Hey y’all,
after finally being able to use my Macintosh SE (it had been sitting unused for weeks due to a faulty floppy drive while I was waiting for replacement parts from overseas), I ran into an issue today that I wanted to document and ask about.
Earlier today my BlueSCSI arrived, and before switching over to it I wanted to create an archive of the internal hard drive, as it contains some software I’d like to preserve. Disk Copy gave me a bit of trouble, so this involved some trial and error, and the SE ended up running continuously for roughly two hours.
I then briefly left the room to say good night to my cat and when I came back a few minutes later, the Macintosh was completely powered off. The entire room smelled very strongly of burnt electronics.
I immediately went to the outlet and cut the power. I did not attempt to turn the machine back on but it is possible it still had power for at least 8 minutes.
After a few minutes to calm down, I opened the SE for a visual inspection only (no touching of course). I couldn’t see anything obviously damaged or burnt. My assumption is that the RIFA capacitor in the power supply failed. I didn’t personally see any smoke, but the SE sits directly next to a wide open window, so any smoke could easily have went outside before I returned. Even so, the smell remained very strong for at least 50 minutes afterward (counting).
I’m not planning to apply power again until the PSU has been serviced. While I do have a fair amount of experience repairing vintage Apple hardware, I’m honestly very uncomfortable working around high voltage components, especially in CRT era machines. I did a Floppy repair on it a few days ago but this was my pain tolerance.
So my two questions are:
1. How safe is it to service or recap a power supply in an 80s Macintosh like the SE?
2. Does this failure pattern sound consistent with a RIFA capacitor, or are there other common PSU faults that could produce a similar smell and sudden shutdown?
I know RIFA failures are notorious for producing a lot of smoke and an extremely persistent smell. I didn’t witness smoke directly, but the odor is by far the strongest I’ve ever experienced from electronics, even though it didn’t smell "fishy" as often described, just strongly of burnt electronics.
Thanks a lot!
after finally being able to use my Macintosh SE (it had been sitting unused for weeks due to a faulty floppy drive while I was waiting for replacement parts from overseas), I ran into an issue today that I wanted to document and ask about.
Earlier today my BlueSCSI arrived, and before switching over to it I wanted to create an archive of the internal hard drive, as it contains some software I’d like to preserve. Disk Copy gave me a bit of trouble, so this involved some trial and error, and the SE ended up running continuously for roughly two hours.
I then briefly left the room to say good night to my cat and when I came back a few minutes later, the Macintosh was completely powered off. The entire room smelled very strongly of burnt electronics.
I immediately went to the outlet and cut the power. I did not attempt to turn the machine back on but it is possible it still had power for at least 8 minutes.
After a few minutes to calm down, I opened the SE for a visual inspection only (no touching of course). I couldn’t see anything obviously damaged or burnt. My assumption is that the RIFA capacitor in the power supply failed. I didn’t personally see any smoke, but the SE sits directly next to a wide open window, so any smoke could easily have went outside before I returned. Even so, the smell remained very strong for at least 50 minutes afterward (counting).
I’m not planning to apply power again until the PSU has been serviced. While I do have a fair amount of experience repairing vintage Apple hardware, I’m honestly very uncomfortable working around high voltage components, especially in CRT era machines. I did a Floppy repair on it a few days ago but this was my pain tolerance.
So my two questions are:
1. How safe is it to service or recap a power supply in an 80s Macintosh like the SE?
2. Does this failure pattern sound consistent with a RIFA capacitor, or are there other common PSU faults that could produce a similar smell and sudden shutdown?
I know RIFA failures are notorious for producing a lot of smoke and an extremely persistent smell. I didn’t witness smoke directly, but the odor is by far the strongest I’ve ever experienced from electronics, even though it didn’t smell "fishy" as often described, just strongly of burnt electronics.
Thanks a lot!
