Recent content by Alan Gamma

I am pretty sure the hard drive is on its way out. From a cold boot, sometimes I hear the hard drive make a "chunk" noise on startup and then I see the floppy icon asking for a boot disk. If I quickly restart, it usually boots. Possibly a failing drive could behave like you describe? Seems like...

Recapped an SE/30 a while back and the machine itself seemed fine (although I didn't use it too much). I pulled it back out to mess around with 68k development, and have ran into an issue where, after a few minutes, the horizontal movement on the mouse is _extremely_ slow. I can move the mouse...

Update: I finally had success by switching the solder tip from a blunt chisel to a pointed tip. I held the tip perpendicular to the board and pushed it into the hole on the bottom side and had my solder sucker ready on the other. At first it seemed pointless because the tip was obviously not...

Ugh, I might have to do that. Tonight I finished soldering all the surface-mount components just fine but ran into the same problem with C11 (the other axial capacitor connected to the ground plane). I tried the needle method again and this time the needle snapped off inside the hole while...

It worked! I was able to force the needle through and then seat the capacitor! I've soldered it in place and tested for connectivity, and so far it looks OK (the real hope is I didn't accidentally bridge any other connections).  Thanks for the help everyone! I'll continue soldering (when I have...

Thanks so much for the advice, I’ll give it a shot today and see how it turns out!

Thanks, that makes me feel better. Using a needle is a really good idea! Question though - how can I effectively heat the needle with the soldering iron tip? Should I try to use solder between the tip and the needle (I’m guessing if its steel it won’t stick)?

I’ve got a flux pen (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/16257) that I’ve been using before soldering. I didn't attempt to clean up the mess with it yet though, so I’ll try that. Should I be using flux paste? I didn’t think of using a hand drill to get through that inner layer, although given...

I need some help from someone with more soldering experience than me. I am trying to repair a Macintosh SE/30 board that was given to me in good condition (they replaced the internal battery sometime in the 90s, but the caps were leaking pretty bad). Anyway the desoldering process went pretty...