• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Awful Macintosh SE FDHD Revival

Bendix

Well-known member
Sorry bibilit, yes I meant the keyboard. I did a test last night with an old "Apple Design Keyboard", Vanish and boiling water. Let all plastic parts of the keyboard in it for three hours after the toothbrush treatment (another 2 hours, gosh, that's really work) and I know, had no sunlight. It all came out very clean and not eroded with the top of the keyboard remaining still a tat yellowish. I am completely satisfied, though, because I think it is not bad, if one can see a little bit of the 30 years, that have passed.

 

PotatoFi

Well-known member
Back with another update! It's a pretty exciting one that even includes some magic smoke! Curious? Read on...

Before soldering the shield back onto the logic board, I decided to clean up the I/O ports a little bit. Here's what they looked like before:

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And here's after working on them with some 1000-grit sandpaper. Much better!

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Extreme closeup! Whooooaaaahhh!

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After slotting in the RF shield, I bent the tabs like they were before. It was pretty easy to solder the shield in since it was held in place.

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Shield installed!

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Next, it was time to recap the analog board. Normally, I post a link to my DigiKey cart with all of the caps, but unfortunately a couple of the caps are out of stuck, presumably due to supply chain issues. I'll post a link to the shopping cart here when the other parts are available.

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First, I marked the old caps with a green Sharpie to keep track of what I'd replaced.

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Then, one at a time, I desoldered caps. Sometimes I heat one leg and rock the cap, sometimes I used the soldering sucker, and sometimes desoldering braid.

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New cap installed here! I always solder one leg, and apply gentle pressure from the back while reheating that leg, which seats the cap firmly against the board.

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Here's a new cap, and an old cap that I couldn't get a replacement part for. I try to find the same diameter and leg spacing, but I don't worry about height. I also try to use Nichicon or Panasonic for electrolytic caps.

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Analog board done!

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At last, time to reassemble! Good thing too... my office has two torn-apart SE's, a torn-apart SE/30, and torn-apart external floppy drive! First, I hot glued the speaker back in.

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Next, I reinstalled the chassis. Yikes, it is blue! But I decided that there was no need to spend money on grey or silver paint. I just wanted to stop the rust. I have plenty of Macs that I make "perfect". Most people would have just thrown this one out anyway, I've already put too much effort into it.

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Jumping ahead a bit, I installed the analog board and logic board, but left the floppy drive and hard drive out to do a quick power-on test.

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The ground lug on the CRT was a bit rusty, so I cleaned it up with some sandpaper to ensure a good connection here.

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Time for the power-on test!

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ERMAGERSH THER MERCERTERSH WERKS! One thing I hadn't tested before now was sound. No problem, it chimed as usual. The CRT is pretty far out of adjustment. I'll need to adjust rotation, width, height, and centering. Basically everything. I don't know if there's a good guide out there on exact picture size, or if there's a program I can run to help calibrate it. If someone has info on that, please let me know.

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Next up, the floppy drive!

 

PotatoFi

Well-known member
Ugh, the floppy drive. I've done a lot of these lately, and I'm not gunna lie: it's become a bit of a chore. I'm just over it. But, it has to be done.

Yikes, pretty rusty, but it looks okay. Let's see how the bottom looks.

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Hrm, not great, but the drive motor spins freely, which makes me think that this will be salvageable with a bit of cleaning.

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My other restoration threads have tons of instructions on how to take these apart, so check those out if you're looking for more details. Here's the top carriage popped off.

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Good news, the eject motor gears look okay! I cleaned these out with alcohol and lubricated them with DuPont Teflon Silicone lubricant, which is designed for lubricating plastics.

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When that was done, I returned the final gear to this specific position, which as far as I know is supposed to be the "default" position.

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The upper and lower carriages got a scrub in the sink, a soak in vinegar, a scrub in vinegar, and a final wash under tap water before getting his with compressed air. No pictures of the vinegar soak, so just imagine these parts soaking in vinegar.

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After lubricating everything, reassembling, and inserting/ejecting a floppy disk a few dozen times to make sure everything was working smoothly, I started to assemble the hard drive and floppy drive assembly.

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Hard drive and floppy drive bracket installed.

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At this point, both the hard drive and floppy drive were completely untested. It was finally time for the big moment where I would see if the floppy drive worked, and if the hard drive worked, and if there was anything interesting on it!

