SE/30 Battery Bomb Advice

[inomine]

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.

 

[alectrona2988]

seems like theres also some severe cap leakage; this is definitely something you'd want to use for a reloaded board. the muxes are 100% going to be fried, you'll have to replace them. PALs seem to be fine, video ROM may or may not work, the 68030 also might not work, ADB chip is likely shot, but there are salvageable components. it will be quite expensive to fix... and if you think its too much i'd practice your skills first by working on something worthless like an old DVD player or a cheap OEM motherboard.
also if you do plan on selling the board, i may be interested, but i'm not sure. i feel bad for ya though, these SE/30s are not easy to find in working condition...

 

[inomine]

Yeah, the SE/30s are as rare as hens teeth. And fetch a mighty price is known condition.

The board I could do, but if it turns out that the analogue board needs doing, and the flyback is done, then, I just won't manage to get parts :/

 

[alectrona2988]

only reason i have one is because a guy i knew on discord had to clear out his inventory and he had an SE/30 that i bought for the cost of shipping, complete with a rasterops colorboard 264. thats never gonna happen again because it simply won't happen more than once in this day and age.

 

[halkyardo]

The analogue board and power supply are common to the SE, so if they do turn out to be bad, that's a cheaper option to use as a parts donor.

Building a reloaded board isn't a task to be taken lightly (or cheaply), but if you can solder and have decent electronics troubleshooting skills (or at least don't mind learning as you go) there's no reason not to give it a try.

 

[chiptripper]

Someone was recently selling Reloaded PCBs with the passives pre-soldered on the Trading Post. This board looks like a good candidate for a rebuild. You’ll need a good iron and probably some ChipQuik to desolder everything.

 

[alectrona2988]

you can order the boards with the bottom side passives from JLCPCB with the pick and place files, though you might need to flip the 3 pin diodes near where the ram slot holes are. also you might need to change some of the parts since they don't always have the stock for some parts.

 

[CompactManiac]

Building a reloaded board isn't a task to be taken lightly (or cheaply)

Do you know roughly what sort of price is involved doing it yourself buying the PCB & components and then re-using any custom components that can only be got from an existing donor board?

Do you need to buy a minimum of so many PCBs for the replacement logic board?

 

[davewongillies]

Do you need to buy a minimum of so many PCBs for the replacement logic board

It's a minimum of 5 pcbs per order