Apple Macintosh SE - Compact Mac

The Macintosh SE was a personal computer manufactured by Apple between March 1987[1] and October 1990. This computer marked a significant improvement on the Macintosh Plus design and was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Macintosh II. It had a similar case to the original Macintosh computer, but with slight differences in color and styling.

The SE was designed to accommodate either one or two floppy drives, or a floppy drive and a hard drive. After-market brackets were designed to allow the SE to accommodate two floppy drives as well as a hard drive, however it was not a configuration supported by Apple.

In addition an external floppy disk drive could also be connected, making the SE the only other Macintosh besides the Macintosh Portable which could support three floppy drives, though its increased storage, RAM capacity and optional internal hard drive rendered the external drives less of a necessity than for its predecessors. After Apple introduced the Macintosh SE/30 in January 1989, a logic board upgrade was sold by Apple dealers as a high-cost upgrade for the SE, consisting of a new SE/30 motherboard, case front and internal chassis to accommodate the upgrade components. Single-floppy SE models also featured a drive access light in the spot where the second floppy drive would be.

Originally the SE could use only Single Sided Double Density (SSDD) (400 KB) and Double Sided Double Density (DSDD) (800 KB) formatted floppy disks. In August 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh SE FDHD with the new SuperDrive, a floppy disk drive that could handle 1.4 MB High Density (HD) floppy disks. Originally marketed as FDHD (Floppy Disk High Density"), later some Macintosh SE FDHDs were labeled Macintosh SE Superdrive, to conform to Apple's marketing change with respect to their new drive. HD floppies would become the de-facto standard on both the Macintosh and PC computers from then on. An upgrade kit was sold for the original Macintosh SE which included new ROM chips and a new disk controller chip, to replace the originals.

Related Links : wikipedia.org - lowendmac.com