Hi folks, my name's Tony and I recently acquired my first two 68K Macs, an SE/30 and a Powerbook 100. I've been collecting old computer hardware for quite a few years, but haven't made the leap into 68K Macs until now. The best part is that I've had my eyes on these two machines for the better part of ten years, ever since I first saw them gathering dust on a shelf at my university when I was a student. Over the years I've been reminding the head of the department of political science to not under any circumstances throw away these beautiful machines, but neither would they give them or sell them to me. Skip forward to about a month and a half ago, when I got my Ph.D. The department finally decided to give me two of the three old Macs that had been in storage all these years, and so they were handed over to me in front of all the guests at my dinner party.
Once I'd recovered from the ordeal of the public defense and the party, I got to work on the Macs. Naturally, they were both in a poor state of repair. The SE/30 started up without any chime, showing nothing but bars and checkered flags. The Powerbook 100 was dead on arrival. So I recapped the SE/30, using (mostly) tantalum caps and guides on this website. Then I repaired a rotten copper trace and replaced the PRAM battery. After that I had it booting, but it remained unstable, crashing intermittently. I measured the voltage output from the floppy port, and noted serious fluctuations. Since the department had given me a green light to scavenge parts from the third old Mac in storage (another SE/30), I was able to finally get a working configuration, using the PSU from one SE/30 and the logic board and hard drive from another. The second SE/30 will go back to storage, but at least it's been recapped and had the battery removed, so at least it will hopefully not deteriorate further in the future.
On the Powerbook 100, I checked the power supply with a multimeter and saw that it was working fine, so I resoldered the joints to the AC adapter port, which made it start up again. The screen was black though, but a complete recapping of the logic board and daughter card took care of this. Finally, I was able to fix the hard drive using a trick I saw on this website. So now it too boots up nicely (although there are some artifacts on the screen in the form of "trembling" horizontal and vertical lines that become visible when I crank up the contrast).
Anyway, I now have two working 68K Macs, and I would never have been able to repair them without all the excellent info I found on this website, so for that I want to say a big kudos to all of you!
/ Tony
Once I'd recovered from the ordeal of the public defense and the party, I got to work on the Macs. Naturally, they were both in a poor state of repair. The SE/30 started up without any chime, showing nothing but bars and checkered flags. The Powerbook 100 was dead on arrival. So I recapped the SE/30, using (mostly) tantalum caps and guides on this website. Then I repaired a rotten copper trace and replaced the PRAM battery. After that I had it booting, but it remained unstable, crashing intermittently. I measured the voltage output from the floppy port, and noted serious fluctuations. Since the department had given me a green light to scavenge parts from the third old Mac in storage (another SE/30), I was able to finally get a working configuration, using the PSU from one SE/30 and the logic board and hard drive from another. The second SE/30 will go back to storage, but at least it's been recapped and had the battery removed, so at least it will hopefully not deteriorate further in the future.
On the Powerbook 100, I checked the power supply with a multimeter and saw that it was working fine, so I resoldered the joints to the AC adapter port, which made it start up again. The screen was black though, but a complete recapping of the logic board and daughter card took care of this. Finally, I was able to fix the hard drive using a trick I saw on this website. So now it too boots up nicely (although there are some artifacts on the screen in the form of "trembling" horizontal and vertical lines that become visible when I crank up the contrast).
Anyway, I now have two working 68K Macs, and I would never have been able to repair them without all the excellent info I found on this website, so for that I want to say a big kudos to all of you!
/ Tony
