessories are nice, but what you really want to see is the Mac itself. This SE/30’s case looks pretty good for a computer old enough to have a midlife crisis. The keyboard and mouse have yellowed a bit more, but it’s nothing a retrobrite couldn’t fix. But how it looked outside mattered less than how it looked on the inside. I cracked open the case to inspect the condition of the logic board. The intact purple Tadiran PRAM battery exhibited no signs of leakage—phew! A light coating of crud clung to the capacitors, which meant a recap job was in order. Barely any dust covered the boards and cables, and the CRT had none of that notorious black soot. The analog board capacitors showed no signs of bulging or leaking. Honestly, this is really good condition for an unmaintained machine of this age. I thought my odds of a successful power-on test were very good. I plugged the board back into the Mac and turned it on. Unfortunately, it powered on with a garbled screen colloquially known as simasimac. This condition could happen for a variety of reasons, but the prime suspect was those cruddy capacitors. After a date with a soldering iron and some tantalum caps, the newly recapped board was ready for another test. I flipped the switch and got a familiar bong—now this Mac is a Happy Mac. Success!

Maximizing My Macintosh

While the recap brought the SE/30 back to life, it wasn’t ready to head back into action just yet. This machine was a bone-stock configuration, and it would need some upgrades to unleash its full potential. My coworker’s parent’s sibling’s former Macintosh came equipped with 1MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive. That was Apple’s mid-range config for the SE/30, but one megabyte of memory was a bit stingy for a machine that cost over four grand in 1989. The 40MB SCSI hard drive was more appropriate for its price, and I wouldn’t mind keeping it if it worked. Alas, I couldn’t rouse it from its decades-long slumber. Thankfully, both of these problems are easy to solve for the modern vintage Mac owner.

Mass storage was first in the lineup, because the hard drive was ding-dong-dead. I needed a better solution than another SCSI hard drive—even if found a compatible drive, it’d just as likely to die as this one. I turned to the current champion of modern retro storage: BlueSCSI. The external DB-25 model is an okay solution, but an SE/30 deserves internal storage. I could have mounted it on the same bracket used by the internal hard drive, but that would mean cracking open the case every time I needed to put something on the SD card. The solution is PotatoFi’s 3D printable PDS slot bracket. Now I can access the SD card from outside the case and even see the BlueSCSI’s status LEDs. Brilliant!

Batting second was RAM. An SE/30 can address a maximum of 128MB of RAM when all eight memory slots are populated with 16MB SIMMs. This stood as the record for the maximum memory inside an all-in-one Mac until the Power Mac 5400 in 1996. Few users actually took advantage of that high ceiling because 16MB SIMMs took a long time to come to market, and when they did, they were outrageously expensive. Nowadays they’re cheap as chips, as my British friends like to say. There’s plenty of eBay shops selling 64 and 128 meg kits for $50 and $100, respectively. Or you can get them from Other World Computing for a similar price. 128MB felt like overkill, so I bought a 64MB kit and saved the difference.

I snapped four new SIMMs into four empty slots and flipped the power switch. The Mac booted up to the desktop and About This Macintosh displayed a total of 65MB. Hooray! But—there’s always a but with old computers—there’s more to the memory story. Many old Macs, including the SE/30, run a memory test on a cold boot. Stuffing your SE/30 full of RAM will have a significant impact on the duration of this test. A maxed out SE/30 can take a minute or two to go from power on to Welcome to Macintosh, and a 64 meg system takes half as much. But that’s not the only caveat for large amounts of memory. The SE/30, along with the II, IIx, and IIcx have a dirty secret—a 24-bit dirty secret.

Have you ever thought about what defines the bit-ness of a CPU? If I polled the average retro computer enthusiast as to how many “bits” are in the Motorola 68000 CPU inside their Amiga 500, Atari ST, or Mac SE, they’d likely answer “16-bit.” Sega used the 68000 in the Genesis and advertised it as a 16-bit system. And they’re not wrong, but they’re not completely right either. To understand how Apple’s ROMs got so dirty, we have to understand the development of the 68000.

The year is 1976, and Motorola Semiconductor was in a heap of trouble. Sales of their 8-bit 6800 microprocessor were slumping due to stiff competition from the likes of the 6502, Z80, and 8080. Meanwhile, Intel’s marketshare was soaring thanks to their advancements in silicon fabrication. They were already designing a new 16-bit CPU, the 8086, that would leapfrog the 8-bit competition. Now Motorola’s plans to reinvigorate its flagging CPU sales were at a crossroads. They could rush a me-too 16-bit product to market, but it wouldn’t be able to beat Intel on price or performance. Having determined that fighting Intel head-on was a losing bet, Moto would zig where Intel had zagged.

