Hello, first post, lot's of great information here thanks. I have 4x SE-30s that were used in my business in the mid-late 80's that have been in storage for 30+ years. Decided to get them cleaned up and running with goal being to check there is no residual data on the HDs before selling them all off.
I just finished a main board recap plus floppy drive clean & lube on first unit and it initially boots with question mark. If I insert a system floppy I get smiley face and the machine will read floppy and operate but then cannot locate a hard drive. The red LED on front panel of machine is blinking most of the time. I'm guessing the 35+ year old HD is toast but thought to ask here in case there is some simple issue to check. It was surprisingly clean inside and battery was fully intact (vague memory of proactively changing the batteries in all the machines every few years) Since I have three more of them that will get opened up I can possibly do some parts swapping to isolate issue, but they are all at my storage unit and inconvenient to access.
Couple questions for the nice folks here:
The floppy drive service seems to be fine and I'm guessing if the recap was faulty the machine would not operate from the floppy drive at all. Is there a scenario where my cap installation might yield a partially functioning machine that recognizes the floppy but not the hard drive? Have double checked ribbon connector seating but not cable itself. (The floppy set I have here is system 6 and I'm pretty sure all the machines were on 7 in case that matters, can dig through the big box of stuff at storage unit at some point)
I had to repair a lifted pad on C6. Triple checked continuity from the pad and am confident it's fixed, but could my issue derive from this spot?
Thanks for any ideas.
Couple shots of the screen messages while running off floppy below.


I just finished a main board recap plus floppy drive clean & lube on first unit and it initially boots with question mark. If I insert a system floppy I get smiley face and the machine will read floppy and operate but then cannot locate a hard drive. The red LED on front panel of machine is blinking most of the time. I'm guessing the 35+ year old HD is toast but thought to ask here in case there is some simple issue to check. It was surprisingly clean inside and battery was fully intact (vague memory of proactively changing the batteries in all the machines every few years) Since I have three more of them that will get opened up I can possibly do some parts swapping to isolate issue, but they are all at my storage unit and inconvenient to access.
Couple questions for the nice folks here:
The floppy drive service seems to be fine and I'm guessing if the recap was faulty the machine would not operate from the floppy drive at all. Is there a scenario where my cap installation might yield a partially functioning machine that recognizes the floppy but not the hard drive? Have double checked ribbon connector seating but not cable itself. (The floppy set I have here is system 6 and I'm pretty sure all the machines were on 7 in case that matters, can dig through the big box of stuff at storage unit at some point)
I had to repair a lifted pad on C6. Triple checked continuity from the pad and am confident it's fixed, but could my issue derive from this spot?
Thanks for any ideas.
Couple shots of the screen messages while running off floppy below.

