I am Steve T., living in Hailey, and Boise, Idaho. Found this place after I got the itch to start exploring the Macs of my younger days. I watched some vids on YouTube as I researched why I was considering vintage, what I might want to do, and how. Saw at least one member here who did a vid. (DoesNotCompute on YouTube)
My Mac history: I purchased my first (well, my parents did) in 1984 as part of a student offer through the University of Washington in 1984. I had done some card based programming in middle school, just school kid stuff... and had some exposure, including dial up Internet communication in a rudimentary fashion, in high school leading into graduating in 1981, then saw my first personal computer, some sort of Compaq PC I believe. Then messed around for a bit on someone else's Apple II.
And around the same time I ordered my original Mac, other folks I housed with at UW were also getting things the IBM PC-AT. In any case, that original Mac took me most of the way through law school. I was able to get online and communicate with a Dad of my friend who I got to know, said Dad being the head of the American Bar Association, and had some early additional exposure to online communication via what was then called the ABAnet. Basically I think it was a messaging and bulletin board type place and had some articles linked and such. This was mid 80's.
Got a Mac SE in '88, and used that as an appellate clerk to do all my writing. Was on Word back then, but as I moved into my own practice, learned to much prefer WordPerfect, which I used until it died on the Mac side. The law partners at my firm wanted me to dictate to mini cassette and have secretaries type, but I much preferred creating via keyboard and computer. And I, since the early days, was always a visual learner and point and click GUI guy. Ultimately I went out on my own and kept running my office via Mac.
Never did much modding of any kind. Would just experiment with peripherals, etc. And like to game just a little. I would get a new Mac every 7 years or so for myself and my work/pleasure. Some level of Performa later on after I had played out that SE, and wanted a bigger and color screen, a black Powerbook with a trackpad after that, then a black Powerbook G3 with trackpad, and then a series of iMacs, (fruit flavor, lampshade attached screen over button type, then the white, then brushed aluminum ones, etc., for myself, my family and my paralegal), and after scaling back my practice to be true solo, relying more on a series of MacBook Pro's including this one I am on now, a 2021 M1 MacBook Pro. I also have my paralegal's latest Mac mini (which I will want to build something better out of at some point), which was probably from the mid to late teens, and a couple recent ones from the last couple years I use to supplement my laptop at my two office locations in Hailey and Boise and so I don't always have to carry my laptop around.
SO, all of a sudden I got reminiscent about my early computing days, and also revisited the new version of Myst on my current laptop. I had enjoyed mid 90's on my Performa, along with the Launch magazine thing on CD-ROM. And then decided after watching Rand Miller talk about the development of Myst on YouTube, and how they used an SE with a Scuzzy Graph II, a SCSI peripheral that provided color video, so that Rand's brother could do the art for the Myst game in color, even though they did not have the color machine. I would like to mod an SE/30 (starting with this SE with the SE/30 board in it) to drive an external color display. And I wanted to mess around with the original Myst CD-Rom game again (even though I have the new version also) and play some old Launch CD-ROM "magazines" with music videos, game demos etc.
SO, I was looking at Reuseum in Boise (a store with an associated STEM program they support with the computer and electronics recycler store) and found this monitor:
That got me intrigued so I researched what it would work with and found this Beige G3 Power PC.
It has been gone through and recapped and such. I will attach this monitor to that to start my foray into this stuff. This will get me going and satisfy my 90's craving. I may sell the LCD display for what I can get and fund some of this stuff. If I do I will start a proper thread for that in the appropriate place with appropriate info.
AND FINALLY, I found this, with a recapped SE/30 board purchased from eBay in it, with a recapped analog board also (by the seller), and also a Blue SCSI in it and with a Floppy EMU, to get me started too. I would like to learn on something that is working at least for some things to start, and learn to restore/mod more later as I go. I will see what I can figure out to do with it, in line with the plans I have, learn, and see if I can keep my eyes open and find a good condition SE/30 to restore myself.
I can solder a little, but plan on doing a class at that STEM store I mentioned in Boise to get better. I have done some electric guitar mods, and would like to get better so I can work on boards, both in these machines, and also the vintage audio stuff I like to mess with and almost always need recapping.
