Rip Van Winkle SE

[johnboy]

Hi,

For the first time in several years, I have unpacked my very old friend the Macintosh SE. We have moved house and I no longer have space to store her, so must put her up for sale. A very sad day!

She helped me earn my living for a long time, and we travelled several thousand miles together - Mac in her “luggable” padded blue MacBag, where she has lived these many years. I also have the original box she arrived in and all her diskettes - OS Install / tidbits / printing / fonts / disk tools / quick time / utilities / system tools plus Word 5.1 plus Norton Utilities plus Compuserve Information Manager V2.3 plus fax modem plus some appletalk? leads / connectors. I suspect that some apparent duplicate diskettes were for a system update 3.

But the even sadder news is that - for the first time ever - she has let me down. I switched her on full of anticipation, heard her old familiar “boing” (so much quicker than today’s Mac!) and my heart sang! And then – the dreaded question mark! Could she be sulking at my inattention for so long? How does one react to a lady in that frame of mind?

After a couple of minutes I inserted her Install Disk 1, and she changed her question mark into a diskette icon on which an X intermittently appears. I tried pressing the switches on the left hand side - forgotten what they should do, but they had no effect. And there matters now rest.

I don’t have the special screwdriver my old technician needed to open up an SE, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do then. Please, does anybody have any suggestions?

Her vital statistics are Model M5011, 1MByte RAM, 800k Drive, 20 SC Hard Drive.

johnboy

 

[Mars478]

It means that the OS is corrupt or your HD has gone kaput. The Floppy disk could have also gone bad. Do you hear the HD spin up has it turns on?

 

[JRL]

The floppy disk is vital, and a X icon means that:

1: your disk has somehow gone bad

2: your floppy drive is dead (but I doubt it)

3: no bootable/corrupt System Folder on the disk (doubt it unless somebody was messing with the disk)

If you have another Macintosh equipped with a floppy drive, you can easily make a new boot disk with the disk images provided by Apple here.

If you don't have another Macintosh with a floppy drive, the most painless way out of the dilemma is here.

As Mars478 said, on startup, listen to the Macintosh SE for hard drive sounds. Do you hear the hard drive spinning up normally? Do you hear the hard drive struggling with spinning up? (the sounds will make it noticeable, and this is likely if the Macintosh SE has sat for a long time) Or do you not hear the hard drive spin up at all? If you hear the latter two, time for some troubleshooting.

And as for opening up your Macintosh SE, it's not that hard. You simply need a long-handled Torx T10 driver, which can be purchased at a home improvement store. Once you open up your Macintosh SE after letting the CRT discharge for a week or so, it is simply a matter of sourcing another 50-pin SCSI hard drive, carefully removing the original hard drive, removing the caddy, and installing your new hard drive into the caddy.

If the hard drive has trouble spinning up, try holding it in one hand and giving it a hefty smack on the top with the other, which should loosen up the stiction that the drive has developed if it has indeed been sitting for a long time.

Good luck!

-JRL

 

[johnboy]

Thanks Guys (or Gals?)

I had an brain-wave and tried the Norton Utility Emergency Disc - it booted beautifully (if painfully slowly), I asked it to search the SCSI network, and it couldn't find anything there - so it does look as if the hard disc is the problem.

I'll go procure the long screwdriver - may take several days however ;( - and then try tapping the wretched thing, as suggested, and will report back.

johnboy

 

[JRL]

Sorry, my bad, you need a long Torx T15.

Here are some helpful hints from the Classic Mac Repair PDF:

Obviously, it’s very dangerous to work on the innards of any line-powered electronic

equipment if the unit is still plugged in. So, before you do anything, UNPLUG IT. Don’t

rely on the on/off switch -- actually remove the power cord. Repeat: Pull out the cord.

Got that? Out with the cord. If you must work on the unit “hot” for some reason, please

pay attention in what follows to notes on how to reduce the risk of killing yourself. A com-

pact Mac by itself may be small, but your power company is very, very strong. Pull out

the cord. This warning brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Unless you are going to work on the HV circuitry, it’s best not to discharge the CRT, con-

trary to most written advice (including Apple’s). The reason is simple: You have to expose

yourself to the possibility of contact with HV to do so. If you make a mistake, you will

receive an unpleasant (but not lethal, despite what a lot of people say) shock. Or, the dis-

charge might take a path through delicate components and damage them. Since the HV

wiring is very well insulated, you will be well protected if you simply leave it alone.