I flipped on the power, and immediately, very bad things started happening. The machine rapidly went "FLUP FLUP FLUP FLUP FLUP", and by the time I got my hand back around to the power switch, there was a big puff of magic smoke coming from the hard drive and floppy drive area! Oh no!

With the power back off, I waved all of the smoke away and took things back apart to find out what burned up. And burn up, something did! My office smelled horrible! I was really hoping that whatever had failed was the hard drive, and not the floppy drive or logic board. The logic board checked out okay, but I quickly discovered this on the hard drive:

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Looks like a tantalum capacitor gave up! This is one of those old Miniscribe drives. Is this a common failure? Maybe the heads are stuck to the platter, and the motor couldn't spin up which overwhelmed the circuitry? Would love to get some insight on this. 

Oh well, I need a hard drive bracket for my SE/30. I guess this is where I'm getting it. Bye-bye hard drive!

But after all of that stress put on the machine, would it chime? My daughter and I flipped the switch again to see what would happen...

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Yep, all good. Whatever caused the failure must have been in the hard drive itself.

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But we're not out of the woods yet... what about the floppy drive?

 

PotatoFi

Well-known member
I decided to test the floppy drive outside of the machine. Unfortunately, despite a thorough cleaning and lubrication, there are a couple of problems.

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First off, the eject motor doesn't quite get the job done. It really labors, despite my careful cleaning and lubrication. By hand, disks eject very smoothy. The eject motor on the other hand sounds very labored, and it doesn't complete a 360° trip like I think it should.

The second problem is more serious. I noticed that the R/W heads do not actuate. I removed the two socket cap screws that hold the motor in, and discovered some rust.

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After pulling the drive out entirely, I found that the drive was stuck. It popped loose pretty easily, but it feels a bit rough... not good.

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Unfortunately, now the motor just buzzes whenever the computer is on. Here's a quick video of what is happening. It's a sealed unit so there's no way to get further into it.

So, the sad state of this machine is that it doesn't have a working floppy drive or hard drive. At this point, I think I'll need to find a donor drive that I can pull both an ejection motor and seek motor from to get it working again.

 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
Have you opened and cleaned/lubed the eject motor itself? Meaning all the gears inside?

As for the stepper motor, unfortunately that means that, once pulled, you may have to re-align the entire assembly to get it to read disks properly. Unless you have one, I have one or two spare parts drives. I could part the motor out to you if you needed.

 

techknight

Well-known member
Yea, time for another floppy drive. Luckily they pop up on ebay from time to time. 

About the tantalum cap. Old tantalum caps become unstable and they are known to short like this. It is a known thing, and when they short, they go boom. The drive is probably fine and changing the cap would get it going again. It usually does no harm outside of the cap itself. 

But you will need to lubricate the head stepper most likely. 

 

PotatoFi

Well-known member
Have you opened and cleaned/lubed the eject motor itself? Meaning all the gears inside?

As for the stepper motor, unfortunately that means that, once pulled, you may have to re-align the entire assembly to get it to read disks properly. Unless you have one, I have one or two spare parts drives. I could part the motor out to you if you needed.
I popped the plate off, removed the one central gear, swabbed everything out, put a couple drops of teflon lubricant in, and snapped it back together. So I was only in the gearbox, definitely not into the motor itself. If you think I need to tear it further apart, let me know.

As for alignment of the drive, can you elaborate? I only removed the motor and leadscrew. The heads are still on their rail that they slide forward and backward on. I've manually turned the leadscrew on other drives for cleaning and haven't had any problems.

Yea, time for another floppy drive. Luckily they pop up on ebay from time to time. 

About the tantalum cap. Old tantalum caps become unstable and they are known to short like this. It is a known thing, and when they short, they go boom. The drive is probably fine and changing the cap would get it going again. It usually does no harm outside of the cap itself. 

But you will need to lubricate the head stepper most likely. 
Good to know about the capacitor! I didn't know that tantalum caps would age and go like this. It did seem like something in the machine was shorted out, as the machine powered off-on-off-on-off-on-off-on rapidly until I hit the power switch. 

As for the drive... I am not sure I will attempt to repair it right now.

If anyone would like to either contribute or sell floppy drive parts to the project, please send me a DM!

