The Mac SE
Support Pages

Macintosh SE

The SE was introduced along with the Mac II in March 1987. Codenamed Aladdin and Chablis, it was the first Mac with a cooling fan, optional internal hard drive, ADB keyboard jack and expansion slot. It ran 15 to 20 per cent faster than the Mac Plus, and cost $2,900 for the dual-floppy version, or $3,700 with a 20MB hard drive. In August 1989 Apple began to ship the SE with a 1.4MB, high-density 'Superdrive' floppy disk drive. The model was discontinued in October 1990.

The SE can run system software up to System 7.5.5, and the CPU is Motorola's 68000 at 8MHz. It shipped with 1MB of RAM, expandable up to 4MB using pairs of 256KB or 1MB 150ns, 30-pin SIMMs. The nine-inch black and white screen measures 512 x 342 pixels. The serial ports are limited to 57.6k bps, so use of a 56k modem is not recommended. The Sound Out port is 8 bit mono.

This is Apple's own original description of the 1987 SE computer:

THE Macintosh SE adds expansion and flexibility to the power of the Macintosh Plus.

Processing speed is improved 15 to 20 percent over previous models, allowing faster recalculations of spreadsheets and faster document processing. SCSI performance is up to two times faster than on the Macintosh Plus.

The Macintosh SE comes standard with either two 800K internal drives, or one 800K internal drive and one internal 20MB SCSI hard disk.

The Macintosh SE incorporates the features of the Macintosh Plus including:
- The same compact design
- A 68000 microprocessor
- One megabyte of memory (expandable to four megabytes)
- A connection for SCSI peripherals

The Macintosh SE-Bus Expansion Slot allows for the addition of a variety of cards:
- Accelerator cards
- External monitor adapters
- Coprocessor cards
- Networking and communication cards
- A 5.25-inch MS-DOS disk drive controller card

Seven built-in ports, including:
- One SCSI port
- One drive port
- Two RS422 serial ports
- One sound port
- Two Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) ports

One megabyte of RAM, expandable up to four megabytes.

A 256K ROM, which includes support for:
- Internal and external SCSI connectors
- Internal drives
- One expansion slot
- Apple Hard Disk 20SC
- The Hierarchical File System
- QuickDraw
- AppleTalk
- The Apple Desktop Bus

A keyboard isn't included with either configuration of the Macintosh SE. However, two keyboards -- the Apple Keyboard and Apple Extended Keyboard -- are available.

Following are the specifications for the Macintosh SE (2 floppies) and the Macintosh SE hard disk 20MB and 40MB (1 floppy, one 20 or 40 megabyte hard disk).

PROCESSOR
MC68000, 32-bit internal architecture, 7.8336 MHz clock frequency

MEMORY
256K ROM, 1 MB RAM (expandable to 4MB), 256 bytes of user-settable parameter memory

DISKS
Capacity: 800K on double-sided 3.5-inch disks; 20MB (20.2 actual) or 40MB (42.1 actual) on optional 3-1/2" hard disk
Bytes per block (20MB or 40MB hard disk): 512
Total disk blocks:
20MB hard disk: 39,360
40MB hard disk: 82,150
Average access time:
20MB hard disk: 89 msec
Floppy: 36 msec
Average seek time:
20MB hard disk: 65 msec
40MB hard disk: 30 msec
Transfer rate, maximum:
20MB hard disk: 1.25MB per second
40MB hard disk: 1.25MB per second
Floppy: 500K-bits per second
Shock limit:
20MB hard disk: 40 G's
Noise level:
20MB hard disk: 42 decibels-measured at seated operating distance

SCREEN
9-inch diagonal, 512-pixel by 342-pixel high-resolution bit-mapped display

INTERFACES
Two Apple DeskTop Bus connectors
Two RS-232/RS-422 serial ports
SCSI interface
External disk port
Sound port for external audio
96-pin expansion connector (CPU bus connector)

SOUND
4-voice sound with 8-bit digital-analog conversion using 22 KHz sample rate

KEYBOARD
Apple Keyboard (or Apple Extended Keyboard)

MOUSE
Mechanical tracking, optical shaft encoding 90 pulses per inch (3.54 pulses per mm) of travel

CLOCK/CALENDAR
CMOS custom chip with 7-year lithium battery

FAN
0 CFM Cross Flow

ELECTRICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Input line voltage: 120/240 Volts AC, RMS
Frequency: 47 to 63 Hz
Power: 100 Watts maximum

SIZE AND WEIGHT

                 Weight         Height       Width        Depth

Main Unit        17-22 lbs*     13.6 in      9.69 in      10.9 in
                 7.7-9.5 kg*    345 mm       244 mm       276 mm

Apple Keyboard   2 lbs 4 oz     1.75 in      16.5 in      5.6 in
                 1.0 kg         44.5 mm      418.3 mm     142 mm

Mouse            6 oz           1.1 in       2.1 in       3.8 in
                 0.17 kg        27.9 mm      53.3 mm      96.5 mm

* Weight varies depending on optional installed hard disk or 
second 3.5-inch drive.

ENVIRONMENTAL REQUIREMENTS
Operating temperature: 50 deg F to 104 deg F (10 deg C to 40 deg C)
Storage temperature: -40 deg F to 116.6 deg F (-40 deg C to +47 deg C)
Relative humidity: 5% to 95% (non-condensing)
Altitude: 0 to 10,000 ft (0 to 3048 m)

HOME

The Mac SE Support Pages, maintained by Chris Adams
http://www.ccadams.org/se/