To reduce the risk of getting shocked, let the unit sit unplugged for a day or two. If the

Mac is healthy enough to light up the screen, you can speed up the process by turning up

the brightness, and then unplugging the Mac while it’s still powered on (yes, this is a little

rough on disk drives, so make certain that no disk activity is happening). The current

drawn from the HV supply by the still-functioning circuit will rapidly discharge the HV.

2.2 Opening up the Mac

You’ll need a very long mutant Torx-15 driver to open up a compact Mac. Two screws are

in the deep recess along the top, and another two are on the back panel, straddling the con-

nector array on the bottom. For the 128K, 512K and Plus, there’s also a fifth screw, hidden

inside the battery compartment.

Once all the screws are out, hold the Mac with the CRT facing down, a couple of inches

over a soft surface (carpet is good). Holding the unit by the rear cover alone, give it a vig-

orous shaking until the cover works loose from the rest of the unit. The two case halves

can be very tightly joined, so expect a little bit of a struggle. Just be patient.

Don’t use a screwdriver, or you’ll chew up the case. Special “case crackers” exist, but I

find that the “shake it until the front falls out” method works fine.

 

[Scott Baret]

I'm willing to bet you have a MiniScribe hard drive. These drives were prone to failure in the first place and seem to be failing at an alarmingly high rate as of late due to age (nearly all of them are 20+ years of age today). You're best off replacing it with a Quantum ProDrive LPS (easily pulled from an LC) and doubling your capacity to 40MB while doing so. (Of course, you can always take it higher than that).

 

[System6+Vista]

Do you by any chance have a Mac running OSX 10.4 or earlier? By taping over the hole on a 1.44mb disk you should be able to make a fake 800kb disk and put Apple's image on there, then you can try installing that onto your SE's hard disk. As long as you can get disk copy 4.2 running (which I was able to on a 350mhz iMac on system 9 through a USB floppy drive) you can make that disk! I'm assuming that 10.4 can run disk copy in 'classic' mode, but as I don't really use OSX others may have more info on the plausability of that. That's also assuming you have a floppy drive for said computer that can get the .sit file from Apple's website and also run disk copy 4.2....I got a little USB one and it works great on my vista laptop though it looks like it was designed for g3 imacs!

 

[JRL]

I'm willing to bet you have a MiniScribe hard drive. These drives were prone to failure in the first place and seem to be failing at an alarmingly high rate as of late due to age (nearly all of them are 20+ years of age today). You're best off replacing it with a Quantum ProDrive LPS (easily pulled from an LC) and doubling your capacity to 40MB while doing so. (Of course, you can always take it higher than that).

I agree. The Quantum ProDrive LPS series are a great hard drive.

They also made them in 80/120/160/230/250/300/500 MB variants. If you have serious trouble finding one of these, I can possibly sell a 160 MB Quantum ProDrive LPS w/system 6.0.8 installed for around $5 + S/H.

However, if you don't mind doing a little extra work regarding formatting, you can format a non-Apple ROMed SCSI hard drive (basically one that has no Apple sticker/no mention of Apple on the label) with third-party software like MicroNet Utility 7.2.7 (free utility). For example, I have a Seagate 80-pin SCA 700 MB hard drive (with a converter that changes the SCA plug to standard 50-pin SCSI) installed in one of my Macintosh LCs and another Seagate 9.1 GB 50-pin SCSI hard drive split into several partitions in my Macintosh LC 475; both drives were not designed to be used with Macs, but they work fine with the correct software.

 

[tomlee59]

Do you by any chance have a Mac running OSX 10.4 or earlier? By taping over the hole on a 1.44mb disk you should be able to make a fake 800kb disk and put Apple's image on there, then you can try installing that onto your SE's hard disk.

Unfortunately, this does not work. An 800K Mac floppy requires a quite different physical formatting than 1.4MB ones. Newer drives (and this includes all USB external units, and anything that shipped in the OSX era) simply lack the hardware to support 800K disks.

 

[System6+Vista]

Do you by any chance have a Mac running OSX 10.4 or earlier? By taping over the hole on a 1.44mb disk you should be able to make a fake 800kb disk and put Apple's image on there, then you can try installing that onto your SE's hard disk.

Unfortunately, this does not work. An 800K Mac floppy requires a quite different physical formatting than 1.4MB ones. Newer drives (and this includes all USB external units, and anything that shipped in the OSX era) simply lack the hardware to support 800K disks.

Ah, well if you have access to any old beige Macintosh with a floppy, you could give it a try. I used my vista computer with external usb floppy to move the file to my Color Classic, where I expanded the file and used disk copy. Took me 5 disks (all taped) to make a bootable 800k disks -the rest of them would boot only in Superdrive computers (and read as 800k disks) but wouldn't be recognized or booted by the SEs.

