Robert,
Thanks for rescuing an old Mac. As far as tricking out your mac, the first question is what can you find? Our first SE had a math coprocessor and it was noticibly faster than the Plus. The SE has the Processor Direct Slot as you have pointed out. We have a 20" display card in one of ours. Fun but not worth what we paid for it. If you can find cards, go ahead and test them. One word of caution, - do not kill your self by touching the high voltage wire without discharging the capacitors first.
Second, do not kill what you have, except for the sake of education. We purchased six SEs at a yard sale. They came from a Goodwill auction. One had a bad floppy drive. Another did not have an internal hard drive. Another had a cracked case, etc.. A volunteer at the store decided to take the best parts of all the machines and put them all together for his mom. He suceeded in killing all the machines. Don't know what he did but they were all dead by the time he was done. Sometimes it is better to leave well enough alone.
So, the best thing you can do to trick out the machine is software of the day. To the best of my memory, Photoshop did not exist back then. We still have the demo disk for the very first Freehand software promotion and we have the original Pagemaker. Ironically, Filemaker from Nashoba had the first database that allowed for filing clip art or grey scale photos. That was created in 1984. We started using it in 1985 and it was the ONLY software at the time that would store photos in a database. To this day, Microsoft Access does not do that. Access was based on FoxPro Mac. I will spare you the history except to say that the machine to trick out would be an SE/30 or a Mac IIfx with maximum ram and FoxPro software.
As for your specific questions:
"As I understand these are FDHD ready macs"
Maybe not, but I will check. I know that our first SE had dual floppies and an external hard drive. Seems as though it was not FDHD. I will have to varify.
when I format a FDHD disk it formats to 800k (double sided format)
Either it is an 800 drive or the switch that identifies the disk as high density might be sticky. The switch button has to drop into the void in the plastic case of the disk jacket to signal a higher capacity.
"could swap in a HD 3.5" FD or will I still need to replace the ROM."
The ROM issue will require some additional information. The external floppy controller port will handle floppies from this site:
http://www.vintagemacworld.com/drives.html
But, the comments under the G7287 external FDHD floppy drive lead me to believe that my memory is correct. It says "It was designed for use with Macs with an FDHD disk controller (eg SE FDHD, SE/30, IIx, IIci)." Only the SE FDHD versions and beyond would read the HD disks. Other posts not withstanding, we could use the FDHD disks in our original SE. The hazard was that if we took the disk to the Apple dealer to have laser prints made, their newer, nicer machines would say that the disk was unreadable. By covering up the HD hole, their computers would then recognize the disk as 800 and read it properly. The magnetic media substrait is not the same and can give you problems so find the right disks and you will be happier.
What do I look for to see? As well will an old IBM 3.5" FDHD work?
No. IBM drives were single speed and Apple drives with the WOZ chip were variable speed. More on that another day.
"Second set of questions: is system 7 as far as os' go for an SE? Will system 8 (probably not 9) work at all? If a 68030 PSD board were installed will 8 or 9 work?"
If you go too far ahead with a system you will slow down your machine, not speed it up. More on that later.
"Third set: Has anyone tried running the original Photoshops on this type of setup?(PS 0.63, PS 1-5.5)"
Are you in to self torture?
Hope that helps a little.
Ji~m
