SE/30 with a bad logicboard - is there hope?

[Huxley]

Hi guys,

I've just taken ownership of a super-clean SE/30 (along with a ton of vintage accessories and software - more on that later), but this system seems to have a funky motherboard. Here's the story:

I got a call yesterday from a guy named Chris. Chris has been using this SE/30 for ages as a basic word processor and email machine. However, his beloved SE/30 recently failed to boot, and instead displayed a strange garbage pattern on the screen at power-on, with no chime. Here's a link to a snapshot of what it shows: http://gallery.mac.com/huckdunsany/100165

I've cleaned the board with an air compressor, along with the ROM and RAM slots, but to no avail. I've already replaced the old, bad PRAM battery, but it didn't make any difference either. I've even tried powering it up with all the RAM and ROM sticks removed, but got the same results.

Here's the interesting thing - I know that the chassis is good, since I helped Chris recover his old files by installing a known working SE/30 mobo, and it fired right up with no problems. However, Chris took that mobo in exchange for the wounded SE/30 and accessories (he's going to put it into an old SE/FD for now), so I'm either going to get this board working, or have to start scrounging for a 'new' one.

Any thoughts, or offers of a working replacement board?

Thanks!

Huxley

PS The thing I'm most excited about (so far...) is that this SE/30 came with a ProColorServer 24x PDS video card! I haven't tried booting the system with the card installed (don't want to damage it), but it'll be cool to eventually have a color-capable SE/30 on my desk...

 

[Huxley]

Quick update!

I just finished putting the system back together (RAM, ROM, etc.) and, since it was opened up anyway, decided to adjust the H-size and V-size knobs on the video board. After tweaking those, I noticed the two buttons on the lower-back of the system, the Programmers button and the Reset button. Just on a whim, I pressed the Reset button (while the SE/30 was displaying its usual distorted checkerboard pattern) and what do you know, it chimed and went to the grey screen with mouse cursor! Maybe this board isn't as dead as I thought...

I'll keep playing around...

Huxley

 

[Huxley]

Well, this has to be my fastest transition from being totally stumped to having a working SE/30!

As you'll see if you click my .Mac Gallery link in my first post, I managed to get the SE/30 to boot, using my external SCSI HDD and the Reset button trick I described in my last post. Frankly, I'm still mystified as to why it's behaving this way, but I'm quite excited that it's showing signs of recovery. In the long run, it may still make sense to replace this flakey board with a more reliable one, but for the time being, it's a good start.

Now, to play with that video card! BTW, is that type of PDS video card of the variety that can be used to improve the bit-depth of the internal monitor? I seem to recall reading years back that it was possible to get the stock monitor to display greyscale, but it required a PDS video board. Am I way off base?

Thanks again for following along with this - I promise that I'll catalog and share any of the useful info gleaned from the 3(!) boxes of original software, books, manuals and accessories...

;D

Huxley

 

[JDW]

Welcome fellow SE/30 owner.

In my experience, pressing the Reset button on the left side of the Mac will often bypass the RAM startup checks. I have 128MB of RAM on my SE/30, and it takes well over a minute to check all that RAM, during which time my screen displays these strange artifacts. But once the RAM checking concludes, the machine boots normally. So you should try waiting longer, like 2-3 minutes and see if the machine finally boots. If it does, you have nothing to worry about.

Now despite what I have written about RAM checks, it still very well could be you need to change the capacitors. If no one has done a cap job on your logic board before, I would say with 90% certainty that you do need to change the caps, as do most SE/30 motherboards by now. This topic has been discussed endlessly on this site before, so a quick search should yield the info. Here is a cap job thread, for example.

 

[Huxley]

Well, I've just gotten the SE/30 put back together and set up on my desk, and she's working beautifully! I'd taken her apart earlier today, to migrate 32MB of RAM from my Quadra 950 over, along with a 2GB SCSI internal drive. I tried booting the system with the PDS video card inserted, but it defaulted to the (currently non-existent) external display, so I've removed that card and the little beastie fired right up (after performing the "Reset Button" trick mentioned before), and is currently running Norton Speed Disk on the internal drive. So far, so good!

