Macintosh SE

The Macintosh SE was released by Apple Computer as an all-in-one successor to the Macintosh Plus with additional capacity for expansion as a workhorse computer. It was sold from March 1987 to October 1990.

Its design utilized parallel grill bars from the Snow White design language introduced with the Apple IIc. It included the option of an internal hard drive with a floppy drive, or two floppy drives. Each supported a double-density 800KB disk; support for 1.4MB FDHD floppies came later. Additional storage could be added through a SCSI port. Unlike its predecessors, the SE (and Macintosh II) adopted the ADB port for connecting the mouse and keyboard.

The SE would be succeeded by the much faster Macintosh SE/30 and the lower-priced Macintosh Classic.

Specifications

 * CPU: 8MHz Motorola 68000
 * Built-in monitor: 9-inch (512x342pixel) monochrome
 * RAM: 1 MB (expandable to 4 MB) in 4 SIMM slots
 * Hard drive: optional 20MB or 40MB hard drive (in top floppy bay)
 * Floppy drives: 1 or 2 800KB floppies (later upgraded to 1.4MB)

Development
Apple prototyped the SE in transparent plastics to visualize how the components would fit together in a compact package. This also allowed smoke testing to view how air would travel through the system for cooling. According to collector Hap Plain, 20 units were built, with 8 to 10 of them fully functional as bootable systems.

Articles

 * Original Mac SE Ad Artwork from 1987 by Arnold Kim at MacRumors (2008-09-06)