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Now, of course, I'm at a crossroads. Do I... * Buy an iron, learn how to solder, buy the parts, and do all the work myself? This would be satisfying, but I don't know how feasible it would be: My last attempt at soldering ended in disaster, and I'm not sure I want to risk ruining a Mac SE/30 as...

As a belated update, I gave the logic board a bath. Removing all the socketed chips (including the 68030) may have been overkill, but it seemed like the right thing to do. After letting the board soak in soapy water, the capacitor goo dissipated...but the pads and IC legs were still corroded...

$100 may not be free, but I think it was a reasonable price for a desirable system with accessories and components in clean, complete, boxed, and working order. The beige color composite monitors are relatively uncommon in my experience (the green-screen monitors were more common until the...

Your front bezel is slightly better than mine. :)

Thanks for the advice so far (with a special hat tip to joethezombie for the reference pictures!) After a trip to the hardware store and a couple rounds of twisting, cutting, and cursing, all the aluminum can-style caps have been removed. Not a minute too soon either, from the looks of...

I'm removing capacitors now, and I feel uneasy. How much in the way of capacitor remnants am I supposed to be leaving on the board? Are the metal leads supposed to be left intact? The plastic pads? Unfortunately the traces below the caps are somewhat corroded, and I can't easily control where...

Okey dokey. Just to itemize, here's what's been done so far: * Computer disassembled * Front bezel glued back together * Drive cage reattached properly to chassis And here's what's left to do, in more or less priority order: * Logic board needs to be cleaned and recapped. * Hard drive...

Now it's time for questions... 1) Is the top front brace of the chassis supposed to have a slight bend in it, or is this yet another artifact of drop damage? 2) Is the hard drive supposed to be set so much farther back than the floppy? The illustrations in the service manual show the...

When I got the computer, the metal chassis had become completely unattached from the front bezel. The drive cage was hanging loose, limply, and crookedly from the rear screws (A). The middle screw holes (B} had no fasteners...I'm guessing a delinquent technician left them out during a 1990s...

The computer looked as if it had been dropped at one point, and this manifested itself in a number of ways. The front bezel was damaged with two long hairline cracks in front, a chip taken out of the top corner, and four screw struts that had snapped and (in the case of two of them) were...

Thanks for the feedback so far, The SE/30 did boot and the hard drive still worked when I obtained it in 2014...I have pictures here. Trouble is, that only happened once and it never booted again.

It's a damn shame if the hard drive lasted for more than two decades in operational condition, only to die in my hands. But not surprising. I was quick to remove the purple Tadiran battery. It looked as if it had been replaced at least once in the computer's operational life (date code 07 96)...

Out the logic board comes! The hard drive ribbon cable was made much easier to remove without having the analog board in the way. But wait: Where's the floppy drive cable? It turns out there isn't one! That explains why the drive didn't work during the computer's brief useful life in my...

One more observation relating to the analog board and things that aren't totally factory-original: A sticker on the reverse side for "800-WE-FIX-MACS," with a service date in 1994. Apparently they're still in business in Palo Alto, California; which is nowhere near where this Mac ended up! A...

With all the cables detached and a few screws removed, the logic board came loose. It slid out willingly enough...though it was easy to whack the power supply casing against the CRT if I didn't jimmy it carefully, so it was hardly a tension-free affair. I was expecting to see bulging or leaking...

I won't mince it: For someone used to working on modular PCs, a compact Macintosh is a nightmare inside! Cramped quarters, with fragile parts and potential sources of stored electricity seemingly everywhere. At least with a small black and white tube like the one in the SE/30, there are only a...

The last time I attempted to disassemble the SE/30, my journey essentially ended here:  I discharged the CRT, then put the computer back together again as I wasn't yet ready to venture on. This time around, I proceeded to disconnect the CRT from the analog board.  Removing the anode cap was...

Separating the cases was the first, the simplest, and most straightforward part of disassembly:  I'd done this before, and the process was no-doubt eased by a cracked front bezel that wanted to bend.  Of course, that's one of the problems I'm seeking to fix!

It's been a long time...too long, since I last posted here.  What's happened? Back in the autumn of 2014, I found a Mac SE/30.  It had visible flaws I wanted to fix, but it booted up, and the price was free! Or should I say, it once booted up.  A week or two after I got it, I turned it...

Ahh...I just need some alligator clips, then. I did find one additional detail on the computer that I thought was interesting:  A sticker on the analog board that said "800-We-Fix-Macs, Date 9/27/94, Tech KP," with a California bay area telephone number.  I wonder how many hands this machine...