SE/30 ... finally!

[tecneeq]

After looking for almost two decades, i found a SE/30. No upgrades, 8MB ram, 40MB harddisk, fair appearance, works fine. Didn't open it yet.

Sadly, i had to fork over 225€, dude was cold as stone and thought he could easily get 700€ because he saw it on Ebay.
Anyway, my 68k collection is complete, amongst them:

• Quadra 700
• Quadra 650
• LC475
• SE/30

I know there are a lot more 68k machines, and i have some of them, but i could be happy and grow old with that list (I'm 48 already, so maybe 20 to 30 more years).

I'll sell or gift the rest to another collector.

 

[mgmac]

very beautiful machine I like them

 

[Durosity]

Didn't open it yet.

I’d get on that as soon as possible. One to remove the clock battery, and also to inspect for any corrosion from leaking caps that will need to be replaced post haste.. else that €225 will have bought you an expensive paperweight!

 

[tecneeq]

It almost seems as if i like expensive paperweights, i have so many.
Will order a round of fresh caps later. I know the sound doesn't work, that means some caps have gone up already.
Also, slight jitter in the CRT image isn't a good sign either.
The OS seems to have signs of decay as well, for example, repeatable crashes when you close the last finder window.
Also some esoteric biorythm software which told me that tomorrow is a good day to make financial decisions.

Also, my Pixel 6 pro can't latch on the 50hz power distribution net.

Looks fine cosmetically, yellowing is smooth and acceptable.

 

[Phipli]

It almost seems as if i like expensive paperweights, i have so many.
Will order a round of fresh caps later. I know the sound doesn't work, that means some caps have gone up already.
Also, slight jitter in the CRT image isn't a good sign either.
The OS seems to have signs of decay as well, for example, repeatable crashes when you close the last finder window.
Also some esoteric biorythm software which told me that tomorrow is a good day to make financial decisions.

Also, my Pixel 6 pro can't latch on the 50hz power distribution net.
View attachment 47671
Looks fine cosmetically, yellowing is smooth and acceptable.

If you turn the brightness down (under the Apple logo on the front) phones cope with taking photos better. Also rotate your camera 90 degrees so the refresh is aligned with the pixel rows in the camera

 

[tecneeq]

Cheers, i'll give this a try later and report back.

 

[Phipli]

Cheers, i'll give this a try later and report back.

Its been working for me

Good luck.

 

[tecneeq]

Are you in 50 or 60Hz land?
I have read on the patent Google filed in 2013 about auto detecting CRT banding, and it seems the lower the frequency, the worse the algorithm is. Add to that the slight jitter you can see in CRTs that old and the algorithm can't latch on.
Of course there are no user configurable settings any more, like they where before that auto crap became prolific.
anyway, haven't tested it yet, will do so later.

 

[joshc]

I use ProCam on iPhone to capture CRTs as it allows me to adjust the camera settings to compensate. I'm sure there's a third party camera app for Android that will do it too.

 

[cheesestraws]

Unless I'm missing something, there's no difference in display refresh rate on compacts between 50Hz and 60Hz regions. On SE (/30) PSUs, all the outputs are DC, nothing that drives anything in the machine reflects the power grid. If you are seeing variance between 50 and 60Hz power grids on a machine, then the PSU in that machine is knackered.

 

[Phipli]

Are you in 50 or 60Hz land?
I have read on the patent Google filed in 2013 about auto detecting CRT banding, and it seems the lower the frequency, the worse the algorithm is. Add to that the slight jitter you can see in CRTs that old and the algorithm can't latch on.
Of course there are no user configurable settings any more, like they where before that auto crap became prolific.
anyway, haven't tested it yet, will do so later.

Like cheesey says, the mains frequency doesn't impact screen refresh rate on old macs. Probably a good thing

 

[tecneeq]

Was buying some caps just now, stuff got expensive, ordered parts for 5 or 6 macs, only the logic boards:


82,59€ for a bunch of caps!
I may have to go panhandling for a bit to be able to afford recapping my analog sections.

Unless I'm missing something, there's no difference in display refresh rate on compacts between 50Hz and 60Hz regions.

I see. Well, then i suspect the algorithm not doing it's job is caused by the jittering of the CRT picture.

