Starting my Compact Mac Vintage Journey with this SE modded to SE/30 project.

sunvalleylaw

New Tinkerer
Jan 7, 2026
15
16
3
Just getting into the vintage scene, after using Macs basically my whole life, and the life of that line too. Starting in 1984. I did an intro thread in the appropriate place also! :) Got this machine to start with. It has been recapped and upgraded as listed below. The SE?30 board was purchased already recapped from eBay by the Seller, and Seller also recapped the analog board. It should arrive in a week or so.

I had an SE in 1988 I used for my legal work at that time, and this one was not too expensive, and looked up and running enough for me to learn and mod from a starting place. would like to add something akin to the old ScuzzyGraph II SCSI mods that allowed the machine to drive a color display. Learned about that watching a video interview of Rand Miller and how they developed Myst. Would use it for displaying family photos, messing around with old games, etc. And for grins. Just developing my knowledge and ideas now. If anyone has any ideas of directions to pursue, chime in. :). I think I would like to avoid putting in a flat screen LCD or such and would rather have a good working machine, with the capability to run a color external drive, rather than a lot of the mods I have seen on Youtube and the forums. We'll see.

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sunvalleylaw

New Tinkerer
Jan 7, 2026
15
16
3
OK, here it is! I have been excited about this. Figured out from the UPS store today.

First a little unboxing. It was packed very well, in my opinion. Hooked everything up. The newer keyboard that doesn’t have the rainbow apple seems to work better as the Q key seems to be stuck on the one with the Apple. I’m going to see if I can clean that one up and take care of some of the yellow and get it working again.

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And here is the first start up and a little brief exploration. I had to stop after firing it up to change out the keyboard because as I said, the one with the rainbow apple on it wasn’t working properly. The other one works just fine though! And this thing seem super fast for what it has on it right now.



I did check in with the seller and the PSU has not been recapped so I will either do that or install a different one. And then my next plan is to secure one of the 30Video HC greyscale kits or equivalent and hook up an external monitor. After messing around on this old monochrome monitor, I just can’t bring myself to put the LCD color screen in instead.I’m also going to see how I can figure out to add some (limited) Internet.