Schmo's SE Superdrive...

[Schmoburger]

Just thought I ought to share one of the personal favourites of my collection with you folks.... my SE Superdrive, which I've been playing with today. The old OEM 20Mb Miniscribe clunker finally gave up the ghost so now as of this morning it is running the comparitively gargantuan 160Mb hard drive I salvaged from the recently demised LC475, and milling away on System 7.1, currently with 2Mb of RAM which I intend to take up a notch in the near future. The pics unfortunately don't do it justice, as my iPhone camera is woeful.











It's a great little machine, is still white and clean, no gauges or cracks, and the internal electronics are pristine and it operates flawlessly which is always a bonus. I'll recap it when it starts to play up, until then I'll just enjoy it... I picked this up years ago at a garage sale for $20 in fully working order. This is one of two that I have owned (not including the SE/30), the other being a first revision dual-800k floppy model that was my first ever Mac which appears to have since gone walkabouts. Incidentally, my dad has an SE FDHD in his shed taking pride of place on his electronics workbench too.

 

[mcdermd]

Those miniscribes like to get their stepper motor stuck. I've found moving the arm a couple of clicks one way and back to the original position will usually "unstick" it and allow it to seek properly again.

 

[techknight]

my miniscribe quit formatting/erasing. it would read its data fine, but would never erase or format, kept erroring, would even error on trying to copy a new file onto it. So i tossed it.

 

[Schmoburger]

Yeh I noticed the arm just before and moved it and then got to thinking it may actually still work... Might test it out in the SE/30 when I get it working again

 

[onlyonemac]

But how do you move the arm without taking the cover off (which obviously kills it)?

 

[LCGuy]

The older drives aren't as badly affected by dust as newer drives. I have an old Seagate 40MB drive that I sometimes take the lid off and use just to watch it spinning and reading/writing. It's never skipped a beat.

But Schmo...I hope you haven't got that 5.25" drive plugged into the SE....do you? 8-o

 

[Schmoburger]

Nooooope lol it's just there from when I brought the stuff in from the car and dumped it on the bench... the 5.25 is from my IIe. :lol:

That said, I have had it plugged into a Plus in the past and iirc it actually functioned and more importantly didnt blow anything up heheh.

 

[LCGuy]

I was pretty sure...but knowing what can happen if a 5.25" drive is connected to a Mac...I just thought I should check

 

[mcdermd]

But how do you move the arm without taking the cover off (which obviously kills it)?

On those old Miniscribes, there is an actuator arm on the outside of the drive.

 

[Mk.558]

There was a 5.25" drive expansion card for the SE. IIRC it had a DB-37 connector.

 

[techknight]

I remember when I was a kid, trying to plug a 5.25 drive into a Mac SE. Results wernt very good. lol.

 

[James1095]

You can usually get away with opening a drive in a reasonably clean environment, just don't run it with the cover off, that in my experience tends to kill them rapidly.

If the driver could read but not write, I would suspect an electronic fault. Bad write amplifier or a problem with the analog switching for the head circuitry.

 

[volvo242gt]

There was a 5.25" drive expansion card for the SE. IIRC it had a DB-37 connector.

Yep, for the Apple PC 5.25" Drive. Same drive that Mark (maceffecrs) is selling on eBay. The SE that had the working original Varta battery had one in it. CelGen now has the card for one of his SE's. Traded him that for a Nubus card, which is in my IIfx.

-J

 

[techknight]

back when I had it, the formats woudl fail, and the volume would be corrupt. it took norton disk doctor to bring the volume back. I do remember that.