Anyways, that's me. Thanks for letting me join you!
I will start threads about the two projects in the appropriate forum for each so I can learn from you all there!
My Mac history: I purchased my first (well, my parents did) in 1984 as part of a student offer through the University of Washington in 1984. I had done some card based programming in middle school, just school kid stuff... and had some exposure, including dial up Internet communication in a rudimentary fashion, in high school leading into graduating in 1981, then saw my first personal computer, some sort of Compaq PC I believe. Then messed around for a bit on someone else's Apple II.
And around the same time I ordered my original Mac, other folks I housed with at UW were also getting things the IBM PC-AT. In any case, that original Mac took me most of the way through law school. I was able to get online and communicate with a Dad of my friend who I got to know, said Dad being the head of the American Bar Association, and had some early additional exposure to online communication via what was then called the ABAnet. Basically I think it was a messaging and bulletin board type place and had some articles linked and such. This was mid 80's.
Got a Mac SE in '88, and used that as an appellate clerk to do all my writing. Was on Word back then, but as I moved into my own practice, learned to much prefer WordPerfect, which I used until it died on the Mac side. The law partners at my firm wanted me to dictate to mini cassette and have secretaries type, but I much preferred creating via keyboard and computer. And I, since the early days, was always a visual learner and point and click GUI guy. Ultimately I went out on my own and kept running my office via Mac.
Never did much modding of any kind. Would just experiment with peripherals, etc. And like to game just a little. I would get a new Mac every 7 years or so for myself and my work/pleasure. Some level of Performa later on after I had played out that SE, and wanted a bigger and color screen, a black Powerbook with a trackpad after that, then a black Powerbook G3 with trackpad, and then a series of iMacs, (fruit flavor, lampshade attached screen over button type, then the white, then brushed aluminum ones, etc., for myself, my family and my paralegal), and after scaling back my practice to be true solo, relying more on a series of MacBook Pro's including this one I am on now, a 2021 M1 MacBook Pro. I also have my paralegal's latest Mac mini (which I will want to build something better out of at some point), which was probably from the mid to late teens, and a couple recent ones from the last couple years I use to supplement my laptop at my two office locations in Hailey and Boise and so I don't always have to carry my laptop around.
SO, all of a sudden I got reminiscent about my early computing days, and also revisited the new version of Myst on my current laptop. I had enjoyed mid 90's on my Performa, along with the Launch magazine thing on CD-ROM. And then decided after watching Rand Miller talk about the development of Myst on YouTube, and how they used an SE with a Scuzzy Graph II, a SCSI peripheral that provided color video, so that Rand's brother could do the art for the Myst game in color, even though they did not have the color machine. I would like to mod an SE/30 (starting with this SE with the SE/30 board in it) to drive an external color display. And I wanted to mess around with the original Myst CD-Rom game again (even though I have the new version also) and play some old Launch CD-ROM "magazines" with music videos, game demos etc.
SO, I was looking at Reuseum in Boise (a store with an associated STEM program they support with the computer and electronics recycler store) and found this monitor:
That got me intrigued so I researched what it would work with and found this Beige G3 Power PC.
It has been gone through and recapped and such. I will attach this monitor to that to start my foray into this stuff. This will get me going and satisfy my 90's craving. I may sell the LCD display for what I can get and fund some of this stuff. If I do I will start a proper thread for that in the appropriate place with appropriate info.
AND FINALLY, I found this, with a recapped SE/30 board purchased from eBay in it, with a recapped analog board also (by the seller), and also a Blue SCSI in it and with a Floppy EMU, to get me started too. I would like to learn on something that is working at least for some things to start, and learn to restore/mod more later as I go. I will see what I can figure out to do with it, in line with the plans I have, learn, and see if I can keep my eyes open and find a good condition SE/30 to restore myself.
I can solder a little, but plan on doing a class at that STEM store I mentioned in Boise to get better. I have done some electric guitar mods, and would like to get better so I can work on boards, both in these machines, and also the vintage audio stuff I like to mess with and almost always need recapping.
Anyways, that's me. Thanks for letting me join you!
I will start threads about the two projects in the appropriate forum for each so I can learn from you all there!
