[comp.sys.mac] New SE/30 discoveries

kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) (02/18/89)

I felt like the poster who said every one told him to wait till the next
new Mac came out and if he continued to follow that advice he'd never
get one. But I got an extraordinary good deal on an SE/30 and due to some
other looming expenses decided to go low end instead of wait for the IIcx.

I NEED A LARGE SCREEN MONITOR!  Otherwise there was no reason to get a
new machine. I tried calling E Mchines, but all their sales reps were in
a meeting. I was curious about the reply that no one makes a 32-bit
monochrome monitor. Is that another name for grey scale?  Am I missing
something?

Has anyone else added a large screen monochrome (not grey scale) monitor
to the SE/30 who would like to make a recommendation?

Also, for those who don't have the new high density floppy, it might be
a while before some of this information becomes common knowledge.

The HD floppy has a cutout hole on the upper left corner. If you insert
one of these in your HD floppy drive, the dialog box offers no choices
in formatting. It's either initialize or eject. (If you insert the regular
floppy, the choices are the standard single or double sided.)

To initialize for IBM format, you open the Apple File Exchange application,
and then insert the diskette. There are two different dialog boxes,
depending upon whether you inserted an HD floppy or a regular one.

There is a warning to never put an HD floppy into an 800k or 400k drive. 
"These disk drives cannot reliably read or write information on HD disks,
and they cannot properly initialize an HD disk for use in an Apple FDHD."

If you accidentally put an HD floppy into an 800 or 400k drive, you will
be asked if you want to initialize it or eject it. If you do initialize
an HD floppy as an 800 or 400k disk, when you put it in the HD drive, it
will again offer only to initialize or eject.

Thus, the moral of the story is: use HD floppies (with cutouts in the upper
left corner) only in HD floppy drives. You can't (reliably) use this disk to
transfer files to 400 and 800k drives.

Shirley Kehr

pfile@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Rob Pfile) (02/19/89)

In article <83842@felix.UUCP> kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) writes:
>will again offer only to initialize or eject.
>
>Thus, the moral of the story is: use HD floppies (with cutouts in the upper
>left corner) only in HD floppy drives. You can't (reliably) use this disk to
>transfer files to 400 and 800k drives.
>
>Shirley Kehr
 
 Why not just put a piece of scotch tape over the notch on the disk, as
 you might do to write-enable a standard audio cassette that has it's
 write enable notch broken out?

 The problem seems to be the fact that the se/30 checks the disk type, then
 tries to read MFM on the FDHD, fails, and asks to format the disk.

 Perhaps if you fool the hardware the computer can successfully read the
 disk...

 Rob Pfile

 pfile@cory.berkeley.edu
 ...!ucbvax!cory!pfile

holland@m2.csc.ti.com (Fred Hollander) (02/20/89)

In article <83842@felix.UUCP> kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) writes:
>I felt like the poster who said every one told him to wait till the next
>new Mac came out and if he continued to follow that advice he'd never
>get one. But I got an extraordinary good deal on an SE/30 and due to some
>other looming expenses decided to go low end instead of wait for the IIcx.

I just find it a little amusing that you consider the SE/30 low end.
I just sold my Mac II so I could move up to an SE/30.  Including the
IIx and IIcx, I consider the SE/30 the top of the line - for my needs
portability is more important than NuBus.  I admit is was nice having
all those slots so I could move my video card in the middle to reduce
noise :).

By the way, does anyone know of any plans for a NuBus expansion
chassis for the SE/30?  That would give it the best of everything.

Fred Hollander
Computer Science Center
Texas Instruments, Inc.
hollander@ti.com

The above statements are my own and not representative of Texas Instruments.

mike@shogun.cc.umich.edu (Michael Nowak) (02/22/89)

In article <70358@ti-csl.csc.ti.com> holland@m2.UUCP (Fred Hollander) writes:
>By the way, does anyone know of any plans for a NuBus expansion
>chassis for the SE/30?  That would give it the best of everything.
>
>Fred Hollander
>Computer Science Center
>Texas Instruments, Inc.
>hollander@ti.com
>
>The above statements are my own and not representative of Texas Instruments.

In the 21 February issue of MacWEEK, there is a small article on an
expansion chassis from Second Wave.  According to the article, the chassis
holds 8 NuBus cards and three internal SCSI devices.  The retail price
is $2295.
 
Second Wave can be contacted at:
9430 Research Blvd. Echelon II, Suite 260
Austin, Texas  78759

I am not affliated with MacWEEK or Second Wave.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Michael Nowak                                          ...mailrus!shogun!mike
 Workstation Consultant                               mike@shogun.cc.umich.edu
 U of M Computing Center User Services              Mike_Nowak@um.cc.umich.edu

    ...working for but in no way representing the University of Michigan...