I liberated an SE/30 today

[Andrew T.]

While browsing the local Craigslists this weekend, I happened upon an SE/30 that someone was ready to throw out: Free for the taking!

I promptly picked it up, brought it home, and surveyed the package. The SE/30's serial number is F10281HPK03...evidently indicating a production date of July 1990. I have the Mac, an M0116 Keyboard, an ADB Mouse II (newer than the computer itself), and a bit of a surprise: A third-party Fujitsu external floppy drive. No floppy disks, though.

The Mac is hardly unblemished: The front bezel is cracked and chipped in a number of places from either mishandling or past shipping damage, and it's come loose at the bottom. The floppy drive is dislodged from its slot opening, and the case sounds like it has something rattling inside.

I wanted to open the case and inspect the guts for exploding batteries and obvious physical damage, but I didn't have a Torx driver of the right size and handle length available at home. So, holding my breath and crossing my fingers, I turned it on. Surprise: It worked, and burst into life with System 7.5! What's more, I discovered through Finder that both the hard drive and the memory had been upgraded from their original specs...to 231MB and 20MB, respectively! But not all was perfect: There was no sound, and the monitor had a speck of bad phosphor producing a dead pixel blob.

So...it's a fixer-upper. I'll be looking forward to seeing what I can do with this machine.

 

[Elfen]

Looks like that poor little guy was dropped at one or twice in its life. But it's all fixable. The screen looks great from this photo. The speaker many be detached from the connector or broke off when they dropped it. Again - fixable. A truly excellent find!

 

[bibilit]

Congrats, a free SE/30 is always great.

Never seen one of those floppy drives before.

 

[3583Bytes]

Very nice, love the floppy drive

 

[Unknown_K]

No sound is probably a capacitor issue.

 

[Macdrone]

Could be caps, just also maybe the chip. Seen one or two boards that needed sound chip replaced.

 

[Andrew T.]

Thanks for the comments! The screen output is a bit jittery...I'll bet that's a capacitor issue, too. A recap could be in order down the road.

I'll be working on this machine pretty slowly, though, taking things a step at a time. Is an SE/30 bezel interchangeable with an SE's?

 

[Elfen]

The bezels are interchangeable but there are cosmetic differences.

But go to Home Depot or some other Home Service Hardware place and see if they got ABS Piping, for they will have that Blue ABS Glue. The Glue should be strong enough to save the case and wipe it clean if you get it on the case while it is still wet. Bleach should be able to remove the blue if it stains the case and you don't remove it time.

 

[Elfen]

My mistake. ABS Glue is not blue, but can be green, milky white, clear or any other color but blue. Blue is for PVC piping.

For fixing Macs with ABS casing, use a q-tip to apply the glue to both sides of the break, hold together (a few seconds) and then let go after it dries.

 

[bibilit]

Is an SE/30 bezel interchangeable with an SE's? 

Elfen is right, bezels are interchangeable, the main difference is the label (SE on the right SE/30 on the left)

 

[Andrew T.]

After spending a week searching for a T-15 screwdriver, I finally got the case open today!  Observations so far:

* A screw strut had broken loose and was rattling in the case.
* The hard drive and floppy drive are mounted crooked, and there is no LED present anywhere.  The HD bears an Apple sticker, so it was probably scavenged out of another Mac at some point. 
* Peering inside, it looks like the original purple Tadiran battery is intact.  Good thing it's not a red Maxell, but I've got a good mind to take it out anyway.

I'm now at the "discharge the CRT" disassembly step, and feel at a bit of a loss.  Most of the tutorials say to use a discharge tool (what?) attached to the grounding lug (where?), and I've never done this sort of work before.

 

[Elfen]

Discharging is not that hard. Read this link on how too and how to build a discharge tool:

http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~shamada/fullmac/repairEng.html#DischargeCRT

Also, it looks like your flyback has a bleeder resistor, so if it was off for a while it will discharge itself. Given about a couple of days to a week any Mac would discharge itself.

The bend drive frames sounds like your Mac was dropped at one time in its life and recently, and yet your CRT Tube survived. Congrats on that.

 

[Andrew T.]

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 may have passed through before it came my way?