 

[tomlee59]

The tape trick only tells the drive (and OS) that it is dealing with double-density media, and only works reasonably well if the disk has never, ever been formatted or otherwise written on as a 1.4MB disk. You can avoid the hassles and unreliability of the tape trick simply by using 720K PC floppies -- they are physically the same as 800K Mac disks, and are still available.

 

[JRL]

PMed you johnboy. =)

 

[johnboy]

It’s great to hear you experts discussing what type of disk I should install, and esoteric (beyond me!) methods to prepare an Apple image to store on this disk, and many thanks for the suggestions ...

The reason for all this is to help sell / find a good home for my old friend - without too much expense!

I have scoured all major DIY stores within a 20km radius and not a single one sells Torx screwdrivers. I do have an appropriate torx bit (meant for for fitting into a power screwdriver), but all “extension” pieces I have found are too thick to fit into the MAC SE recess. It seems easy to find them in the US, but not in the UK ;(

There are another couple of options I will explore in the coming week, and if successful I will open her up and “try holding [the disk] in one hand and giving it a hefty smack on the top with the other” - but don’t know that I would be capable of changing a drive and formatting the new one.

Is there any market for the machine in its present condition?

johnboy

 

[JRL]

Is there any market for the machine in its present condition?

johnboy

I also have the original box she arrived in and all her diskettes - OS Install / tidbits / printing / fonts / disk tools / quick time / utilities / system tools plus Word 5.1 plus Norton Utilities plus Compuserve Information Manager V2.3 plus fax modem plus some appletalk? leads / connectors. I suspect that some apparent duplicate diskettes were for a system update 3.

Mac in her “luggable” padded blue MacBag

I'd definitely say yes because of the above! As you probably know, most Macintosh SE boxes were thrown out over time, so the box is nice to keep (and better if in mint condition) The MacBag is also nice for storage.

However, really, it's your choice, and I'd say you should keep your Macintosh SE because you may regret selling later.

Also, checking el-cheapo tool stands/flea markets/country fairs for a Torx T15 is a good idea too! One member got his for 50p at one of them.

 

[johnboy]

Success - I’ve managed to open her up without using a torx screwdriver! A 50x3 mm flat blade does the job nicely.

Special thanks go to

http://home24.inet.tele.dk/ccadams/se/torx.html

and to JRL for the “helpful hints”

Now I need to get to the hard drive. There are two “chassis”, one mounted above the other, on the LHS looking from the back. The top one contains a small square box but it has no apparent witing on it and looks too small to be the drive. Should I remove the top chassis to get to the drive?

johnboy

PS in reply to JRL’s

“I'd say you should keep your Macintosh SE because you may regret selling later”

I’m already regretting it, but compete lack of space in our new house forces the decision ;(

 

[johnboy]

CORRECTION

The screwdriver was a 150x3mm flat blade (200m length would have been better but I couldn't find one)

 

[JRL]

Congratulations!

http://lowendmac.com/oldmac/compact2.html and http://www.preterhuman.net/texts/computing/Apple_Service_PDF/68k_Macintosh/macintosh_se.pdf will be useful for the hard drive.

If you had never ordered a hard drive upgrade or have had somebody upgrade the hard drive for you, this is what the hard drive should look like.

For the former, find the section on "Picking a Hard Drive" and "Installing a Hard Drive", which includes clear photos of where the hard drive is. For the latter, find the section that is simply called Hard Drive in the Part Replacement section.

Good luck! Be careful too.

-JRL

 

[johnboy]

I read the documentation on how to do it (many thanks), and got to the point of actually removing two screws to release the chassis, then stopped and thought long and hard about what I was about to undertake. The thought process was along these lines:

a) Assuming that the hard drive really is faulty - and it seems odds-on that it is - do I want to go to the time and expense of procuring a new one and re-installing the OS and (should the diskettes be faulty) procuring a new copy of said OS?

B) What are the chances of me completely messing up and being left with just a box of spare parts? (quite high!)

c) Assuming that an enthusiast becomes the new owner, how easy would it be for them to resolve the problems? (very easy!)

So, sad to relate, I have chickened out and but her back together again, and will now take photos etc and put her on sale.

But I really do appreciate all the enthusiastic help, encouragement and advice that you have given me in this forum .

ciao

johnboy

 

[JRL]

You're very right, and I respect your decision. Sorry if I have been rude.

However, a better idea would be to advertise here on the Trading Post, the 68KMLA's own stop for selling and buying. That way, it will be easier to find a good home.

-JRL