Colin Crook, Tom Gunter, and the 68K team decided that a 32-bit instruction set would be a way to future-proof their design while offering something Intel wasn’t. There was only problem with this clever idea: economically packaging all the support circuitry for a full 32-bit CPU wasn’t yet possible. A dual-inline package CPU with more than 64 pins was costly both in manufacturing and in board real estate. So how could they keep an eye on the future while utilizing then-current tech?

Motorola’s solution was implementing the 32-bit 68K instruction set with 16-bit components. The CPU has 32-bit registers, a 32-bit memory model, and 32-bit data types, but it also offers 16 and 8-bit data types. Only 24 of the 32 address lines are connected to memory, and the data bus and arithmetic logic unit are 16-bit. This let the CPU use those common 64-pin DIP chips. Most programs used the 8- and 16-bit instructions, with 32-bit operations possible if you were okay with reduced performance. This forward-thinking architecture made it easy for Motorola to design a full 32-bit chip, unlike Intel who needed to work around a lot of cruft when designing the 386. 68K software would be forward compatible with Motorola’s eventual full 32-bit chip, so long as you didn’t do anything foolish like hijack the unused high-order memory address bits for non-addressing purposes.

Unfortunately Andy Hertzfeld did exactly that when he designed Mac OS’ lockable and purgeable memory flags, to his later regret. The memory pointer had room for all 32 bits, but only 24 were actually used because only 24 physical memory address lines were available on the CPU package. Exploiting this seemed like a good idea at the time; those eight bits weren't doing anything and it’d be an efficient use of limited resources. But that quest for efficiency in the present mortgaged their future, and the bill came due when Apple shipped Macs with 32-bit 68020 and 68030 CPUs. These 24-bit dirty Macs couldn’t address more than 8MB of RAM unless you used A/UX.

Apple fixed this memory malady by including new 32-bit clean ROMs in Macs beginning with the IIci. Application developers also had to fix their apps to avoid touching those memory address bits. Owners of the II, IIx, IIcx, and SE/30 expected Apple to offer a ROM upgrade to unleash their systems’ full potential, but Apple never did. Most users back in the day fixed this limitation by installing a 32-bit patch extension like MODE32 or Apple’s 32-bit Enabler. If you were lucky to find a spare Mac IIsi ROM SIMM, you could install that into your SE/30 and have a truly 32-bit clean compact Mac. But those ROMs were hard to find back then and are even rarer today.

Instead of stealing Peter’s ROMs to fix Paul’s Macs, the community has developed new hardware to clean up Apple’s dirty laundry. I procured a Big Mess O’ Wires ROMinator II, which is one of several modern Macintosh ROM SIMMs. It’s not only 32-bit clean, it also eliminates the memory test, adds a ROM disk, and a few other features. I’m not sure how I feel about the pirate icon and the new startup chime, but I admit it gives the Mac a little more character. If you don’t care for the frills, a GGLabs MACSIMM or a PurpleROM will get you 32-bit cleanliness and a ROM disk for a lower price. Honestly, running Mac OS 7.6 and later on these machines without an accelerator is probably a bad idea. I’m sticking to System 7.5 and earlier.

After the repairs and upgrades, the SE/30 was ready for a test drive. I wrangled words in Microsoft Word, slummed around in SimCity, and floated with AfterDark’s flying toasters. Apple claimed the SE/30 was four times faster than a vanilla SE and it sure feels that way. My past experiences with a Plus, SE, or Classic left me wanting because applications always felt a little slow. Not so with the SE/30—its responsiveness, especially with solid state storage, was excellent. I had to admit I was falling for the SE/30’s charms. I get it now. It’s not just hype or nostalgia—this was the compact Macintosh as it was meant to be, without compromises or excuses. So why did Apple kill it?

SE/30/30 Hindsight

Apple discontinued the SE/30 on October 23, 1991. Its replacement, if you could call it that, was the Classic II. The headline specs for the Classic II sound like an SE/30 in a cheaper package. It had a 16MHz 68030 CPU, 2MB of RAM, and a 40MB hard drive all for the low cost of $1900. Sounds like a good deal, so what’s the catch? While the Classic II’s 68030 ran at the same clock speed as an SE/30, it was hobbled by a 16-bit external data bus, making it 30% slower than an SE/30. Floating point calculations are even slower because the FPU was now an optional add-on. Two, its maximum RAM was cut down to 10MB—a fraction of the SE/30’s 128MB. Three, the versatile PDS slot was replaced with a more limited connector for that optional FPU. All these changes combined to make the Classic II more of an entry level appliance and less of a power user’s machine. SE/30 fans were understandably upset; they wanted an upgrade. Why would Apple kill a beloved Mac like the SE/30 without offering a true successor?