 

Daniël

Well-known member
Nice work! I'm in the same boat as you, floppy drive wise, on my PowerMac 6100. At some point, that 6100 got fed either pancake syrup or soy sauce, specifically in the floppy drive opening. It had a good few rust spots, that I too tried getting off with vinegar, then I noticed the top head had been slightly knocked out of place, definitely not by me. There were toothpicks in it too, so I'm guessing someone tried shoving a floppy into it when the syrup mixed with the lubricant and it no longer moved freely, which probably caused that damage. So now that drive too is total loss, other than for parts.

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Check out my video on cleaning and lubricating the drives. The part relating to the eject motor is near the end to see a more complete breakdown and possibly seeing where you may be having issues. Otherwise, it's totally possible that something otherwise is shot. As for the motor, I had never tried adjusting because there was a warning in Pina to not do so unless you wanted to recalibrate things...or something to that effect. Perhaps I had it wrong.



 
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PotatoFi

Well-known member
Fast forward from June, 2020 to May, 2021. During this time, @erichelgeson has sent me a donor SuperDrive for this Macintosh SE FDHD. I specifically asked for one that hadn't been serviced, so that we could go through the process here.

Here's the drive! It's a bit rusty too, but absolutely nothing like the drive that came in this machine. I think this will clean up nicely.


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First, I used tweezers to disconnect the springs. They stay attached on the top.

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Next, I removed the two screws that hold the eject motor into place. I recommend being careful with these - it's easy to strip the heads!

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The next part of kinda hard to explain, so I made a quick diagram showing all of the steps. Step 4 is a bit tricky - I always forget exactly how to do it, but you'll know the instant you figure it out. The drive goes SNAP! Step 5 involves some maneuvering, but you can work the upper carriage out pretty easily.

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After removing the upper carriage, use pliers to remove the little snap-rings that hold the lower carriage to the drive.

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With that, the drive was completely disassembled.

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Next, I decided to clean up and lubricate the eject motor gears. I used a small screwdriver to pop the metal shield off, exposing the gears.

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A couple of the gears can be removed easily with tweezers. The dark yellow one is know to break, but fortunately, there are 3D printed reproductions available. These prints are done on a different type of printer than my FDM (fused deposition modeling) printer that can hit much higher resolution. Fortunately, we don't need a replacement gear here yet. I always clean and lubricate these drives before using them to try to avoid snapping a gear.

I swabbed everything out with alcohol and cotton swabs, then added a couple of drops of Teflon Silicon lubricant.

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With the eject motor reassembled, I turned my attention to the upper and lower carriages.

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To deal with the rust and corrosion, I scrubbed them down in some vinegar.

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After the vinegar, I used dishwasher soap and water, and then dried everything off with the air compressor. Not perfect, but a lot better!

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I didn't get any photos of this, but I hit the drive with the air compressor, swabbed the heads with alcohol, and use alcohol and cotton swabs to clean up the linear rail and leadscrew. I dabbed some grease onto them, and it was time to reassemble!

First, I greased the little bumps on the bottom of the lower carriage.

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I reinstalled the snap rings by pressing them into place. They take a pretty good push! I usually use the soft, squishy part of my thumb.

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I maneuvered the upper carriage back into place, and greased up a few of the moving parts. I don't go crazy with grease... just a bit here and there.

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I reattached the springs.

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After reinstalling the eject motor, I tested it with a dead floppy disk. At this point, the drive was ready for reinstallation in the Mac!

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ScutBoy

Well-known member
I like doing the clean/refurb on floppy drives, I usually wait until I have a a pile of 4 or more, then put on some music or a movie and just cruise through them, testing each after I'm done. Then I have a pile of "good" drives for when I work on a machine- just put a known good one in, and the "old" one goes in the pile for next time.

Just a note, the external floppy drive cable works for either 1.4M or 800K drives, so I have an FDHD SE sitting there, and just plug the refreshed drive into the cable (with the machine off, of course) and do a format and read. Then I put the disk in another Mac and if it will read it OK, I consider it "good"
 

PotatoFi

Well-known member
Fast forward one last time from May, 2021 to now (which is November, 2021)! We're finally back up to "current". I feel like it's time to get this restoration finished up. First, I dug out the floppy drive that I cleaned and refurbished in May.

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I pulled the old drive, and put it in my box of spares. You never know when you might need a little spring or something!

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In a shocking turn of events, I installed the drive! I know, I know.

