My Snow and Graphite SE/30

what is that mouse? what do the 3 buttons do?

It's an old Mouse Systems "A3" optical mouse. The left button performs a regular click. The middle and right buttons function as left and right arrow keys by default, but they can be programmed to do other things like "click and hold".

That is the best looking SE/30 I have seen in a while.

--DDTM

Did you paint the keys or is it the white paint that makes them look darker?

What do you use it for now? I did my SE and it sits collecting dust in the basement.

MaxTek

I've been looking all over for one of those! Very nice.

The keys are the original color and yep it's the white paint on the keyboard case that makes them look darker.

I was at a thrift store looking for some Halloween costume stuff and I saw the SE/30 on a shelf collecting dust with a tag that said $2.99 on it. Back in the early 90's an SE/30 was a dream machine as far as I was concerned but way out of my price range. So when I saw this one for $2.99 and knowing it had an ethernet card, even if the computer didn't boot (which it didn't initially), I just couldn't pass it up.

I had an old 1.2 Gig HD and I found some dirt cheap RAM so I could make it respectable in that department. The problem was that it looked like crap. There was a chip out of one corner that I knew I could fix with some epoxy but the finish in general was yellowing and it had some permanent marker on it. So I painted it.

The fact is though that I have no real need for it. After I finish the linux install, I'll put it up for sale on Ebay. I'll set a fairly high initial bid ($50 or $75) because I have a lot of time invested in it and if I can't get at least that much, I'll just bring it to work and have it sit on my desk displaying local RSS news feeds.

I picked up a second SE/30 for $5.00 and I'm not sure if I'm going to give the same treatment or not. I think the two of them would be a nice conversation piece in my office and maybe one could display a national set of RSS newsfeeds while the other would show local stuff.

This is another(if there were any previous ones...) hack that I just don't like. The colour scheme suits the iMac, not a kludgy old square box; too many Apple logos, and the ones on the side shoulda been in the exact centre(correct me if I'm seeing things, but to me they look very close to the back of the case); and the keyboard doesn't look right... white and murky cream don't lend themselves to each other.

Bear in mind that this is only my own opinion and does not require somebody to come along and 'correct' it. And I'm not trying to make anyone mad or anything. I just don't like it.

First off I appreciate your honesty.

The Apple logos on the side's are slightly toward the back. One reason is that the sides aren't exactly symmetrical in shape so what "centered" means is open to interpretation. The other reason is that I painted it disassembled and I didn't account for the depth of the front bezel when positioning the logos. If I had to do it again, I'd slide the logos forward.

Originally, I didn't want another Apple logo on the front. I wanted "SE/30" in a large font, but the stencil would have been too time consuming for me to cut, while a smaller Apple was relatively simple thing to do.

As far as the keyboard goes, well, I couldn't leave it like it was could I? ;-) It's one of those things where you don't know how it's going to look until after you do it. The color of the keys is pretty close to grey. It could have turned out worse.

Finally, although I know you disagree, I don't think there's anything wrong with the color scheme for the SE/30 although my execution could have been better. The new iMac, the iBooks, and the iPod are all rather squarish in shape.

Mostly I share your criticisms. I have another SE/30 and if I take the time to paint it in a similar fashion, I'll position the logos on the sides further towards the front. I don't know what I'll do with the front bezel itself. Just leaving it all white wouldn't quite work. The keyboard problem is one I think I'll just have to live with.

Just like what is often the case with new Mac models, it does look a bit better in real life. My limited photography skills don't help.

The lines that break the back from the front bezel get washed out in the pictures. When the lines are more clearly defined, the position of the logos seem to make more sense, -although I still think they're too far back.

...and the keyboard really isn't all that bad :-)

Nice SE! I've got an ADB/C Little Mouse, which is only a single button optical. Does yours require one of the relective mouse pads? Mine doesn't seem to work on any normal surface, so I'm betting that it is one of the older types. That looks like a reflective pad on the desk there...

As for the paint job, It seems like it might have cleaned things up a bit to fill in the lines on the front of the case, and possibly fill the old logo hole (saving the logo itself ) so there is only the smooth front with the new centered grey logo and the floppy slot. I'm thinking a nice slot load CD-ROM hac would be really sweet, but might be more in the way for things like accel cards, etc.

...with 80% of what Jon just said.

The adb mouse I have does need the special pad. It's a tiny bit inconvenient, but it is a really nice mousing surface.

The two different apple logos on the front clash I agree, but I couldn't quite bring myself to cover the old one. It just seemed wrong.

I believe the "Classic" and "Classic II" macs had the smooth front you describe. It would look better but I'm not sure if the ventilation up there is just for the sake of the speaker or is an actual aid to cooling.
Plus it would have been more work

The Classics do have the smooth front, but when I wrote that I was looking at my 512k on the shelf right next to me and the iMac. The only things that break up the smooth front are the floppy slot and the keyboard port, then the logo and the brightness icon but they don't distract too much. With the main floppy slot so much lower on the SE/30, it would give a nice big smooth area for the logo.

As for the old logo, maybe a big rainbow logo in the center, but that would look outta place too. Eh, er, um. I like the style of the paint job, but keeping th eold logo on there thats away from the "smooth uniformity" of the new Apple style. And of course they dumped the old one years ago anyway so their new styles wouldn't be coordinated to it...

You could paint the old logo the new apple grey colour.