Also, I've only just begun digging through all the stuff that came with the system, but I thought I'd share a couple of choice items:

Floppies Galore! We've got all sorts of Norton disks, some games (not sure which ones yet, but I did spot "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" and "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego"), and a whole passel of original Apple-brand system disks, including "Your Apple Tour of the Macintosh SE/30," three HyperCard disks ("HyperCard and Stacks," "HyperCard Ideas" and HyperCard Help"), "Macintosh Printing Tools," "Macintosh System Tools," and two copies each of "Macintosh Utilities disk 1 and 2."

I've also got two large file boxes full of original software boxes and manuals, along with all the original Apple-brand system manuals for the SE/30.

Also, the original owner Chris offered me a bowling-ball bag containing what he kept referring to as a "Zip drive," but what turned out to be a full-size external SCSI SyQuest drive with five 44MB SyQuest disks! I've always wanted to play with one of these. Plus, for your LOL pleasure, one of the SyQuest disks is still marked with its Suggested Retail Price of... $129.99! Ouch.

Finally, and perhaps most touching, Chris even included a set of hand-sewn cloth covers for the system and accessories - he'd made them back when he first bought this system, and they must have played a large role in keeping the entire system (and all accessories) from showing any yellowing at all. I've had a number of compact Macs before, but this one is the first I've owned that has retained its original grey ("Platinum"?) color, and hasn't started turning that nasty shade of yellow that seems so common on Apple products from this era. Sadly, my beloved Color Classic has turned a particularly bile-like yellow/brown, and I can't seem to fix it...

Anyway, I just wanted to share what's been included in my haul so far - I'll continue to post details as I find them, and if there's interest in any of this, I'd be happy to make dupes of any of the floppies or scans of any manuals as needed.

Best wishes,

Huxley

 

[Flamingtoasters]

A while ago I had purchased an SE/30 from eBay. A very nice system with tons of programs and interesting extensions. I fired it up and started to explore the hard drive. Then the screen flickered and I got a system bomb. From then on, whenever the SE/30 was tapped or moved, it crashed and the screen flickered. I tried everything I could to fix it. I concluded it was the logic board. Frustrated, I got a new SE/30 (with a bad case) and "merged" them together to get the SE/30 I wanted. Now I have this fault logic board and nothing to do with it and no idea of how to fix it. Any ideas?

:?:

 

[JDW]

To all SE/30 owners with unexplinable problems, I strongly suggest you read through this thread and search for other threads on "capacitor replacement" on this site.

Seriously, we need to consolidate this information into one big thread and make it a sticky. While replacing the caps won't solve every SE/30 problem, the fact remains that almost all SE/30's now need to have this work done on them because some or all of the SMD capacitors on the logic board have leaked, whether you can physically see the leakage or not. Some SE/30's have serious problems like SimasiMac while others merely crash/lockup now and then and the owner simply doesn't know why. Replacing the caps will solve many problems and help you troubleshoot other problems by eliminating leaking capacitors as a variable in the troubleshooting process.

 

[Huxley]

Hi again, everyone!

I just uploaded some pics of the system up and running, along with some of the software and manuals that came with the SE/30. Just click the .Mac Gallery link in my earlier post if you'd like to take a look!



Huxley

 

[JDW]

Huxley, as a true lover of photos, I certainly appreciate all the new pics you just uploaded for us.

I do have one question though. Is Apple's .Mac service limiting your photo resolution to 600x800? (I am totally ignorant of .Mac as I don't use it or iPhoto.) I suppose it matters little, but I tried to zoom in to see more detail only to find the pics were 600x800.

 

[Huxley]

Huxley, as a true lover of photos, I certainly appreciate all the new pics you just uploaded for us.
I do have one question though. Is Apple's .Mac service limiting your photo resolution to 600x800? (I am totally ignorant of .Mac as I don't use it or iPhoto.) I suppose it matters little, but I tried to zoom in to see more detail only to find the pics were 600x800.

Yeah, the Web Gallery reduces the size of the in-browser pics, but I've enabled the Download button at the top of the gallery - if you'd like to see the full-size images, just click that button and they'll download as a .zip file, in their full-res glory.

Thanks for the kind comments!

Huxley