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Macintosh SE/30 logicboard recreation (thread revival)

Bolle

Well-known member
I recently finished testing on the final (so far) working revision of the SE/30 board.
Below is my initial post from before the site crash on how everything started:

Just like I promised when teasing everyone in the SE logicboard thread here we go with the build-log/information exchange/everything thread on the SE/30 logicboard replacement PCB.

The plan to redraw the available SE/30 schematics in Eagle has been in my head now for quite some time. It wasn't the task of having to redraw everything that kept me off, but I genuinely hate creating new devices in Eagle, so there goes that.
Luckily @GeekDot kept bugging me about it and thankfully took over the job of creating Eagle devices for all the custom Apple ICs on the SE/30 board.
This got me started and things quickly went down from there... a month ago I began copying the Apple schematics to Eagle. With most of the devices available this went through in a breeze.

Only two days later I was already taking measurements on one of my SE/30 boards to arrange components and get them as close as possible to the original


Another week in (not doing much else than drawing blue and red lines all day long) and still somewhat surprised that things went through so quickly I was basically done with a first revision:

1.thumb.png.026106ea747eb07b0a3460ebf988904e.png2.thumb.png.66a8a6ad87e6804a23b443bf86950d7b.png3.thumb.png.13b072700d2fbab9b47f9d6ecdfd4258.png4.thumb.png.730132abf6ae20148e805a4b837dcdc0.png


Most components found their place in exactly the same spot as on the original board - unless it was useful to move them around a little bit. The RTC for example to make some space for a CR2032 battery holder.
The battery is the only component I replaced with something that's not on the original. (yes I know, 72pin RAM, a single 16bit VRAM IC, accelerators, network cards, grayscale, and a PPC built right in - no)
Goal for me was to set a baseline and verify the Apple schematics are even correct and would result in a running board before thinking about modernization efforts.

One major advantage of re-doing the whole routing of the board is that everything can be made to fit into 4 layers, instead of the 6 layers the original board had. This is cutting costs dramatically.

So on it goes with ordering boards...

It took two weeks to turn this:

render.thumb.jpg.b0ac8870041843112ee274901746dae3.jpg

into that:

IMG_6170.thumb.jpg.bdceca554225bdac85fd3af5f7b5ef43.jpg

and a few hours later to find myself here:

IMG_6180.thumb.jpeg.fad3c7baa7705c2cba6a08ad2ced16d9.jpeg

Only a few components missing to get her powered up for the first time - I went without any RAM to see if it actually does anything at all before bothering to solder in SIMM sockets.
So a few more bits soldered down, a deep breath and the flip of a switch later:

IMG_6184.thumb.jpeg.ad6338dfa8255be049509e9d5f0435c8.jpeg

SUCCESS! It turns on at least and I got video. I seriously didn't expect it to even do that.
No chimes of any sort though - would have expected the slow chimes of death because there's no RAM.
At least the screen image is what is to be expected if there's no RAM installed which was a good thing.

I took a break here, got some food for dinner, took a shower and while doing the latter it struck me... to get sound you need the headphone port to be present, because of the switch that's in there and connects the internal speaker to the amplifier.
So back to the workbench... two little jumpers on the headphone ports solder pads and there we go - slow death chime was there indicating RAM failure.

It was time to go to bed at that point but I couldn't have slept anyways. I got a donor board, moved over the RAM muxes, control signal buffer and missing address line resistor arrays, installed 4 SIMM sockets.
I put in some RAM, hooked the board up again and couldn't believe my eyes when I was looking at that flashing question mark.

Well past bedtime a SCSI and floppy port went onto the board, back on the testbed with FloppyEmu and a hard drive connected...

IMG_6190.thumb.jpeg.4891fa69d719af988fba626d033ca2d9.jpeg

I sh*t you not the damn thing was booting from floppy - first board revision, rushed through copying the schematics, board layout, routing, putting it together... and it just boots.
Not a single jumper wire (spoiler: yet!)

Notice how there's no HD showing up? This is where rushing through things strikes back.
I copy-pasted the data lines to the SCSI IC from the nearby SCC - not noticing that they were sorted different in the original schematics. D24-31 on one and D31-24 on the other IC.
End result: the data lines to the SCSI controller were reversed. Nothing that can't be fixed though.
Popped the SCSI controller off again, cut the data lines and installed jumper wires.

IMG_6192.thumb.jpeg.933ee8a50d95e5f93401b93e61cdeded.jpeg

And that's how I ended up here:

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The board now has a few hours of runtime on it and seems to be rock solid so far.
Couldn't notice any differences from an original.


Left to do:

-test the serial ports (haven't done that yet because I totally never use serial ever)
-test external Floppy and SCSI ports
-chassis fitment
-runtime runtime runtime


The SCSI blooper has been corrected already for the upcoming rev 2 of the board.
A few SMD pads will be added here and there for the fuses, SCSI Term power diode - those were through hole only for simplicity.


And a few more images to drool over:

All things on the "left to do" list had been worked out before the site crash.
Just recently I found the time to finally order a batch of revision 2 boards with the SCSI blooper fixed and PLCC32 ROM sockets added.

Now just look at this beauty:

Logicboard_populated.jpg

Passed all tests, no bodge wires needed and already has been running 3 days straight now without any hiccups.