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After a couple of tries, it booted from one of my System 7.0.1 disks. "Reliable" isn't a word I'd use for it... once, there was a floppy icon with an "X", and it spat the disk out a few times. I think I'll take the drive apart one more time, but not yet.

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By the way, if anyone has tips on how to get good photos of these CRT's from an iPhone 12 mini, I'd love to hear them. Sometimes, it does a fantastic job, and sometimes, I can't get a good photo no matter how I try. I think it has something to do with the lighting in the room, and how fast the shutter is. I don't know how to manually adjust that, or even what to adjust it to.

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PotatoFi

Well-known member
You might remember from a previous post that the hard drive in this machine blew a Tantalum capacitor. Additionally, my SE/30 needed a hard drive bracket, so I decided to build install a BlueSCSI.

I absolutely love these little things, because for about $25 and a MicroSD card, you can have solid-state storage in your retro Mac. There are so many things about this hobby that have become expensive. For storage replacement, that is no longer the case. Buying one is easy - just head over to scsi.blue!

Before we can install it, we need to assemble it.

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Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that the MicroSD card slot is already installed! Awhile back, I used this board to record a quick soldering tutorial:

Part 1: Tack down the part.

Part 2: Solder the pins.

Part 3: Solder the remaining mechanical strength pads.

Next, following the BlueSCSI assembly instructions, I solder in the diodes, which go on the bottom. They hold themselves to the board very securely.

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Next, I solder the pin headers to the BluePill. My favorite way to do these is with a breadboard, which holes everything nice and straight for soldering.

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All soldered, and perfectly straight!

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Next, I installed the BluePill onto the BlueSCSI board. Making sure the board is oriented correctly is SUPER important here - if you get it backwards, it's a huge pain to desolder and flip around. Don't ask me how I know!

Also note that I don't cut the header pins off after soldering. You'll see why in awhile.

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Next, it's time to install the resistor packs. I always use tweezers to bend the end legs outward slightly to hold it in place for soldering.

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Here are the resistor packs, all soldered in!

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Next, the Molex header for power. I don't need it on this machine, but I like to solder it in for completeness. Getting this one in alone takes a bit of a trick:

1. Bend your solder up in such a way that you can "scoop up some solder" with your iron with only one hand. Fortunately, solder can be formed how you want it.

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2. With your non-dominant hand, use your index finger to hold the header in place. Note that I'm holding it in by the plastic so I don't get burned.

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3. With your dominant hand, grab your iron, clean it, "scoop up" a generous amount of solder, and touch it to the pad and part for awhile. It will leave a nasty, poorly-flowed joint in place. Before you remove the iron, use your finger to get that header nice and straight. Remove the heat, hold the header still until the solder cools, and the part will now be tacked into place (which you can see in the photo).

4. You can now use two hands to solder the opposite pin.

5. Solder the two middle pins, and then reflow the first pin that you did.

I employ the same technique on the termination headers. Hold the part with one hand, use the other to tack it in...

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...and then go back and "do it right".




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Finally, we can solder in the SCSI connector. I have a trick for these too:

1. Pick a pin in a corner, and solder it into place.

2. Push the header towards the board, and reheat the joint. The header will settle against the board.

3. Do the same thing on the opposite corner.

Your header is now perfectly flush with the board, and you can solder the rest of the pins.

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Next, I scrubbed the bottom of the board with Dawn and water, and hit it with the air compressor. It looks so nice and clean!

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I wish I could say the same about the top, which I only used alcohol to clean.

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Finally, I installed the BlueSCSI into one of my printed brackets. If you'd like, you can get the files to print your own, or you can buy them on my Etsy store. The BlueSCSI hooks under the tabs on the front, and snaps down flush with the bracket.

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There was one last thing to do, which was set up the MicroSD card. First, I formatted my 8 GB card as ExFat using Disk Utility on macOS 11.6 Big Sur.

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Next, I grabbed a RaSCSI System 6.0.8 Boot image from Macintosh Garden. These are intended for use with the RaSCSI, but they work on the BlueSCSI and are so, SO convenient. I unzipped the image, and renamed it to "HD10_512 System 6.hda". If everything works right, this system will boot to a working copy of System 6.0.8, which is super convenient! From a software perspective, the BlueSCSI is insanely easy to use - I love it.

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joshc

Well-known member
By the way, if anyone has tips on how to get good photos of these CRT's from an iPhone 12 mini, I'd love to hear them.
Use ProCam. It allows you to adjust the aperture, ISO, white balance, etc, just like a 'real' camera.

