SE FDHD w/20HD SCSI issue

[Buickguy]

I've got an old SE FDHD with a problem. I had set it up for my 10 yr old nephew with system 6.0.8 and a copy of MOTU Performer 2.2 to get him started with keyboards and midi. It was running well untill Saturday when I fired it up to add some sequencesfor him. The HD seemd to stop responding so I restarted and got the Startup floppy qiestion mark. Starting up on a system floppy with HD steup revealed no scsi device available. My first thought was drive stiction failure but further investigation showed the the drive was spinning. I opened it up and found the pram battery (battery dated 10-89) had leaked and capacitor CR 33uF 16v had become detached from the motherboard. :-/

In the meantime, I'm hooking up the nephew with a Q605 chipped up to 33mhz and the 25mhz LC040 swapped out with a 33mhz full 040 and secondary CPU heatsink/cooling fan.

So my question is this, Has anyone had any experience/luck with replacing this cap and will it's replacement solve the issue? I do have an Se with 800k floppy and 20 meg HD in reserve so would I be better off changing the roms and swm then using that motherboard? I'm fairly comfortable with the soldering pencil and all even though its been a few years.

 

[JRL]

A full cap replacement (as well as a good rubbing alcohol scrub where the battery leaked and a new battery as well) should do the trick. In turn, the SE FDHD will last for a very long time.

 

[Buickguy]

Thanks JRL.

I took your advice and did the alcohol wash and pram battery replacement.

I was able, with the help of a friend, to locate a cap with the value I needed. I didn't swap out all the caps, just the bad one. The results are the SE FDHD is booting, happy and running system 6.0.8 again and the sequencences my nephew did in PERFORMER 2.2 are available again. I did make a backup of all essential data. :b&w:

 

[Unknown_K]

You are better off redoing them all at once (not that many to do). Hopefully none of the other onces leak and kill the motherboard.