questions about SE (not FDHD) - Floppy drive, capacitors

[youjuoufudtgd]

Hi,

I have had an SE for about as long as I can remember. I never used it from about 2009-2017. One day last summer I turned it on and was VERY surprised to find that it works!

It has 1 mb of RAM, and 2 floppy drives. It appears to have never been repaired before, let alone opened. I have 2 questions:

1) How likely is it that the capacitors are failing? Everything seems to be working, even sound. I think the clock resets itself though. (it was only ever used from 1988-1991, and now, other than to VERY occasionally play old games or copy things from floppies)

2) some time in between 2008 and now, the bottom floppy drive stopped working. When a disk is inserted, it makes sounds as if it is straining to turn a motor, then ejects the disk and shows an X. How easy is this to fix?

 

[68krazy]

Capacitor replacement is not as crucial for you as it is would be if you had a SE/30 or Classic, because the SE doesn't use surface mount electrolytic capacitors.  (Surface mount electrolytic capacitors look like this, and they are a replace-on-sight part).  That being said, you may experience instability from the analog board or power supply with its original capacitors, and replacing them is definitely something you need to do if you aim to preserve the SE.

What you really need to do immediately is get the case open and remove the battery from the logic board.  It varies from brand to brand, but some of them are known to leak spectacularly over the motherboard and effectively destroy the machine.  Check out the Maxell thread for more info, and gratuitous carnage shots of wrecked systems.  Get your original battery out of there before it ruins your machine!

If you'd like, you can replace the battery with a fresh one.  They are still being produced and are very easy to find—Digi-Key stocks genuine purple Tadiran batteries, which are an OEM part for these machines.  If you don't want to put a new battery in there right now, the machine will work fine without one, it just won't remember time and other other PRAM settings (mouse speed, etc.)  Totally your call.  

As for the floppy drive, it probably needs a good cleaning.  It's also probably an 800k drive (unless you have an SE Superdrive/FDHD), so it won't read 1.4mb disks.

Welcome to the forum and the vintage Mac hobby!  I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but the compacts are fun little machines that you can tinker with endlessly.  There are lots of resources for vintage macs and it's all a little overwhelming in the beginning, so feel free to ask as many questions as you need to  

 

[youjuoufudtgd]

Thanks! I'll remove the battery when I get home from college.

How exactly do I clean the floppy drive?

 

[EkriirkE]

Base SE models tend to have a soldered-in battery, you will need to clip it out or otherwise desolder it. I like to install a holder on these to make future replacement a breeze https://imgur.com/a/qMnJF