🚀 go-pugleaf

One of the reasons that slots are a good thing, is that they allow you to 
expand the capabilities of your system in a way the manufacturer never
intended.  That's why the Apple II, IBM-PC, and Mac II are such popular
architectures, and the Mac Plus seems doomed to oblivion.

Apple has a nasty habit of upgrading its systems in such a way that older
machines can only catch up by a "brain transplant" (motherboard swap) which
is very expensive and usually unnecessary.  I wonder, would it be possible
to use the SE's expansion slot to turn it into the equivalent of a Mac SE/30
at a REASONABLE cost?  Here's what you would need on the expansion board:

An '030 processor, '882 math chip, and supporting circuitry, running at 16mhz 
as a minimum. 25mhz would be preferable.
Space for SIMM expansion to 8MB RAM (or more with the new 4mb SIMMS)
New ROMs, licensed from Apple, with support for Color Quickdraw
A connector for an (optional) display card, which would support color or
greyscale output.

This would not give you the other more subtle benefits of the SE/30, such as
the advanced ASC sound chip, FDHD, or faster SCSI circuitry, but it would be
enough for me.  I'd love to write and use software that supports color
quickdraw, virtual memory, and all the other goodies that come with the SE/30
but I cannot afford to sell this machine and upgrade to the latest & greatest.

I suspect the major stumbling block would be obtaining permission to use a copy
of Color Quickdraw in conjunction with this card.  Apple just doesn't do things
like that (possible exception: use of Mac Plus ROM guts for the MacWorks Plus
package on the LISA) , but the existence of RISC CQD accelerators in non-Apple
products may mean that cloning CQD is a possibility.  Otherwise, CQD ROMs
could be purchased on the "black market," just like Atari owners get the Mac 
Plus ROM set for their Spectre GCR boards.  

This would also be a wonderful upgrade for the Mac Plus, which probably needs
it just as badly.  I doubt the power supply could handle the extra hardware
though.

Any comments, especially from Apple people?  Does anyone know if a project
like this is underway?  If so, I'm first in line for a board! :-)
-- 
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