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Notes on refurbishing a SE/30

wileyc

Member
I got ahold of a non-functional SE/30 about a month ago, and decided that repairing it would be my isolation project.

It's operational now.  Apart from the usual cracked solder joints on the analog board, and leaking caps on the logic board (both of which I took care of before I even thought of trying to turn it on) ...

... the PSU capacitors had leaked.  Badly.  About two volts on the +5VDC rail, nine volts on +12VDC, nothing on -12VDC.  So the PSU got itself recapped.  It's not the Sony unit, and I couldn't find a capacitor list for this one (it has an Apple label), so I list them here to help others:

  • 620µF@400V (the big hurking capacitor in the middle)
  • 10µF@25V x6 (C101 C102 C304 C408 C402)
  • 22µF@26V (C404)
  • 100µF@25V x2 (C401 C412)
  • 4700µF@10V (C308)
  • 1000µF@25V (C305)
  • 1000µF@16V x3 (C307 C310 C309)
  • 470µF@16V x3 (C312 C306 C311)



The 620µF seems to be rather rare -- I wasn't able to find anything close to that in Akihabara, so I have both 560 and a 680 capacitors inbound from Marutsu.  Replacing the rest of the capacitors brought the power rail voltage back within specifications.  That 620 will be replaced.

The PSU switch is pretty dodgy.  It'll work perhaps five tries out of six.  A replacement for that is inbound as well -- it's a Arcol H8650VBAAC, although I think a Bulgin H8650VBBB will also work.

The leaked capacitors in the PSU toasted the reset and diag buttons.  I wasn't able to find any 12mm 90-degree tactile switches, but I found that the 90-degree mount can be separate from the switch itself.  A 10mm tactile switch (I used NKK JB15HFBP2) will work, just bend the top legs around the top of the mount to hold it in place.

On-board sound didn't work, although powered speakers plugged into the jack did work fine.  The capacitor leaks fried the 3.5mm jack.  Replacing that with a Marushin MJ-354W solved that problem.

At this point, everything appears to work.  I re-tapped the case bolt holes for M4 and interior cage bolt holes for M3 because it's sort of hard to find non-metric bolts out here.

Outstanding issue: the screen geometry is correct with the slight exception of the upper left corner.  It's deformed just a tad -- if you hold a straight-edge against the screen parallel to the bottom of the menu bar, the left centimeter or so is down about half a centimeter.  Will adjusting those deformation magnets around the CRT fix this?

Trivia: I mentioned that I was doing this to a guy I used to work for when I was at the fruit company, saying that I was using his DiskCopy 6.x to mount the images.  He said that there's an easter egg or two in the utility.  Go to "About", and click on his name while holding down command and option-command.  I wasn't able to reliably trigger the eggs -- they'll only show up after several rapid clicks, and they disappear as soon as they see another click, so all I was able to see was "developed by" and "special aloha to", no name list.  Perhaps someone out there can figure out the correct procedure to get at these :)

 
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wileyc

Member
Update: use a 680µF/400V capacitor to replace the 620.  The 560 doesn't smooth the line voltage out enough -- the screen will wobble after things warm up a bit.  (the old capacitor actually measured at around 670 FWIW)

Mouser part number 5985-381-400V680 works fine.  The original is spade terminal, and the replacement is snap-in.  I straightened the leads with pliers and it fit into the slots fine.

Apart from a set of metal-armed SIMM sockets to replace the cracked originals, and a ROMinator-II, the SE/30 is stable and ready to be used as my daily fun-ride.

 
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