The oldest Mac still in Apple’s current product line is the venerable SE/30. When the SE/30 first came out, people quickly became fond of it because of its combination of IIcx power and SE size. It also gained a few converts later on in its lifetime when people who owned the SE decided to increase power by upgrading the SE to the SE/30, which is what we did last year. So why has the SE/30 been able to hang on while the IIcx and IIx have fallen by the wayside? Primarily, the SE/30 offers an attractive combination of small size, good speed, and acceptable expandability despite its lack of NuBus slots. The main problems facing the SE/30 these days are the small screen and the 24-bit ROMs that will not let you use System 7.0 to its fullest. With System 7.0, the 24-bit ROMs limit you to 13 MB of RAM (that’s a maximum of 8 MB worth of DRAM SIMMs plus whatever virtual memory you need to have a total of 13 MB RAM – you probably wouldn’t want to use a system configured to a total of 13 MB unless 8 MB of that RAM was from real memory). So if you install eight 4 MB SIMMs, you’ll still only get 13 MB of usable RAM (that’s one reason for petitioning Apple for new ROMs – see below). For the moment, I’ll just address what can be done about the screen.
The most common expansion that an SE/30 will experience is the addition of an external monitor. The compact size of the SE case restricts the SE/30 to the 9' monitor, but the Processor Direct Slot (PDS) can hold a video card to drive an external monitor. The PDS has never been as popular as NuBus, so you won’t find as many choices of cards for the PDS, though several have appeared over the years. As far as video cards go, the most popular 8-bit card appears to be the Micron Xceed card (the one we have), which runs about $350 mail order and supports 640 x 480 color monitors. Micron also has an 8-bit card which supports 1024 x 768 monitors. Another popular card is the RasterOps 264/SE30 card, which costs a bit more than the Micron card but provides 24-bit color. SuperMac also may have a ColorCard SE/30, which is also slightly more expensive than the Micron Xceed, but I haven’t heard much about this card in quite some time, so it may no longer be in production. Finally, Nutmeg Systems has two SE/30 video cards as well ($400 for an 8-bit color card or $500 for a card to drive a full page display), though we have no specifics short of a brief ad in the MacConnection catalog. MacConnection also mentions several MegaGraphics card/large monitor combinations, but no one on the nets had said anything about these.
Once you have a video card, you need a monitor. The Apple 13' color monitor is always a good choice, though it tends to be more expensive than others. That’s the one we bought because of the educational discount. Other popular monitors include a Magnavox 13' color monitor (about $530 from MacConnection), the Sony 1304 for a bit more than $600 from various places, and the Seiko CM1445C (about $600 from MacAvenue). Those three monitors all use the same Sony Trinitron guts that Apple puts in its 13' color monitor, and thus should be fairly similar in picture quality. Another popular monitor is the NEC MacSync, but its lower price (about $500 from Mac’s Place) seems to be reflected in lower quality – people on the nets have been less pleased with the MacSync. Of course, a monitor is a subjective beast, so if it’s at all possible, use the monitor before buying or at least make sure you can return it if you don’t like it. https://sourceslasopa284.weebly.com/share-desktop-for-mac.html. Also keep in mind that installing a video card in an SE/30 is not a trivial job and you probably don’t want to mess with it unless you’re quite familiar with discharging monitors and connecting cables in irritatingly small places. It took me a while to install my Micron card, and while it wasn’t hard, it was a pain.
Micron Monitor XCEED 1.0 (13 k) Micron driver for the XCEED 8 bit video card for the SE/30. Micron Monitor XCEED 2.01 (19 k) Micron driver for the XCEED 24 bit color video card for the SE/30. Miro; Prisma 16GX - Driver for the Miro Prisma 16GX Nubus video board.akin to RadiusWare 3.2.5 Mobius; Mobius Drivers (91 k). MICRON XCEED VIDEO CARD FOR USE ON MACINTOSH SE/30 COMPUTER Up for auction is a Micron Video Card for use on a Macintosh SE/30. I admit I really do not know much about it other than it came from a working SE/30 that had a faulty internal monitor (so I'm parting it out). The SE/30 has color QuickDraw built in, so it can be used to surf the Web. However, it requires a video card, such as the discontinued Micron Xceed, to display anything beyond black and white. Did you know the SE/30 could display grays on the internal monitor? Vintage Apple Macintosh Video Card Mac Micron XCEED N86-48 MGII16 NuBus. Sign in for checkout Check out as guest. Adding to your basket. The item you've selected wasn't added to your basket. Watch this item Unwatch. Long-time member. UGREEN SD Card Reader USB 3.0 Card Hub Adapter 5Gbps Read 4 Cards Simultaneously CF, CFI, TF, SDXC, SDHC, SD, MMC, Micro SDXC, Micro SD, Micro SDHC, MS, UHS-I for Windows, Mac, Linux 4.6 out of 5 stars 6,545.
