Mac SE 1/20 is the same as Mac Classic?

1. If it has a 1.44mb drive and appropriate swim, eg the FDHD did.

2. "PC Exchange", later versions of System 7.5 had this built in.

3. When you try and format a disk what capacity does it say? 400kb, 800kb or 1.44mb, or does it just say single-sided/double-sided?

The Classic has more surface mount components, 32 bit clean ROM, smaller motherboard, insane memory expansion.

The SE has a slot that can be most usefully filled with an ethernet card.

I recommend putting 4Mb in the beast.

First: Is the floppy drive in a SE 1/20 capable of read/write 1,44 MB disks?
Second: What software do I need in order it can read/write ms-dos disks?

Third: What does the «Verifying format.......wrong format» when trying to initialize 1,44 MB disks? Is the SE 1/20 floppy drive **REALLY** capable of 1,44 MB disks? (Note: the disks I tried to format in the mac were ok, previously tested in a Windows XP machine with no hassle).

Thanks a lot for a quick response. Regards.

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First: Does the front of the machine say "Macintosh SE" or "Macintosh SE FDHD"? If it's just SE, then no. If it's SE FDHD, then yes.

FIGURE 1: Macintosh SE

FIGURE 2: Macintosh SE FDHD

Second: As was stated above, it's called PC Exchange. Only the 1.44 floppy drives can read/write PC disks.

Third: Hmmmm, never seen that. Hopefully someone else knows a bit more.

As for the thread title; they're not the same as the Classic. While the SE does run the same 8MHz 68000, it has a larger logic board, more sane memory expansion, and an internal expansion slot. Plus, it looks nicer IMHO

Enjoy your SE! They're great little machines.

An SE with a 1.4MB drive can also read "Macintosh SE SuperDrive" (it seems the latest models said this).

I've come across several SE FDHD Macs that only had 800K drives, thanks to some scavenging. So, the general rule might be: If it doesn't say Superdrive or FDHD, it's almost certainly an 800K Mac. If it does say Superdrive or FDHD, it may have a Superdrive.

And along the same line, even if it just says "Macintosh SE" it may have a SuperDrive due to an upgrade.

A surefire way to test is to insert a high-density Mac disk that is known to be good (such as a program disk). If it reads, you have a high density drive.

Also, keep in mind there is a very small chance that you actually have an SE/30 if your Mac just says "Macintosh SE". My cousin has one like this (I stuck an SE/30 logic board in an SE case when I built it for her, mostly because I wanted her to have a Mac with a nice un-yellowed case). These are very rare to find but do exist in small numbers.

Also, keep in mind there is a very small chance that you actually have an SE/30 if your Mac just says "Macintosh SE". My cousin has one like this (I stuck an SE/30 logic board in an SE case when I built it for her, mostly because I wanted her to have a Mac with a nice un-yellowed case). These are very rare to find but do exist in small numbers.

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I had one when I was a child. It was an SE which was upgraded to the SE/30 using an Apple Upgrade kit. At some point, I took a pen and wrote /30 after the SE name on the front! I doubt I'd do that today.

I had one when I was a child. It was an SE which was upgraded to the SE/30 using an Apple Upgrade kit. At some point, I took a pen and wrote /30 after the SE name on the front! I doubt I'd do that today.

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That's odd. The Apple Upgrade kit came with a new case front to accommodate the new chassis required for clearance.

Also until JuanJavier weighs in again with some answers, he may be talking about an actual SE 1/20 which came with 1 MB RAM and a 20 MB HD. I do believe that all of those models were IWM 800K only. Once they switched to 1.44MB I think they were marked only SEFD and Superdrive and the 1/20 was the standard configuration. That does not preclude a SWIM upgrade or a logicboard swap, the later models of the original SE had the revised chassis, so no need for the front case upgrade.

I had one when I was a child. It was an SE which was upgraded to the SE/30 using an Apple Upgrade kit. At some point, I took a pen and wrote /30 after the SE name on the front! I doubt I'd do that today.

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That's odd. The Apple Upgrade kit came with a new case front to accommodate the new chassis required for clearance.

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I don't know all the details. This was over a decade ago, and that Mac is long gone now. I think the back was an SE/30, because it had the slot you could open, but the front was clearly an SE front. I've completely taken apart my Classic before, and it's definitely a job to get everything to the point where you can take the front off. I think whomever did the upgrade didn't want to bother, and just did the easier job of putting the SE/30's back on.

The back is the important part of an SE/30 upgrade because of the new back. The same also goes true for Classic --> Classic II upgrades and any upgrade involving a II/IIx, IIcx/IIci, or LC/LCII/LCIII.

The only difference in the front of an SE/30 is that an SE/30 front does not accommodate a second floppy drive. Finding a slot cover for an SE whose second floppy was removed during upgrade (necessary since the SE/30 only supports one on its logic board) is much easier since the CRT doesn't have to be removed.

any upgrade involving a II/IIx

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I have a II with a IIx motherboard, I wasn't aware of any case changes made. Both have 6 nubus slots and a floppy port.

I finally have the story of my SE - SE/30. This is from my grandfather, to whom I sent an email a few hours ago:

The original SE/30 was dropped and the monitor was broken. A SE had

a bad mother board so the simplest was to just replace the mother

board with a SE/30. Anything else, I might have added a DSDD drive

and memory. I don't really recall the exact conditions. For sure,

there wasn't any "upgrade" to the process.

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