A lot changed at Apple from 1989 to 1991. Jean-Louis Gassée—Apple’s product man responsible for high-cost, high-powered Macs like the IIfx and the Mac Portable—left the company in 1990. CEO John Sculley and newly promoted COO Michael Spindler delivered new marching orders to Apple’s engineers: build less expensive computers to grow Apple’s marketshare. From that standpoint the Classic II was a smashing success. The SE/30’s copious component count made it a prime target for a cost-reduced revision. The Classic II’s highly integrated logic board had 60% fewer chips than the SE/30’s, making the Classic II considerably cheaper to manufacture while maintaining a healthy margin. The street price for an SE/30 with 4MB RAM and 80MB hard drive in 1991 was $2800. A Classic II with the same specs was $2400, and one year later Apple’s retail partners would sell the same machine as a Performa 200 for $1200. Slashing the maximum memory and removing the PDS slot pushed power users to more expensive Macs instead of buying a Classic II and hot-rodding it.

The Color Classic wasn’t the upgrade SE/30 owners were looking for.

By 1993 the black-and-white Mac was looking pretty dated in a world of Super VGA graphics. It had been four years since the announcement of the SE/30, and its fans picked up on rumors of an upcoming all-in-one color Mac. Surely this time will be different and they’d get the upgrade of their dreams. And when the Macintosh Color Classic was announced, it looked it might be the one! It came in a brand new case featuring Apple’s curvaceous Espresso design language and a glorious ultra color Sony Trinitron display. Apple even brought back the PDS slot! But wait—further down on the spec sheet was the same old and slow 16MHz 030 hampered by a 16-bit data bus. And a maximum of 10MB of RAM, again? It’s not different at all, is it, Steve?!

Apple soon realized their mistake and launched the Color Classic II a few months later with a 33MHz 030 and a full 32-bit data bus. Now this was a true upgrade for most SE/30 users, but Apple didn’t sell them in the USA. Too bad, so sad. Apple was descending into its beleaguered era, when prospective Mac buyers had to choose between the dizzying array of Centrises, Quadras, Performas, or whatever Apple’s roulette wheel said they should name their computers on any given day.

But wait—you’re a discerning power user with an SE/30 on their desk. Why should you spend multiple thousands on a new Mac when you could spend multiple hundreds on an accelerator instead? DayStar Digital’s Turbo 040 sold for about $1500 in 1993. As long as you were still okay with monochrome video, this card gave your little Mac enough power to trade blows with the reigning heavyweight champion, the Quadra 950 tower. And if you weren’t okay with monochrome video, Micron’s XCeed brought multiple shades of gray to the SE/30’s display. Color graphics cards were available too. A determined user could hack together an accelerator, graphics card, and network card into this tiny package and keep it going until the PowerPC transition finally made them cry uncle and buy a new Mac.

Apple’s power users have been remarkably loyal to the Mac through some pretty tough times. Not necessarily loyal to Apple, mind you—I have a hunch that the kind of people who owned SE/30s bought Mac clones. But these people stuck with the Mac through the beleaguered era, eventually becoming the bloggers and podcasters who filled the vacuum left by the death of Macworld, MacUser, and MacAddict. Whenever there’s a new Mac announcement I always sense this undercurrent from their coverage that “if only Apple made a computer tailored to my specific needs, it would be the best computer ever! Just like the SE/30, and the Cube, and the G4 towers!” But like it or not, the Macintosh and Apple are no longer the underdog who’s too cool for school. You’d think they’d be happy, because Apple finally won and took over the world, but they can’t be happy because Apple lost their counterculture joie de vive in the process.

Macintosh SE/30 on desk — The SE/30 Abides.

I understand why so many former SE/30 owners have been chasing that machine’s ideal for decades. Perhaps it’s an impossible standard to live up to and their idea of the Perfect Mac can never actually be realized. After all, the SE/30 had its share of shortcomings. But in the context of the overall package they were minor inconveniences. It’s no surprise that it found an audience with college students, writers, and designers who appreciated aesthetics and the value of the overall package while appreciating its technical prowess. If I had one at the time, I would’ve appreciated it too. Sometimes when you meet a hero, you’ve actually met the real deal.

How Much Video Memory Does A Mac Color Classic II Have, Anyway?