It’s relatively easy to add a larger color monitor, and the dual monitors are well worth the cost. I’m completely addicted to the dual monitor setup because it allows me to keep Remember?, Timeslips III, QuickMail, and ThoughtPattern open on the little monitor and use the large monitor for my primary work (i.e. writing TidBITS in Nisus :-)). You will notice that many programs are not smart about remembering their window positions or zooming to the correct monitor size, but these are minor drawbacks considering how much more productive you become when you have a lot of windows open at once.
Micron Technology — 800/642-7661 — 208/386-3800
Nutmeg Systems — 202/966-3226
RasterOps Corp. — 408/562-4200
Nutmeg Systems — 202/966-3226
RasterOps Corp. — 408/562-4200
Information from:
Pythaeus
Dieder — [email protected]
Paul Jacoby — [email protected]
David Hightower — [email protected]
Puneet Pasrich — [email protected]
Pottie Karl — [email protected]
Pythaeus
Dieder — [email protected]
Paul Jacoby — [email protected]
David Hightower — [email protected]
Puneet Pasrich — [email protected]
Pottie Karl — [email protected]
Next up was DeskPicture. I had looked forward this because all I’ve found that randomizes the desktop picture is a shareware program, Backdrop, and Backdrop doesn’t work quite right on the SE/30. Under MultiFinder it’s not too bad, but under the Finder the desktop picture is overwritten by every window or icon. DeskPicture hadn’t been advertised as having desktop picture randomizing abilities, but hoped it would have them.
Micron Xceed Color Card For Macbook
DeskPicture supports multiple monitors, which is good, because we’ve added a color monitor to the SE/30 (the Micron Xceed card and the Apple 13' color monitor). It does randomize pictures, which pleases me to no end, and it even tells you how much precious RAM you waste by putting a picture on your desktop. If you have one of the monster 19' monitors and wish to have a desktop picture, DeskPicture has a virtual screen function which uses little memory in favor of using some disk space. DeskPicture’s virtual memory abilities work well, but are a tad slow at redrawing the screen because of reading everything in from disk. I would only use it if I had to have a certain huge picture on a 19' color monitor, and even then, it’s ridiculous to waste so much memory and disk space on decoration.
DeskPicture has a few quirks. It loads pictures from other volumes automatically, but only if the formatting and partitioning software uses the same technique as Apple. Apparently Silverlining doesn’t because that’s what I’ve used to partition my hard disk. DeskPicture would load and reserve memory, but wouldn’t display the picture. Putting the pictures on the boot volume solved the problem. DeskPicture displays StartupScreen files and PICT files, but not MacPaint files, which meant that I had to convert a number of the old files I used with Backdrop to work with DeskPicture. Unfortunately, I chose to convert them to PICTs, assuming that PICT was a better format to keep the images in if I had a choice. This is unfortunate because although DeskPicture can move a PICT around the screen and scale it to the screen, it doesn’t remember those settings if you ask it to choose a random picture later on. A preferences file could be used to store those settings, I would think. Luckily, I understand from Clay Maeckel that the next version of DeskPicture will address some of my criticisms.
Micron Xceed Color Card For Macbook Air
Considering the shareware alternatives, DeskPicture is worlds better. Backdrop is showing its age, and Clay’s own DeskPICT isn’t nearly as friendly or powerful. I’ve heard of other programs that do this sort of thing, but none has been popular enough that I’ve found a copy. Highly recommended.