You have to applaud this guy, getting an ethernet card and a video card in an SE/30 would have been impressive way back in the 1980s, let alone now.
From memory at the university, we had Fastpath boxes (maybe before they were bought by Shiva). At one point about a decade ago I got nostalgic for classic macs and hooked 512 up in my garage with a Fastpath. Took me a while to get enough working localtalk adaptors and whatnot to set it up, and another while to track down the right networking software to get it working.
Turned it on, configured, whoah I have an IP address in MacTCP. Got it file sharing off the house Linux server. Fired up macwww and pointed it at google and about 15 minutes later, after heroically trying to render the page I got a few characters and nothing recognisable. An SE/30 is miles faster than a 512 so you might be able to do something useful with it, but macwww didn't render graphics and chokes on anything that isn't plain html.
I think it would be even worse now, you would need a HTTPS/HTTP proxy to get anything at all.
Nostalgic computing is awfully fun but all the fun is in the setup, finding parts, working on solutions etc. The end product is generally underwhelming but the journey is the real reward.
A clever hacker has gone and ported a modern SSL library to System 7, plus SSH [1]. Runs on a 68030+ Mac. OpenTransport, not MacTCP. And I imagine key exchange takes a few minutes... but yeah, you can ssh into a contemporary machine over the open Internet using a Mac SE/30 under System 7. (You could also just run NetBSD on the thing and run an entirely modern stack, in theory. The SE/30 can take 128 MB of RAM. It's one of the oldest machines out there that can run a current operating system! Though I'm unsure whether Firefox would finish loading before the heat death of the universe.)
The SE/30 was one of the all-time great computers. The form factor was very intimate, and even portable-ish if you needed it to be.
With Mode32 you could install 128MB of RAM. This was an insane amount of memory back in the day. With full RAM and the SCSI port, they made pretty good file servers once you stuck an ethernet card in the PDS slot.
I had one that I used for programming back in the 90s. I used BBEdit (v4 I think), which was (and still is) a great text editor. Later, I installed NetBSD on it and used it as a local mail server. It was by far my favorite computer.
I don't understand why someone isn't making a more modern computer in this form factor. Okay, you're not going to want to watch a movie on a 10-12 inch screen, but for a dedicated "I'm going to do computer things now" computer, it's very inviting.
Well, your average Chromebook has a similar screen, more power, built-in battery, and can run Linux. And Ye olde Beaglebone or Android computer on an HDMI stick is more portable and more powerful. And if you want a new Mac, well, the Mini is an amazing machine in a tiny package, or there's also the Intel NUCs. Or for gaming, the Shuttle PCs, Razer Tomahawk, etc. Or just connect your iPad to a keyboard.
Don't get me wrong, I loved those old Macs too, having learned Logo and Hypercard on them. But most of that machine was the CRT monitor plus huge components. You can pack a lot more into a lot less these days. I do miss the "cute" factor though. They were loveable in a way that modern machines just aren't.
> You can pack a lot more into a lot less these days.
True, but even so, there is no reason to not have a little tower with a friendly face sitting on a desk, even if it's mostly empty space. Or use the empty space for something, like a door to a cubby where you can store a game pad.
If you need mobility a laptop is great. But sitting hunched over at a desk using a laptop is not nearly as good as sitting upright with the screen at a more ergonomic height.
Maybe it's all just nostalgia, but I think we got a lot of things right back in the day, and the toaster Mac was definitely one of those things.
> I don't understand why someone isn't making a more modern computer in this form factor. Okay, you're not going to want to watch a movie on a 10-12 inch screen, but for a dedicated "I'm going to do computer things now" computer, it's very inviting.
In a non CRT world it doesn't really make sense. You could say that the NUC/micro computers with a VESA mounts and all-in one and iMacs are its successors.
I used to wish someone would sell a laptop in portrait format but nowadays you can really build that out of a tablet + external keyboard or a laptop/tablet convertible.
The Nuc is excellent, and the big ones (ghost canyon etc) take a pci card. With 10gb networking and Proxmox or ESXi you have a great little server that is pretty portable.
That's kind of how I use my Surface Pro. I keep it docked on the desk and carry it with me if I need it to be portable. If I could build/buy a computer this size with an integrated screen and one or two PCI slots in the back, I'd be all over that.