Neat soldering on the BlueSCSI and great photos as usual, please keep it up!
 

PotatoFi

Well-known member
Use ProCam. It allows you to adjust the aperture, ISO, white balance, etc, just like a 'real' camera.

Neat soldering on the BlueSCSI and great photos as usual, please keep it up!

Thanks, I'll give that a try! And I'm glad you're enjoying following along. Sometimes I worry that I'm a bit too detailed and verbose. As always, keep the feedback coming.



Ok, just a couple things left on this Mac! It's coming together! It's almost done!

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No, no. I can't leave it. It can be so, so much better.

Time to take it back apart. Again.

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I may be anxious to get it fixed up, and while the SE does have a bleeder resistor for the CRT... safety first. I always discharge the CRT before touching the anode cap, anode wire, and flyback.

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Here it is all taken apart, littering the floor of my office. Again. I didn't even bother to disconnect the ground wire!

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Next, I desoldered the shield from the logic board. Do you see where this is going yet?

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PotatoFi

Well-known member
The blue chassis just wasn't working for me. I had to paint it. I had to. I grabbed a couple of cans of paint at Home Cheapo, and ultimately chose the Metallic Aluminum Rust-Oleum 2X.

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I found a place to hand them up in the back yard, and hit them with their first coat of paint.

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Since it's pretty cold outside, I took them straight inside and hung them up in the laundry room.

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In my excitement, I forgot to mask off some important places for grounding, so after things had dried overnight, I hit some places with the wire wheel and some 220-grit sandpaper.

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I masked things off, and hit both parts with a couple more coats of paint.

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I'm really, REALLY happy with how these turned out!

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After it had a couple of days to dry, I put everything back together, including soldering the shield back on the logic board (again). As for masking and grounding, I only worried about three points:

1. Where the ground wire attaches from the analog board
2. The two places where the logic board shield touches the back of the chassis

Other than maybe the floppy drive, I couldn't find any other places for grounding. I also checked for continuity for grounds everywhere, and it all checked out. Considering that you can easily run these machines outside of their cases on a bench, I think this will be 100 percent fine.

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Finally, I installed the BlueSCSI. Since I stole the hard drive bracket for my SE/30, I just used a couple pieces of double-side tape on the back of the BlueSCSI bracket.

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Then, I stuck it to the top of the floppy drive bracket.

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PotatoFi

Well-known member
We're just about done here. After installing the BlueSCSI, I flipped the power switch, and the machine booted right up to System 6.0.8. Fantastic.

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The CRT was positioned slightly too far to one side, so I used a plastic spudger to rotate one of the centering rings. With that, the restoration was done.

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PotatoFi

Well-known member
Let's take a look at the results!

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PotatoFi

Well-known member
Up until now, I hadn't thought to see how much RAM it has. It appears to have 2 MB. In this configuration, System 6.0.8 will be super snappy, and it will work great for some black-and-white Mac gaming. If someone wanted to upgrade it to 4 MB, and plug in a RaSCSI for SCSI Ethernet emulation, you could probably download some files with FTP, or even do some Telnet! Technically, you could load up a webpage or two... but with System 6 and a 4 MB RAM ceiling, that is extremely challenging.

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Yes, there's some burn-in... but I don't think it's very distracting. This is max brightness in a well-lit room - not super bright, but really no brighter than I go on my other machines.

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Here's a close-up of the burn-in. If anyone has any ideas what this is from, I'd love to hear them! It almost looks like a CNC application or something to me.

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And I think this is where our restoration thread draws to a close! As for the machine's future - I'm going to offer it back to the person who gave me the whole pile of Apple stuff to begin with (although I would need to track down a mouse and keyboard for it). The floppy drive still isn't super reliable, so I might tinker with that a little bit more. For now, thanks for reading my restoration thread! I hope you enjoyed it.

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SuperSVGA

Well-known member
Here's a close-up of the burn-in. If anyone has any ideas what this is from, I'd love to hear them! It almost looks like a CNC application or something to me.
I wouldn't say CNC, the control terms looks more like MIDI control to me.
It has buttons like Play, Stop, Re-Play, Preview, All Stop, as well as three sections with In, Out, DT (double time?), and 8X buttons.
No idea what the software is though.
 
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