I am not the first, and likely not the last. I took a gamble on eBay and purchased an SE/30 which was not in a working state.
Opening it up revealed that the battery had a bad enough leak that both it and the holder had gone walkies off the PCB and was flapping around in the case. All the electrolytics have let out their magic sauce. The short version is that the board looked toast, I cleaned it up after this photo, but it's clear that there are some components that are complete gone, SOPs, RTC oscillator, etc. There are resistor packs and muxes that have lost legs. Most of the very custom stuff, especially the GLUE, has some green on it, but looks salvageable.
I have enough skills with electronics to do a rebuild on a new PCB, although with no one doing a group buy, it won't be quick, or particularly cheap.
Even then I'm left with a chasis that I don't know if it works. The CRT looks clean, I can see a glow on the neck of it. A non contact voltage probe shows nothing near the flyback lead. So there's some chance it is cooked, although maybe its not. Either way, when I power it up without the system board, I feel no static, and I see nothing when I twiddle the brightness adjustment. And I don't have a donor machine that I can use for easy debugging. Maybe there are just some easy fixes on the analogue board.
The case is very nice, apart from the expected electrolyte damage to the internal shield coating.
So, what should I do? Is this too much of a fixer upper to do for for a first time? Should I just part it out? Or sell it to someone with more experience and just move on to another Mac. I wanted a project, but I'll admit that this one has probably got too much for me to tackle.
Please, lend me your wisdom.
Opening it up revealed that the battery had a bad enough leak that both it and the holder had gone walkies off the PCB and was flapping around in the case. All the electrolytics have let out their magic sauce. The short version is that the board looked toast, I cleaned it up after this photo, but it's clear that there are some components that are complete gone, SOPs, RTC oscillator, etc. There are resistor packs and muxes that have lost legs. Most of the very custom stuff, especially the GLUE, has some green on it, but looks salvageable.
I have enough skills with electronics to do a rebuild on a new PCB, although with no one doing a group buy, it won't be quick, or particularly cheap.
Even then I'm left with a chasis that I don't know if it works. The CRT looks clean, I can see a glow on the neck of it. A non contact voltage probe shows nothing near the flyback lead. So there's some chance it is cooked, although maybe its not. Either way, when I power it up without the system board, I feel no static, and I see nothing when I twiddle the brightness adjustment. And I don't have a donor machine that I can use for easy debugging. Maybe there are just some easy fixes on the analogue board.
The case is very nice, apart from the expected electrolyte damage to the internal shield coating.
So, what should I do? Is this too much of a fixer upper to do for for a first time? Should I just part it out? Or sell it to someone with more experience and just move on to another Mac. I wanted a project, but I'll admit that this one has probably got too much for me to tackle.
Please, lend me your wisdom.