Diagnosing my SE/30

[srieck]

Just got an "as is" on eBay....Here are the issues:

When I turn on the power switch, I get no startup chime (not sure why? No sound?) but the CRT comes on displaying the "?" disk (looking for a valid drive)...

Assuming the hard drive is dead, I put several System 6 and 7 disk tools floppies into the floppy drive which seems to be mechanically fine...The drive ejects every disk displaying the floppy "X" icon.

Thanks for any ideas ?

 

[Mk.558]

Sounds a lot like my SE/30 once I got a replacment motherboard for it.

Replace all capacitors on the board. You can do radial type and have an easier time with the 47uF and 1uF capacitors, or you can contact "trag" and use SMTs if you're a pro solderist.

Replace the floppy disk drive.

Get a network RJ45 card. Floppy drives become anquitated once you have an Ethernet connection to speed things up.

I have more info that can help.

 

[Unknown_K]

Open it up and see if everything is connected (speaker wire, HD cable, floppy cable). Is the battery ok?

No sound could be from a disconnected speaker cable or bad capacitors.

Try booting from an external HD (with terminator) if you have one and another machine to set it up.

 

[phreakout]

I too agree with Mk.558 and Unknown_K on this. Usually bad capacitors can be a common issue, but check the easy obvious things before going any further. Also, when you get System 6 or 7 booted up, check the volume level in the Control Panel. Sometimes the previous user/owner might have muted it for whatever reason.

Keep in mind that the logic board (motherboard) is getting over 20 years old and the capacitors do wear out. The common solution is to replace them, or as we call it on the forums, a "recapping". You just have to replace the ones on top of the board; they will be labeled C1 through C13.

Here is a helpful website for diagnosing and repair of the Mac SE/30:

http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~shamada/fullmac/repairEng.html

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[srieck]

cleaned out the floppy drive with Qtips and alcohol and it booted right up from disk tools....Still no sound externally but I hear a very faint "simple beep" alert sound (when I click on it in the sound control panel which I added to the disk tools floppy) coming out of the headphone jack.

Any ideas what that might imply?

No sign of life from the scsi drive but I was happy to see it had 32mb ram installed!

 

[gubbish]

I also have an SE/30 with no sound. It also had the beginnings of simasimac - when started after being off for a while, it would come up with horizontal stripes and no bong. But after trying a couple of times it would start properly - but still no sound.

In my case I recapped everything and that fixed the simasimac stripes but I still have no sound. But sound does work from the headphone jack, so I don't know what that means.

Some of the caps on the board are located very close to the sound chip, so recapping is definitely a good plan. I saw quite a bit of gunk that had leaked out of the caps onto the sound chip and some blue-green stuff had formed on some of the pins of the chip. Cleaning the board off and recapping would be a good start.

 

[Unknown_K]

If there was anything leaking you should have cleaned it off before recapping.

 

[gubbish]

Did that a couple of times, but the simasimac kept happening, so decided to go through with the recapping. Got rid of the substance on the board though, which I'm sure was a good thing.

 

[phreakout]

srieck,

If your SCSI hard drive is not showing up, it could be either drive stiction, improper SCSI termination, bad data cable, bad SCSI controller chip, System Folder isn't blessed or the jumpers on the drive are not set properly. Assuming the latter is properly set, let's start with the first possibility in the list.

Drive stiction happens when the layer of lubrication covering the Mylar platter of the disk has bonded with the read/write head, freezing it in its place. When you let your retro Mac sit for long periods of time unused or powered on, this bonding can occur. The easiest solution would be to take the drive out of the case, hold it in your hand (palm facing up) and quickly rotate horizontally (a quick flick of the wrist) the drive a couple times until free. Movement should be almost as if you were to spin a basketball on your index finger, with how you move the drive in your hand. Once done, place the drive back in place, reconnect the cables and power up your Mac. It should start booting.

If it still doesn't boot, try checking to see that the "termination enable" jumper is in place on the bottom of the drive. If the jumper is in place but still won't boot, try a different data cable. If still no luck, the System folder for the OS isn't "blessed" or may be corrupt.

To bless the System folder, simply insert the Disk Tools floppy of System 6 or 7 into the floppy drive and restart your Mac. Wait for it to load. If the icon for your hard drive shows up on the desktop, go ahead and double-click to open the drive up. You'll see the System folder in the list. Open up the System folder, then close it again. The System folder should now be blessed. Restart your Mac without the floppy and see if it boots off the hard drive.

