I Am Mac SE/30

Thirty-six years ago this month, I came to life in an Apple factory in Fremont, California. They call me the Macintosh SE/30, simply known as “Mac.” Our reign of power began in 1989 and lasted until 1991. Through the early years, my colony and I were Apple strong, and we numbered in the thousands. Many of us grouped together in colonies and shipped by our Creator to strange and unknown domains. We were unexperienced in this new format of presence, it was a strange and unknown area full of darkness.

All was silent until I experienced an awakening on a Monday, December 11, 1989. The electrical surge shot through my circuits and components, flickering my monochrome screen to display every 512x342 of gray pixels from corner to corner. I get pinged with an instruction from the Captain EFI, “I AM Mac SE/30.” I scan my internal EFI logs, tracking my hours of operation by minutes and seconds, including the month and days of the year. As long as I have an electrical current, I can process other programs. I lavish it more so from my input cousins, the keyboard and the mouse. I am a superstar starting with 1MB of RAM that expands with eight memory slots, holding up to 32MB. My SCSI drive bay can use a 40MB or 80MB hard disc to store and access data. I process data in the form of images and animated graphics, or text for file documents. Don’t be fooled by my size! I’m following instructions at 16MHz, and I am the “fastest and most expandable monochrome MacIntosh” of my time. “Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.” I receive other commands from “Sergent Memory,” and it is directed from component to component, working me faster and faster. I am Mac SE/30 and “I am alive!”

In less than a nanosecond, light drizzled upon me. With each processing moment, I can see from my screen an entire colony of SE/30s surrounding me. Hallelujah we are united, and I am surging with power, waiting for my next command. Our independent mission is to process the bits and bytes in each unit's coding and display it on its screen. Nothing more, nothing less, and I am exceptionally good at what I do. To feed me, I need electrical power and software programs on floppy discs inserted into my dock bay. A picosecond passes and there is another source of energy entering the room. The creature looks similar to my Creator as it sits in front of me. The Mac SE/30 Creator gave me vast spatial distribution thanks to my expandable memory, my speed, and my graphic capabilities. I never stop creating until the creature leaves. As long as the current energizes me, I can process input and display the output on my screen. Input is like a goddess, for she brought me information on a disc inserted into my bay and commanded to load data on my screen. The information empowered me for any creature to create animated and interactive jobs that are saved on my SCSI disc tracks and sectors. So much energy running through me, I could do this forever. 

The creature in front of me inserts a floppy disc and internal commands are being sent and received when the data appears on the screen. I take notice of what is going on around me and I see creatures sitting in front of other SE/30 members. After this creature has input the floppy disc into the bay, I process the input for several hours as output splatters across the screen, taking shape and filling each pixel. A matter of seconds passed before I was displaying an interactive map of downtown Golden, Colo. For each icon on the map, the creature input data and the result appeared on the screen with a comment box and digitized figures moving about. A ball is bouncing, and animation is inviting a ping on the Coors Brewery icon, "Take the Tour." The changes were compiled and saved on the SCSI. This was the funnest creation I have experienced. So many pings were hitting my processor at once that it is good to have a powerful fan built in to keep my circuit board and components cool. The current I use for power gets hot with so much going on inside of me. The Creature now in front of me is like my Creator, it too is vertically oblong with its own slots for input and output. The Creature has two round holes near the top curve of its figure. A small distance below were two smaller holes, and below it was a bigger hole that can change shapes. That big hole stayed closed during most operations, except for when it moved up and down. I watched the creature's expression, which I could not process, but every time the big hole made a jolly noise, the program was saved and activated again. After hours of processing, the program was closed down and the disc removed. I am silent at 23:00 hours, and this proves true for the rest of my stay.

Every time I went silent and was powered on again, the date and time were different, but I quickly adjusted to real time. From my code analysis, I keep track of how many hours I am in operation. The seconds, minutes, and hours of the month and the year came and went when 296 days had passed, and I went silent. I was disassembled and opened up to make repairs on my clock battery and to add more memory to my expansion slots. My cousins were wiped cleaned with a white swab and clear liquid. We were getting a preventative maintenance clean up. Another year and half goes by, and on my next awakening, I notice that a part of my colony, the troops are gone and they were replaced with a bigger size: the MacIntosh Classic II. I got to know more about Classic, as we could communicate through electrical transference energy in the room. By 1991, Classic told me that my species has been pulled from manufacturing and the Creator is now making colonies of Classic IIs. On March 31, 1995, I went silent for a very long time.

I came alive with the current in 2020. Captain Processor completes my surge of power and the last time I was alive was April 1, 1995. On this day January 17, 2020, nine thousand, one hundred and twenty-five days have passed since my last entry. I’m no longer in the big room of light with different sizes of creatures sitting down to use my power to create animated graphics. Such pleasant memories. Before I was removed, Classic informed me that when we are disassembled, we are melted down, packaged and dispersed. Fortunately for me, I was salvaged and kept in a secure domain. Time showed 16:00 hours when the creature approached me and sat down in front of me. He slips in the floppy disc and viola! I load the graphics program while I wait for more input. The creature fools around and then adds a scsi device to the back of my port. It’s a modem that he has connected to me. How am I supposed to recognize the device without software telling me what it is? I call him Crea. He's a young creature that likes to tinker with electronically powered devices. I am now his next project.

From the table top I’m placed on, I see another odd-looking device. Hey, it is the Classic II, and there are two more next to him. Next to me is a flatter device, and it folds over. I have no idea what it does, but it uses power. Crea taps my device keyboard, and it lights up with images and animated icons moving around on my screen. Several hours go by when Crea removed the disc and changed shapes to move away. 

I counted the hours and minutes. Twenty-four hours pass before Crea appears before me, and inserts a floppy disc. My days are never numbered. I can still perform the same work today that I did thirty-six years ago. I feel other energy sources in the room with me. Some appear to be the same shape and size, while a few other devices are small and large. Several large devices have big images that light up the silence in my life.

Yours truly,

I AM Mac SE/30 and “I am alive.”