My Macintosh SE that was damaged in shipping

[LarBob]

I've had it since 2011 but only found out about this site recently. It included a LaserWriter printer and a bunch of system diskettes and such, but only the Mac and printer survived the seller's horrible packing and the mishandling it went through whilst being delivered to me. Here is a look at the back; notice the messed up power input.

Spoiler

When I first got it, it booted fine. It doesn't now though, blinking question mark on a floppy. I'm guessing either the hard drive went bad or a capacitor on the analog board has gone bad so it can't spin up the drive.

 

[unity]

Hard drives always fail in those. Typically they will fire up a couple times at best.

 

[LarBob]

I haven't seen any cheap replacements. The SCSI2CF and SCSI2SD solutions seem kinda pricey.

 

[unity]

Yeah, not much you can do on the cheap other than hope for another cheap SCSI drive. I literally have a pile of these, untested and no plans to. Probably make something weird out of them.

 

[LarBob]

I guess I could take the drive out of my Power Mac 6100/60...

 

[Reasons.]

The SCSI2SD is pricy for a vintage computing accessory, but I have nothing but good things to say about mine. If it's a computer you're interested in using on a semi-regular basis long-term, it makes a ton of sense. You get a speedy, reliable, and spacious dive for about the same price as a new SATA drive. Of course, the calculation changes if it's just a computer you're going to occasionally mess around with. My SE/30 has one, for example, because I use that fairly regularly for writing and other tasks. For my SE, though, I'm really just taking it out every once and a while to play with it and so the lack of a headache is worth it. 

One nice unadvertised use for the SCSI2SD that I've noticed, though, is that it can be used as a quick and dirty file transfer system with modern Macs. If you need to get a file onto or off of the machine and don't have an ethernet card, bridge mac, or floppy emu, you can pull the card from the SCSI2SD and use it with a modern mac. All the files are visible on the card, and you can copy over whatever you need to or from the card. Adding something like a microSD to SD adaptor with a cable on it makes the whole process a lot easier, too.

 

[LarBob]

Yeah, it seems nice. Not sure I want to get one for this SE though.

 

[Compgeke]

Depending on how cheap is cheap, a setup I used for someone was:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/231299701132  $12 Hard Drive

http://www.ebay.com/itm/170641507340  $5 50 to 68 adapter

http://www.ebay.com/itm/150893667423  $6 terminated 68 cable

---

$23

 

[LarBob]

Sweet, thanks man. Way cheaper than other options.

 

[techknight]

And this particular HDD works? I dont see any Narrow/SE SCSI-1 support jumpers. 

 

[LarBob]

And this particular HDD works? I dont see any Narrow/SE SCSI-1 support jumpers.

Is this towards Compgeke?

 

[Compgeke]

It should work, the original setup I used was with the 1 gig version of the drive, a ST31250W. I'll grab one in a couple days and post back on the results.

 

[LarBob]

Thanks!

 

[Johnnya101]

Just saying my preference, Id get the Floppy Emu, as it can also boot floppies, and can be switched to different macs (AND Apple IIs) easily.

 

[LarBob]

Definitely need to get a floppy emu as well, but I'd like a working hard drive too

 

[Compgeke]

Finally got the drive in the mail, and it works! It does get pretty warm and is a bit noisy but it shouldn't present too much of an issue.

Drive comes as a plain drive, nothing special. You will want to select the SCSI ID with the jumpers on the front.



First thing you'll want to do is remove the "Enable Motor Start" jumper. This jumper tells the drive to not spin up until the controller sends a motor start command.



The next is get the drive installed. On an SE factory drive bracket the holes aren't going to line up for all four holes. You can drill new holes or just mount it with 2 screws diagonally. Note on this drive the LED connector is on the front for some reason. If you want the case LED to light up you'll need to hack up an extension of some sort. 



Afterwards format with a patched drive setup and install the OS (or copy files from another HDD).



Fairly significant speed upgrade over the factory Miniscribe as well, fastest I've ever seen in an SE.

 

[tanaquil]

Thanks for the walkthrough! I always have trouble with jumper settings.

 

[LarBob]

Yeah, thanks a lot!