Macintosh SE/30 (1989-1991)

Apple Macintosh SE/30

The Macintosh SE/30, released in January 1989 for a steep $4,369, is widely considered the greatest "compact" Mac ever made because it crammed the raw power of the flagship Macintosh IIx into the iconic, small-footprint chassis of the original 128K. It featured a formidable 16 MHz Motorola 68030 processor and a 68882 math co-processor, making it exponentially faster than the standard SE and capable of supporting a staggering 128MB of RAM—an unheard-of amount for a desktop in the late '80s. This was the first compact Mac to include a 1.44MB "SuperDrive" as standard, and its high-speed Processor Direct Slot (PDS) allowed users to add third-party grayscale or color video cards, turning the little monochrome machine into a professional workstation. Despite its immense popularity among power users and its "dirty" ROMs that required software like MODE32 to access high memory, Apple discontinued the SE/30 on October 21, 1991. It was replaced by the Macintosh Classic II, a successor that many enthusiasts viewed as a downgrade due to its restricted 16-bit data path and lack of an expansion slot.

Donation:  Howard Greenspan