boot disk needed?

[supernova777]

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-computers/oshawa-durham-region/macintosh-vintage-computers/1105212191?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

ok so im interested in the SE this guy has for sale for like 60$ (cheap!)
but he says its got all the hardware.. keyboard + mouse but needs a boot disk to boot it upall the way?

is this going to be a problem?
it probably doesnt read normal floppies right? so i cant even make a floppy boot disk for it?

according to wikipedia its the first mac to support 1.44mb floppies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE/30

The Macintosh SE/30 is a personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1989 until 1991. It was the fastest of the original black-and-white compact Macintosh series.

The SE/30 has a black-and-white monitor and a single PDS slot (rather than the NuBus slots of the IIx) which supported third-party accelerators, network cards, or a display adapter. Although officially only able to support 32 MB, the SE/30 could expand up to 128 MB of RAM (a significant amount of RAM at the time), and included a 40 or 80 MB hard drive. It was also the first compact Mac to include a 1.44 MB high density floppy disk drive as standard (late versions of the SE had one, but earlier versions did not).

it seems this is greater complicated by the fact that apple offered upgrades, and if an SE was upgraded to an SE30 it most likely didnt upgrade the floppy.. so the floppy could be 800K only..

In keeping with Apple's practice from the Apple II+ until the Power Macintosh G3 was announced, a logic board upgrade was available to convert a regular SE to a SE/30. The SE would then have exactly the same specs as an SE/30, with the difference only in the floppy drive if the SE had an 800 KB drive. The set included a new front bezel to replace the original SE bezel with that of an SE/30.

does the SE + SE/30 have network port? or do i need a stupid PDS network card?
im guessing i would have to order a pds network card.. grrrr

found a pic of an se30 upgraded with a pds nic..


guidance appreciated.

[GaryN]

Correct, grasshopper. You need an 800k DS/DD Mac OS boot disk and yes, you need a network card as in the pic (that's an early NuBus, by the way) unless you can live with the 56k modem serial port.

[supernova777]

 
its a pds slot not nubus
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/specs/mac_se30.html

Like the earlier Macintosh SE, the SE/30 has a PDS expansion slot rather than the NuBus slots introduced by the Macintosh II line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_Direct_Slot

Processor Direct Slot or PDS introduced by Apple Computer, in several of their Macintosh models, provided a limited measure of hardware expandibility, without going to the expense (in both desktop space and selling price) of providing full-fledged bus expansion slots.

Typically, a machine would feature multiple bus expansions slots, if any. However, there was never more than one PDS slot. Rather than providing a sophisticated communication protocol with arbitration between different bits of hardware that might be trying to use the communication channel at the same time, the PDS slot, for the most part, just gave direct access to signal pins on the CPU.

Thus, PDS slots tended to be CPU-specific, and therefore a card designed for the PDS slot in the Motorola 68030-based Macintosh SE/30, for example, would not work in the Motorola 68040-based Quadra 700.

The one notable exception to this was the PDS design for the original Motorola 68020-based Macintosh LC. This was Apple's first attempt at a "low-cost" Mac, and it was such a success that, when subsequent models replaced the CPU with a 68030, a 68040, and later a PowerPC processor, ways were found to keep the PDS slot compatible with the original LC, so that the same expansion cards would continue to work.

re: bold; thats news to me..   CPU-specific.. the mind fuckery continues

[GaryN]

You're right, it's PDS, my bad.