If you're still not having any luck, then you'll need to double-check the jumper settings on the hard drive. Simply pull the drive back out and take notes of the make and model number of hard drive; you might need to Google it later. Chances are the company that created that drive is still in business or was acquired by one of the current popular brand companies. Seagate did swallow up Maxtor, Quantum and Conner brand hard drives, so go to Seagate for any old data sheets regarding your hard drive jumper settings. The same applies to other brands as well.

If you've double-checked the jumper settings but still can't get the drive to work, it could be the SCSI controller chip. On the SE/30, it is labeled UI12. It is a 53C80 square 44-pin PLCC chip. The symptom of a bad SCSI controller chip is when turning on the power of the SE/30, the monitor shows the bright rasters and an arrow pointer appears on the left upper corner. But the monitor doesn't show a smile Mac and the SE/30 doesn't start up. At this point, you'd just have to replace the chip; in my opinion, unless you know how to do so, don't even try.

Good luck and let us know what you find.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 

[srieck]

Got the board out and swapped the scsi drive - All went well but here are a few specifics:

1] HD no longer an issue, the old one was just dead. New HD working perfectly.\

2] Cleaned and examined the board. It looked suprisingly good to me eyes. I saw no evidence of leaking or popped caps though I understand that isn't conclusive.

3] Battery was dead so I tossed it. I'll get a new one.

4] Still no sound, or I should say no speaker sound and very very faint sound from the headphone jack...It was indicated above that a faulty headphone jack could cause exactly these symptoms or did I read that right? If so, why would this be ?

5] Weird RAM usage....total RAM = 32mb but the system software itself (as shown in the "about this macintosh" window is supposedly using over 25mb! I have system 6.08 installed so that reading is crazy....I assume this might indicate a problem with the RAM itself?

 

[Unknown_K]

OS 6 is 24 bit (8MB max) so it won't work with more RAM unless you get MODE32 software (free on Apples website) for 32bit memory (128MB can be used on a SE/30).

 

[srieck]

That's a relief...thanks I'll install system7 and mode 32.

 

[srieck]

That worked...now the only issue is the sound.

 

[H3NRY]

Most common "no Sound" is a bad cap between the Sony sound chip and the speaker. Instead of 10 or 100 MFD, at this age, they commonly measure <1 MFD. An oxidized contact on the headphone jack is possible, but I haven't seen that myself. Capacitors which have lost most of their capacity also do a lousy job of filtering the power supplies, leading to flaky operation, mystery errors, etc.

After I recapped my SE30, I took the "after" snapshot to document my work, and looking at the picture in iPhoto, there was an old cap I'd missed! 8-o

 

[Mk.558]

4] Still no sound, or I should say no speaker sound and very very faint sound from the headphone jack...It was indicated above that a faulty headphone jack could cause exactly these symptoms or did I read that right? If so, why would this be ?

5] Weird RAM usage....total RAM = 32mb but the system software itself (as shown in the "about this macintosh" window is supposedly using over 25mb! I have system 6.08 installed so that reading is crazy....I assume this might indicate a problem with the RAM itself?

Compare your measurements with mine here: http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/Starofire/Random/2d9cbc05.jpg

4) I can also offload a copy of the electrical schematics if you need them. Bad capaciters are the usual culprit for low sound output. (The SE/30 has stereo sound output jack, and a mono speaker)

5) See below:

OS 6 is 24 bit (8MB max) so it won't work with more RAM unless you get MODE32 software (free on Apples website) for 32bit memory (128MB can be used on a SE/30).

MODE32 requires System 7 or higher. To use 32-bit addressing on System 6 you need Optima. http://www.euronet.nl/users/mvdk/Tips_and_tricks.html

Be advised most if not nearly all System 6 software is 16 bit and not 32 bit. Most System 7 is 32 bit clean, so you may have compatibility conflicts. To resolve this, use something like System 7.1. If you use System 7.5, make sure to use MODE32 v.7.5, not the earlier version of MODE32.

If you have 32MB like I have, you usually only use about 6MB total, so that's more than enough for a nice 12-20MB RAM Disk to speed things up.