Board files, reverse engineered PAL files and BOM available on github:



Many thanks go to...
@joshc for putting together the BOM
@cheesestraws for supporting me with reverse engineering the PALs
@Siliconinsider for making those beautiful die shots of the GLUE https://www.siliconpr0n.org/archive/doku.php?id=bercovici:apple:344s0602-a - who's going to give recreating that one a go now? ;)
@Kai Robinson for putting together pick and place files (also found in the github)
and finally @GeekDot for bugging me into starting with this project in the first place and working on the (not yet working) in system ROM flashing software when using the PLCC32 ROM sockets (more on that later - probably)


I'll clean up the github over the next days and add some more descriptive information.
 

Bolle

Well-known member
Is there any chance to get one?

Like a fully assembled one? No, not from me. You'll need a SE/30 donor board, order your own PCBs from a manufacturer of your choice with the files from the github and then assemble it on your own.
 

robin-fo

Well-known member
Like a fully assembled one? No, not from me. You'll need a SE/30 donor board, order your own PCBs from a manufacturer of your choice with the files from the github and then assemble it on your own.
No, I mean just the board. I do have a spare SE/30 board and would be willing to populate it myself. I simply assumed you might have had to order a bunch of them from your manufacturer and now have some spare ones...
 

ktkm

Well-known member
Beautiful! And no batteries as far as the eye can see! I want a fully assembled one really bad, what do I need to do!?
 

joshc

Well-known member
Beautiful! And no batteries as far as the eye can see! I want a fully assembled one really bad, what do I need to do!?
The gerbers and BOM are in the GitHub repo that Bolle posted.

A place like https://jlcpcb.com/ can be used to order the PCB using the gerber files. The BOM tells you what parts you'll need to order. But you need a donor SE/30 board to pull the custom ICs from to build your board.

@joshc for putting together the BOM
Thank you, it was a fairly long project doing that and I hope it proves useful for people. I will make further updates to it to make it even easier to use.

Now just look at this beauty:
It certainly is beautiful, everything needs to be purple from now on! :D
 

max1zzz

Well-known member
Ooh very pretty :)
Kinda wish I hadn't just sent off a order to JLCPCB, Guess i'll have to add some of these to my next order :)
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
It certainly is beautiful, everything needs to be purple from now on!
Black shows off the traces and silk screen layer to better effect. Neutral black would also tie together BolleWerke-BLUE in PDS, PurpleSIMM therin and BMOW/dougg3 RED in the ROM Slot.
 

CC_333

Well-known member
Oooo!

I really want one of these, but I don't know how to justify it because I have a fully functional original that I'm happy with.

Now I feel like I have to intentionally find a battery-bombed board so I can fix it with one of these new ones!

c
 

Daniël

Well-known member
Fantastic work! I have a couple of grotty SE/30 boards, so a couple of these are in my future. That luscious purple is probably the pick for me, will go nicely with the blue BolleMac Carrera040 and PDS passthrough adapter :)
 

GeekDot

Well-known member
[...] and finally @GeekDot for bugging me into starting with this project in the first place and working on the (not yet working) in system ROM flashing software when using the PLCC32 ROM sockets (more on that later - probably)
Oh dang, you're right... need to resume that. I dived way too deep into the Apple IIgs universe.
So I need to populate my (rev.1) soon to have an "in vivo" test-bench instead those dreaded 'try now' sessions ;)

Also I noticed that the orientation of the diodes D4-D19 is wrong in the provided CPL file (at least for the JLC lib) - They're all at 0° and need to be at 270°. Here's a quick look (I corrected D14/D16 as an example):

Screenshot 2021-11-14 172705.jpg

...and for those, seriously considering to have that beauty made and use their SMT service (I recommend the back-side): It'll be $120US (~105€) plus shipping o_O Just sayin'

Beyond that: Love you, Bolle! Always did! 😆
 

Daniël

Well-known member
I was looking at adding to a JLCPCB order, and noticed it asked me for the layer order (which layer is the top layer, which on the top-middle layer, which the bottom-middle layer, which the bottom layer). I think I know what files should be picked, but I figured I ask here what should be picked there, so others with the same question can read it here :)
 

GeekDot

Well-known member
I was looking at adding to a JLCPCB order, and noticed it asked me for the layer order (which layer is the top layer, which on the top-middle layer, which the bottom-middle layer, which the bottom layer). I think I know what files should be picked, but I figured I ask here what should be picked there, so others with the same question can read it here :)
The order of the layers is automatically defined by the gerber files - so it seems that something went wrong during your order process (create a zip file from the "board files" folder and upload that).
But as long as the top- and bottom-layers are on the outside, everything else belongs into the esoteric field of discussion (at least for 4 layer designs).

Also the provided BOM/CPL files are meant for the back-side only.
NB: If you choose their SMT service you can only choose green as PCB color! No fancy purple ;)
 

Daniël

Well-known member
The order of the layers is automatically defined by the gerber files - so it seems that something went wrong during your order process (create a zip file from the "board files" folder and upload that).

I downloaded the entire GitHub as a ZIP, then removed all files and folders inside other than the board files folder. Just to be sure, I downloaded the GitHub again, but this time extracted the board files folder and rezipped that. I still get asked for the layer stackup, so I'm not sure if this is required to be filled in? I've not ordered boards more than two layers before, so this might be more obvious for others.

stackup.png
 
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