Several years ago I built a few "lunchbox" style portable-ish PCs by bolting a monitor on the side of a SFF desktop, adding feet and a handle, and integrating a power strip so I only needed one power cord. I'd like to try that again with updated components. Think Compaq Portable III[0] but with a micro ATX or mini ITX.
Sometimes I think that if it weren't for heavy cryptography and graphical interfaces, I could do so many things online even with a computer as old as this one.
I could browse a textual version of HN, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and even post and comment things!
Sending HTTP packets to an open API has been a kids game for decades, unfortunately companies just don't want you to hack together your own solution
I've been reading Gopher under MacOS 8.1 (emulated) over the holidays, and it's been nice. Light WWW sites work in Netscape 3 on it, but you have to offload https to a proxy because it's not compatible with modern TLS.
While impressive, it would have been a lot easier to just use a SCSI connected Ethernet adapter. Correct SCSI termination would have required sacrificing a chicken and drawing a pentagram in blood, but still easier than this project.
Eh... I had many, many battles with parallel SCSI. However, once active terminators became widely available and affordable (late 90s-ish) it was practically plug&play (just mind the ID switches)
The trickier bit would be to find one of those old SCSI-attached ethernet devices (Asanté, DaynaPort, EtherMac, ...) since they're coveted items in the retro scene. Although it looks like at least PiSCSI can emulate a DaynaPort https://github.com/PiSCSI/piscsi/wiki/Dayna-Port-SCSI-Link
Yeah, but when you get that termination working, you get to turn to the 4th wall and shout, "It's alive! Alive! Oh, now I know what it feels like to be Woz!"
I never had those issues with SCSI. By 1996 I had a Zip drive, a Jaz drive, an external CDROM drive and two external hard drives connected to my PPC 6100 without issues.
10base-T or 2? I had ongoing nightmares with the latter, BBN R&D used it extensively and we’d have entire network segments flood with noise when someone bumped an AppleTalk repeater in the data closet.
Well, to be fair I was thinking of repeaters and hubs before switched became the norm, but now that you mention it, I do have a couple of horror stories regarding 10base2 as well. In particular, to stay 'on topic' regarding termination, or lack thereof. And those neat insulation piercing taps :(
I seem to recall I had thought the MacOS GUI subsystem limited it to 16MB, anyway, by packing data into the high byte of addresses... Maybe a later release fixed that?
That's the electronics equivalent of sticking a jet engine in a Cessna, very nice!
I really love this kind of hack, instead of ending up in the landfill someone has a ton of fun, learns a lot and breathes new life into a bunch of old hardware. Obviously it's not going to be able to hold its own against modern hardware but who cares, as long as itches get scratched it's all in the game.
If you look at crate upon crate of mobile phones trashed as e-waste and you realize that each and every one of them is probably the equivalent of a 1980's super computer and still working from an electronics point of view then the 'planned obsolescence' path that we are on is ultimately doomed to fail. Sooner or later really building for re-use will have to become the norm.
the electronics equivalent of sticking a jet engine in a Cessna
Not to take anything away from this cool thing but both of these cards were designed/made for the SE/30 as was the passthrough capability. It's a little closer to what Melba Toast is packin' right here
For a long time I've figured that profits to a company should be seen relative to cost to society, not just cost to the company. This is seriously broken and the driver behind most externalization effects.
(Actually, I suspect you've probably seen this -- a while back. But, like me, it may be a pleasant little memory, along with the one of that fellow with one in his shed for cooling beers.)
From memory at the university, we had Fastpath boxes (maybe before they were bought by Shiva). At one point about a decade ago I got nostalgic for classic macs and hooked 512 up in my garage with a Fastpath. Took me a while to get enough working localtalk adaptors and whatnot to set it up, and another while to track down the right networking software to get it working.
Turned it on, configured, whoah I have an IP address in MacTCP. Got it file sharing off the house Linux server. Fired up macwww and pointed it at google and about 15 minutes later, after heroically trying to render the page I got a few characters and nothing recognisable. An SE/30 is miles faster than a 512 so you might be able to do something useful with it, but macwww didn't render graphics and chokes on anything that isn't plain html.
I think it would be even worse now, you would need a HTTPS/HTTP proxy to get anything at all.
Nostalgic computing is awfully fun but all the fun is in the setup, finding parts, working on solutions etc. The end product is generally underwhelming but the journey is the real reward.