SE/30 old hard drive hack ;p

[zezba9000]

So I fixed my SE/30 hard drive.

1) Opened it and fixed sticky motor.

2) These drives work much better facing upward (not upside down).

3) Secure with hot glue (works very well)

I'm sharing this in case your not working drive might be fixed by flipping it the right way.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Nice, one day I'll open up some of my dead HDDs to see what happens. Is the SE/30 HDD normally installed upside down in its bracket?

 

[zezba9000]

Nice, one day I'll open up some of my dead HDDs to see what happens. Is the SE/30 HDD normally installed upside down in its bracket?

Yes the hard drive is upside down in the SE/30. Looking at other old Macintosh II computers this was not the case. Macintosh Classic computers also have the hard drive right side up as well.

I think this might be a major design flaw in the SE/30 computers for putting those old fat hard disks upside down.

 

[zezba9000]

Also I should point out that after "1) Opened it and fixed sticky motor." I had to adjust the tightness of the disk read motor top pin screw.

So if you're trying to recover your old disk, keep this extra step in mind if needed (it may not be).

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

It does seem like an odd design decision, I wonder if it's a carryover from the SE and what the benefit was supposed to be?

 

[zezba9000]

It does seem like an odd design decision, I wonder if it's a carryover from the SE and what the benefit was supposed to be?

Personally from messing around inside the SE/30 my guess is it was done just to keep the cable shorter and non-twisted. Besides this, there is really no point for the decision from what I can tell.

They probably made the goof of putting the scsi plug on the board backwards and fixing that spec was to hard and costly, so they flipped the HD instead.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Seems strange, but the SE was their first Compact with a built-in HDD. The SCSI controller/external connector orientation setup was inherited from the Plus, so it may be as simple as that.

Does the SE use the same drive carrier? Too lazy to look at the explodeds. :lol:

 

[zezba9000]

Seems strange, but the SE was their first Compact with a built-in HDD. The SCSI controller/external connector orientation setup was inherited from the Plus, so it may be as simple as that.

Does the SE use the same drive carrier? Too lazy to look at the explodeds. :lol:

I'm not sure, don't have a Plus or normal SE to check.