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The QUEST for a Mac SE SuperDrive (FDHD)

CYB3RBYTE

Well-known member
Since this last June, I’ve been messing around with classic macs in my spare time. I started with PowerPC Macs back in 2010 and haven’t looked back. From those days I still have a maxed out 1.25GHZ 17” iMac.

Back in June I picked up two classic macs for $50. They came with an ADB keyboard and mouse, ethernet adapter (SCSI), and some system floppies (mixed 7.1 installs). The first mac, a Classic, was battery bombed and unsavable logic board wise, however the analog board, floppy drive, HD, and CRT were all in good shape. The second Mac was an SE, an original 86’ machine with two 800k drives, and it had a dead power supply.

I fell more in love with the SE and it’s look, and as it turns out, it was my dad’s first mac back in the day. It became kind of sentimental to me and I was determined to revive It. I replaced all the caps in the power supply, only to find it still didn’t work. I then got a replacement power supply off eBay, which brought the machine back to life! It booted and was running on a system 7.1 install just fine.

However, this SE had RAM issues, and I even posted about it before the database failure. It would always boot, but it always had vertical jailbars. I tried everything I could to get them to go away, replacing the resistor to change RAM capacity, different RAM, etc. It just wasn’t working out. The machine also had several cosmetic issues, so I began the quest for a nice SE.

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CYB3RBYTE

Well-known member
Now that SE had a single 800k drive when I found it, someone had taken out the second drive, which was fine for me because I wanted to install a hard disk anyways. I really wanted the ability to do 1.44MB disks though, because I didn’t have a bridge mac to write 800k floppies.

After being on the hunt for several months, and buying an SE/30 that was again Battery bombed an unsalvagable (it’s since gone to a new home), I finally found an SE SuperDrive model! From what I understand this was a rebrand from the FDHD model towards the end of the SE’s production run.

Triaging it initially revealed that it booted just fine, but the floppy drive was non-functional, ARG!! It did however have a Mini-Scribe hard drive, and I love those because of all the fun noises they make. It otherwise worked as normal and had 4MB of RAM.

I opened it to take a better look at the components, and found the floppy drive head had fallen off! AHHH!

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Taking a further look inside it, it also contained a maxell BOMB! It’s a good thing we got to it just in time! I replaced it with a fresh EBL as soon as I could.

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But it booted and ran perfectly otherwise! No display burn in, nice and bright! I was running it off of my blueSCSI at this point connected externally. (side note, for anyone concerned, I do have an ESD strap on while working on these, I didn’t have any other workspace than the carpet due to my Mac Pro being setup there)

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CYB3RBYTE

Well-known member
Now like I said, not having the floppy drive functioning was super frustrating, it was basically the reason I bought this particular machine. I also thought that I was going to have to source another replacement drive. I posted in the trading post about needing a floppy drive, and another forum member was kind enough to send me a parts drive he had, complete, but with a dead motor board.

But then I remembered, my battery bombed classic! I had saved the drive from it in my parts stash, and cleaned it as well at that time. I got it connected, and it worked! But it wouldn’t eject. So I took the eject motor off, cleaned the gears, but still no dice. I replaced the eject motor with the one from the parts drive I was sent, and WALLAH!

I blew all the boards out with compressed air (carefully) and cleaned the case to make it nice. After putting it all back together, it looks pretty good. A number of months (and dollars) later, I finally have my white (off-beige) whale!

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cheesestraws

Well-known member
Nicely done! I really like the 'Superdrive' cases for some reason; I don't think we got them over here (?), or at least I've only seen FDHD labelled cases...
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Very nice, indeed. Mine is also a "SuperDrive" case model, I like it very much. One thing I would recommend doing is relubricating the entire drive with some EM-30L grease, the closest thing available to the original thing. Cleaning out the old grease and relubricating is probably the most important thing with these.

By the way regarding your other SE, I vaguely remember someone else here having a similar issue, and someone knew the fix - it has to do with I believe a bad trace to a video component, which caused a line every so often in the video. Maybe that person will see this and chime in.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Well, guess what? I was perusing one of my Mac help books while on my COVID quarantine here, and it appears that what would cause the lines you see is a bad U1 IC on the SE analog board (or a trace to/from it might be bad). Take a look at that area and see what you find.
 

CYB3RBYTE

Well-known member
Well, guess what? I was perusing one of my Mac help books while on my COVID quarantine here, and it appears that what would cause the lines you see is a bad U1 IC on the SE analog board (or a trace to/from it might be bad). Take a look at that area and see what you find.
I will definitely do that. That SE will end up becoming my backup or going to a new home. What signs would I be looking for to know it's bad? Scope activity? Bad solder joint?

Already re-greased the drive while it was in my parts stash :). I found Adrian Black's video on it during messing around with the classic and did that to all my machines I could at the time.
 

CYB3RBYTE

Well-known member
@CYB3RBYTE There's a SE/30 FDHD on eBay, here is the link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304190446251?hash=item46d329daab:g:idcAAOSwD4dhbY50

As for the Mac Classic, there's a modern replacement motherboard. Here's a video:

Hmm, is there more information somewhere on where I can get my hands on such a board? Looked at the video but the links I found didn't go anywhere useful. I'd be interested in trying to get it back up and running but I don't have an air soldering station.
 

max1zzz

Well-known member
Hmm, is there more information somewhere on where I can get my hands on such a board? Looked at the video but the links I found didn't go anywhere useful. I'd be interested in trying to get it back up and running but I don't have an air soldering station.
That board was designed by @Kai Robinson it's not currently for sale as the V1.2 board (with issues with the board in that video fixed) is currently undergoing testing, should be available soon! :)

In regards to the hot air station, if you are going to get more involved in vintage computers it is well worth getting one and they don't have to be expensive, I still have (and use pretty much every day) my ATTEN 858D which cost me about £40 about 10 years ago (I use it far more than my ~£600 Hakko hot air station!) I don't believe ATTEN makes them any more but there are plenty of copys of this unit still available today at low prices
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I’d check for bad solder joints first, check continuity across the traces from the chip and back. If all that checks out, you might need a new IC. Considering this info was from a 1995 repair guide, it happened often enough to be described then when the machines were not even 10 years old. Not out of the realm of possibility for it to have failed now. I just so happened to be working on my analog board today; U1 is right above the logic board cable connector.
 

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