Classic Mac noob with a question about a smell.

[Ravenarchon]

Greetings everyone, I hope I'm posting in the right place. I've been looking around the internet for help with an issue I've been having, but can't seem to find anything related to my exact problem. All the examples I'm finding are a fair sight more dramatic.

In any case, I have a Macintosh SE, which I got from a college about 15 or 16 years ago when my father was redoing their network and they were just going to throw away a bunch of their old macs. The system was in amazing condition, comes with the zip up carrying case and all the books, really nice. When we moved it ended up going into storage (climate controlled inside storage, so not just like a shed or something), and recently I got it back out to play around with it.

And that's when I noticed the smell. A faint... mechanical smell is coming from the inside of the case. It doesn't really smell like it's burning though, just sort'a.. machine like. Like how some automotive or electronics stores smell? It's hard to describe. Kind'a metalic and musty. The system seems to run perfectly fine, boots really fast, runs like greased lightning (they had it expanded, so it has like 4MB of Ram and a 20+ MB HDD), it just... smells odd. All the time. Even when turned off if you sniff any of the vents you can smell it, but you can smell it even more when it's running. There's no smoke, no vertical or horizontal OMG I"M DYING lines on the screen, just an off smell.

So yeah. I turned it back off and packed it back up, since I didn't want to just keep running it if I might be killing it, and I've been trying to find an answer. Does anyone here know what it could be? Every similar instance I've found online of a Mac SE smelling weird also has screen lines or preformance drops or flakey behavior, which mine does not. I think this may have even been how it smelled 15 years ago when I was first using it, because the smell is familier, but I can't remember for sure. I don't want to plug it back in if I might be frying it.

Thanks in advance for any advice or answers. I was looking forward to messing around with the thing. Sorry about the wall of text, I wanted to be specific.

- On an unrelated note, anyone know how to check the max capacity of the HDD on the mac SE? The finder will tell me that it's currently using 17 meg-ish, but not out of what. So I'm not sure how much more space I have. I looked through the users manual but couldn't find anything.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

That smell could be dust on something inside that's heating up when the machine is powered on.  I've noticed a definite musty smell on some of the machines I've picked up where they looked fine from the outside but when opened they were caked in dust (that's when I got in the habit of opening the machines before powering them on).

As to the drive size, if you open up the hard drive to browse for files and use the icon view it should show total size at the top of the window.

 

[Elfen]

I agree with the EvilCapitolist. Sound like you need to open her up and vacuum it clean but take is slow and gentle. You do not want to hit anything too hard and break it.

The SE is the better machine for caps, their logic boards rarely need recapping. But the Analog Board is another matter, its the classic Mac weakest link. Since your video seems rock solid, it probably wont need a recapping there either, not for a while. But I would advise to get the recapping parts for it and soon, this way when it fails, you are ready to fix it.

Great to see a Mac rescued from the killer of all Macs - the Garbage Dump! Hope it will serve you well.

 

[Ravenarchon]

Thanks for the replies. I thought it might be dust. I'm a little wary of opening it up though. I've opened a few of my electronics to clean them from time to time, and I know how to do some basic stuff with my PC, like swap out parts from the tower, but I'm no expert, and I've been reading that the old Macs can be dangerous because their CRTs and power suplies can actually hold enough of a charge to kill or serious hurt. I know there are ways to discharge it, but I may not be quallified to mess with something like that.

Also would a compressed air can be okay on these older systems? Or would they be too harsh or something?

 

[bobo68]

Don't have much to add to what was said before. If you want me to speculate: the HDD (it was added afterwards, right?) might draw a bit too much power for the PSU of the SE. Do you know which type it is? But then it worked in this configuration for quite some time I guess.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

The danger of the CRTs is overblown, IMHO.  I used to be pretty wary of getting near the CRTs on them but a number of CRT/Analog board swaps in and I'm not dead yet.  Just make sure to avoid the red wire going into the CRT and you should be fine.  There are a bunch of threads on here about how to properly discharge the CRT and it's not as scary a process as it sounds, though it shouldn't be necessary to do so just to clean out the dust.

For one of the worst offenders (I couldn't see the components under all the dust!) I used a leaf blower and really kicked up a cloud (I wouldn't recommend that!), you'll be fine using a can of compressed air.

 

[Ravenarchon]

Yeah the HDD was already installed when I got it, and still has a bunch of files, programs, and games - including several docs people were apparently in the middle of. Hope no one needed these. I can remember my mind being blown as a teenager when I got this and found Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office, and Super Paint all instaled. As well as classic Sim City, though it's copy protected. I've never opened it before so I don't know what kind of HDD they installed, but considering it seems to have been used a fair amount before I got it, I would think it's okay?

Anyway, I'll pick up another can of compressed air and see about opening it (carefully) and spraying out the dust. Hopefully that will do the trick. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[360alaska]

I would venture to guess that the metallic smell is coming from the hard drive...