Mac SE/30 high voltage on 30v rail

Hello all,

I have an SE/30 that's a bit sad right now. First the good. Logic board boots (in another machine), 5v, 12v disk and sweep rails are OK. Nothing has been recapped yet, but the core stuff seems stable enough to at least get a bong (well, logic board isn't bonging, but I'll deal with that later).

My issue appears to be with the flyback. The symptoms I'm seeing are components on the neckboard, R1 particularly are getting very hot very quickly when powered on. There is a little life on the screen when powered on, but nothing like a coherent picture and very dim. The orange wire to the neckboard, which should be 30 volts, is reading 120v - just a little high - at least with the neckboard detached from the tube. I'll double check, but at least on a functioning unit it seems to regulate to 30v when detached and functioning properly.

Looking at the analog board schematic, the 30v rail seems to be derived directly from the flyback with only CR5 in the way, so my assumption is either the flyback is bad or the regulation of the flyback is bad. I've not checked the grid voltages, but I assume they're badly off too. Not really wanting to plug it back in to find out though, and I actually don't have a reference for what they should be.

I'll be ordering replacement components for the the various diodes, regulators and power transistors around the flyback soon, but just checking in to see if anyone else has seen this kind of fault before where it *wasn't* a dead flyback transformer.

Cheers!
 
Update for the interested.

I pulled the AB out and removed the protective sheet, to reveal this:

1000017517.jpg

That's a short and almost full thickness burn between one leg of the sub brightness control pot and the 30v rail that goes to the neck board. Cleaning out the burnt material has dropped the high voltage on that rail from 120v to around 50v, so still high but improved. Either more parts are dead, or I still need to clean out more material. Currently waiting on parts
 
It lives....again!

1000017545.jpg

Turns out the fault was with the C13 cap, near the flyback. Completely dried out/not capacitoring. It's meant to be part of a circuit that boosts the 12v from the PSU to 20v for pins 1-4 on the flyback, but the actual voltage was 32v, throwing out all the other outputs from the flyback.

I guess this is the reason the cutoff pot arc'd over to the 30v rail in the first place, given it's nominally I think around 750v DC. No idea what it actually reached.

Now to replace the rest of the AB caps, and try to improve the focus of the very tired old CRT.
 

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