I use ProCam on iPhone to capture CRTs as it allows me to adjust the camera settings

Will try another app.

 

[tecneeq]

Will give it another try tomorrow. He is sleeping in the guest room for now.

 

[Juror22]

You are right to let sleeping Macs lie,
...they won't tell the truth if you wake them anyway.

 

[tecneeq]

...they won't tell the truth if you wake them anyway.

O-ok.

So i opened the SE/30:

• Plenty of dust.
• Battery was still fine, but obviously flat! Date is from 1989. Couldn't find the fresh ones i bought in April.
  
• Scrubbed the board with water and methanol, to neutralize the cap liquids. Some corrosion was visible. Not recapping now, because I'm out of ceramics, order is incoming.
• Got into my bag of ram, pulled out 6x 4MB and 2x 2MB, hopefully they get accepted. Bank A,B,C get 4MB modules, C gets 2MB modules.
• Found a Mac Con ethernet card, sadly coax, means i have to run a coax to UTP adapter.
• I might use the Rodime Systems Cobra 70e as a base for this SE/30. Hope it still runs.
• Once the board is dry and i found the batteries, I'll reassemble.

 

[Phipli]

• Battery was still fine, but obviously flat! Date is from 1989.

Excellent news!

• Scrubbed the board with water and methanol, to neutralize the cap liquids.

In this case your just cleaning, not neutralising.

• Got into my bag of ram, pulled out 6x 4MB and 2x 2MB, hopefully they get accepted. Bank A,B,C get 4MB modules, C gets 2MB modules.

I'm slightly confused... the SE/30 just has two banks of RAM. I think you'll need two sets of 4 matching simms, not 6 and 2. So 4x 4MB and 4x 2MB. Or just use 4 of your 4MB and leave the other bank empty.

Good luck. Share a picture once you have it running Glider (or before).

 

[tecneeq]

I'm slightly confused... the SE/30 just has two banks of RAM. I think you'll need two sets of 4 matching simms, not 6 and 2. So 4x 4MB and 4x 2MB. Or just use 4 of your 4MB and leave the other bank empty.

Makes sense.
However, as it turns out, those 4x 2MB are just 4x 256kB, so now i have 17.408K. Once i find my batteries, i'll open the SE/30 again and put in 4x 1MB from before. I think i'll also try just 2x 4MB, as well as 2x 4MB + 2x 1MB n the second bank, maybe it works.

I'm sure there's a third party camera app for Android that will do it too.

I used Librecamera, it has the same problem.
I tried with a Samsung S7+ tablet, so it's something in the Pixel 6 Pro software:

With some more twisting and turning i could manage this with the Pixel:

Doesn't matter, I'll leave it at that for now.

Can't use the Mac Con card, seems a capacitor is broken, i'll start another thread to find out if i can replace it and what value it needs to have:

Shame really.

Right now i'm looking for my Zip drive to get a fresh MacOS onto the disk. The one that came with it has all kinds of problems.

 

[Phipli]

Makes sense.
However, as it turns out, those 4x 2MB are just 4x 256kB, so now i have 17.408K. Once i find my batteries, i'll open the SE/30 again and put in 4x 1MB from before. I think i'll also try just 2x 4MB, as well as 2x 4MB + 2x 1MB n the second bank, maybe it works.

You need to fill each bank of 4 with the same size simms. Two in each wont play ball sadly

The RAM is wired so that the four simms are presented on the 32bit bus. Putting two simms in would mean you only had 16bits attached to your 32bit bus and you'd have a very confused processor that would save 32bit variables to memory and only get half of it back.

More specifically, it would fail the memory test at boot and Sadmac.

 

[tecneeq]

Shame, then i can't do better than 4x 1MB.

Got the Zip connected, did a fresh installation, everything is peachy.
Got the Rodime connected, found some old stuff from 1992, backing it up now (minus the personal stuff).

It was a good day.

 

[tecneeq]

Getting closer to a nice setup:

• Finally i found the fresh batteries, so I'm opening the SE/30 again.
• I also pulled 4x 4MB ram out of an IIsi, that means i should end up with 32MB, enough to give A/UX and NetBSD a chance.
• While at it, i printed an internal frame for a SCSI2SD, which i also pulled out of the IIsi.