One of the items that came back from New Hampshire was a Macintosh SE. Manufactured in 1990, this little computer is made of hearty stock. It's my newest computer project.

This is the first Mac that I've encountered since college (Windows/Unix boy), so I am looking forward to figuring out what exactly to do with it!

I'll be updating this article as work progresses, so check back often.

When Bob asked if I would like an old Mac computer, my ears perked up. (Bob and his wife Jean are related to me through marriage in a confusing way. I prefer to think of them as honorary grandparents. - It's much easier to explain, too!) I had been looking for a new computer project for a while, so once Nancy agreed that I could have another computer (she was won over by it's cuteness), the Mac made the long journey back to Texas. In a moment of insanity, I figured that I would rather carry the Mac instead of shipping it. If you are ever presented with a similar situation, ship it. They get really heavy after a while.

I hope I look as good in 20 years

So, it came home. Along with the Mac came a full set of manuals, software disks and more. My first step was to clean it up. The case cleaned up easily with a mild detergent and an awful lot of paper towels and q-tips. I popped off all of the keys on the keyboard and gave them a full clean. I will say that the keyboard is very well made. Popping the keys off proved to be a formidable challenge.

Shiny, clean and ready to compute

So, now I have a clean computer. The first item of business is back up the files, and get the Mac up on our home network. This seems to be a bit of a catch-22. To install a network adapter, I will need to install software. Since this is the only Mac in the house, I am having to be creative about how to get the software onto the Mac. I haven't played with it too much, but I am playing with some different Windows apps that allow me to write to a Mac formatted disk.

I'm going to continue a running commentary as I learn and work on the computer. Check back for updates.

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Update: August 9, 2004

So I thought that I would update the entry with some more info. The Mac is labeled "Macintosh SE FDHD." The FDHD stands for "Floppy Drive Hard Drive" as this was kind of an upgrade. You know, a computer that had a floppy drive and a hard drive. Crazy.

Also, this Mac has a "SuperDrive" which is a floppy drive that uses those new-fangled 1.44 MB double-density disks. Right now I am having trouble with the drive. It's able to write to the disk, and I am trying some different translator softwares to read the diskette on an XP machine. So there's no data leaving or coming to the Mac yet. I still have sevral options to try yet.

Here are some of the stats frome the mac.
Built in Memory : 4,096K
Total Memory: 8,192K
Hard Drive: 43.1 MB
Created: Sun, June 20, 1993

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Update: August 20, 2004

I won an eBay auction yesterday for an Asante SCSI-Ethernet adapter. Hopefully, with the right drivers, the adapter will be my ticket to the worldwide web.... on a black and white 8-inch screen...

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