So I've just finished up restoring a SE/30 I received a few weeks ago. When I got it it was in decent shape. It had all the parts it was supposed to have, and it (sometimes) booted. It also had an ethernet card, which was really nice. It was beginning to show capacitor rot, however, so I figured it would be a good candidate for a total restoration.
My first step was to send the logic board off to uniserver. While he did his work on the board, I took the whole machine apart and wiped all of the electronics down with isopropyl alcohol. I lubricated the floppy drive, and gave the case a nice bath with soap and water, and used some Dot 3 brake fluid to clean off a stencil that someone had sprayed onto the side. After that, I waited for the next sunny day and retrobrited the front bezel, rear bucket, and keyboard and mouse. I just submerged the parts in a mixture of 3% hydrogen peroxide and water, which ended up working really well. After my board got back from uniserver, I put the whole thing back together, put in a SCSI2SD in place of the internal drive, and installed System 7 Pro. I ended up with an SE/30 with 8 MB of RAM and a 256 MB hard drive.
The whole thing is working fantastically now, and I'm really proud of the results I got. While it's not quite done yet (I've got a replacement Noctua fan coming in the mail and am looking to get my hands on a ROMinator II and some 16 MB SIMMs), it's a pretty sweet machine that was as much of a pleasure to restore as it is to use. I think I'm going to bring it back to college with me next year and use it for working on essays and other work that doesn't require the internet. Word 5.1a is solid gold, and I could certainly use a less distracting writing environment.
Lastly, I just wanted to thank everyone in this community for their contributions over the years. I've learned a lot about this stuff in my month on here so far, and that knowledge was instrumental in getting this done. This community is a really good reflection of the promise of the internet: a place where people can come together to talk about things they're really passionate about and to help each other out. I'm glad it exists. Special thanks go to oldappleguy for gifting me the machine, and to uniserver (absent though he may be) for his really good work on the board.
My first step was to send the logic board off to uniserver. While he did his work on the board, I took the whole machine apart and wiped all of the electronics down with isopropyl alcohol. I lubricated the floppy drive, and gave the case a nice bath with soap and water, and used some Dot 3 brake fluid to clean off a stencil that someone had sprayed onto the side. After that, I waited for the next sunny day and retrobrited the front bezel, rear bucket, and keyboard and mouse. I just submerged the parts in a mixture of 3% hydrogen peroxide and water, which ended up working really well. After my board got back from uniserver, I put the whole thing back together, put in a SCSI2SD in place of the internal drive, and installed System 7 Pro. I ended up with an SE/30 with 8 MB of RAM and a 256 MB hard drive.
The whole thing is working fantastically now, and I'm really proud of the results I got. While it's not quite done yet (I've got a replacement Noctua fan coming in the mail and am looking to get my hands on a ROMinator II and some 16 MB SIMMs), it's a pretty sweet machine that was as much of a pleasure to restore as it is to use. I think I'm going to bring it back to college with me next year and use it for working on essays and other work that doesn't require the internet. Word 5.1a is solid gold, and I could certainly use a less distracting writing environment.
Lastly, I just wanted to thank everyone in this community for their contributions over the years. I've learned a lot about this stuff in my month on here so far, and that knowledge was instrumental in getting this done. This community is a really good reflection of the promise of the internet: a place where people can come together to talk about things they're really passionate about and to help each other out. I'm glad it exists. Special thanks go to oldappleguy for gifting me the machine, and to uniserver (absent though he may be) for his really good work on the board.
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