SE Hard Drive being stupid... and more.

[macosten]

Ok, here's my situation.

I have a nice looking, mostly functioning SE FDHD with a dead/dying (the drive itself partially works, but the drive refuses to mount) Hard Disk Drive - it (was) a 20 MB HDD; not very big at all.

I also have an ugly SE/30. It has a gummy Floppy Drive and no Hard Drive, but it works - By physically keeping a bootdisk pressed down into the drive, I've gotten it to boot. It had 6 MB of RAM installed currently, and that's about all I know about that machine.

I want to do two things: first, I'd like to switch out the logic boards and give my SE a good boost. That part I understand; except for any PDS stuff, the boards are interchangeable, mostly.

Second, I want to replace/upgrade the Hard Disk Drive. For that, I want to/must know the internal interface for these things - that is, how many pins?

Also, I don't exactly have an abundance of replacement drives - so I'll be needing your help to suggest a few suitable drives that can be purchased off the internet. I have no problem with having a disk with 40 partitions - so be it if that's the price I must pay for capacity, however if my PSU can't tolerate that, I'll need help in circumventing that problem. I'd like the drive to be as fast as it can; an SSD would be nice but if it's expensive it'd be impractical.

Of course, a major issue includes the fact that I don't have a case opener - I'll go to a Hardware Store sooner or later to see if I can pick up a long enough T-15 - but just in case I cannot find one, I'd like it if you'd point me in a direction where I can find one online or in person.

I'm a bit of a noob, and I do feel like a bit of an imposer to be doing this to you guys, but there's no better place to get help than here... so... Help? )

 

[Mk.558]

The chassis is different on the SE versus the SE/30. Feel free to swap them if you feel inclined. It's not hard, takes a little while though.

There's a thread here that talks in length about suitable SCSI drives. 9.1GB former enterprise drives seem to be the favorite. The SCSI implementation on Macs was rubbish, as was the IDE, but that's already set in stone.

Cleaning the FDD is a good idea. Make sure not to touch the heads with *ANYTHING* -- even a cotton swap lightly swiping the surface will ruin it. Focus on the mechanism and the slider thingy near the bottom. It's a bit tricky taking one of those apart if you've never done it before, but you'll see two small springs on each portside and starboard side of the unit. Pop those off, push the pivoting floppy slider thingy slightly forward to unlock it, then allow it to "engage", then it can be pulled out. I'm finding it hard to describe but if you need a video I could cook one up.

2GB for a single partition is MORE than enough. It's not really desirable to have a whole slew of partitions on a Compact's tiny desktop. Heck 500MB is quite "big" but you'll find someone that says it's not enough, which is why bigger drives are available.

You don't need a case opener. Just hop on down to the local stores and look for a T-15 with a shaft length of at least 20cm. Remove all four screws, invert the unit over a couch or a bed, and shake it off. It's really over-complicated in the interwebz. Don't worry about discharging the CRT. You'll be fine.

 

[MinerAl]

In the U.S., Sears sells a nice 6" shaft T-15 screwdriver that works great. I found one in person at the Sears in the local mall.

If you don't have expansion cards for your SE/30, then switching chassis won't be necessary. (Network cards and video cards for the SE's PDS don't work with the SE/30 logic board at all, and vice-versa. The gap over the PDS in the chassis for such cards in the SE is smaller than the one in the SE/30, so big SE/30 cards won't clear the SE's little gap.)

Be aware: any time you put the plastic back of an SE on the front an SE/30 (or SE/30 on an SE) they may not fit perfectly. I've had SE/30 backs on SE fronts and the fit was very snug. Getting it back off was a pain. They were made to the same specs, but they were different dies, so there are slight variations.

There's a thread over in 68k LC & Performa about laptop sized drives that can be adapted to talk to old Mac SCSI systems. They might be the best bet, since the ones they are talking about are huge, and shouldn't tax your analog board (PSU).

If you want to use an SSD, I'd recommend looking for a Compact Flash (to IDE) to SCSI card. With one, you can run a smallish (16M - 512M) CF card as the HD for your Mac, and not have to worry about partitioning anything. Also, you could load it up with software from a modern Mac with a USB card reader. I think a lot of us would do it this way if the (very justifiable) price was a little closer to our hobby budgets.

 

[macosten]

Ordered my Case Tool online today because a search at a few local stores turned out fruitless.

I'm also planning on ordering a suitable HDD from... well, I don't know if they want their name to be announced, but the fact I'm saying this seems like it would be a decently large giveaway.

Side note, one of my ADB II mice is missing its rubber ball (dunno why, but I must have misplaced it :lol: ), how would I find a suitable replacement? )

 

[James1095]

Look at garage sales and computer recycler stores. You can probably find a whole ADB mouse, otherwise I think there are only a few different sizes of the balls, shouldn't be too hard to find one that fits.

 

[macosten]

Well, I got my case opening tool, and, by gently clapping my hands with the case in between it, I removed the back, disconnected the cables, and swapped out the SE's MoBo for the SE/30's MoBo. I upgraded the SE/30 from ~ 6 MB of ram to ~69 MB of ram (I had 4 16 MB SIMMS... that I ordered a year ago, waiting for this moment. ) The SE/30 is now in the SE's case. It runs well, but its a bit quiet. No big deal, because the SE was always a bit too loud... )

The Hard Drive is still broken - in other words, it wasn't just a loose connection or a bad cable/SCSI IC.

Neither of the boards had any leakage capacitor-wise or battery-wise, but both had their PRAM batteries inside. The SE had a red one, so I made extra haste to remove it immediately! I knew it was dead anyways, but still... I don't want a battery acid'd board.

The SE/30 (in the SE's case) is now... a happy machine. But it still needs an HDD. I bought one though, and it's being shipped to me now. All I need to do now is buy a terminator - luckily, they're inexpensive, so it'll be no big deal.

Both thingies will need recaps... eventually, because they all appear to have their original caps... I think. Because they don't look like tantalum caps? Not like I know what they look like anyways... :lol:

I haven't put the screws back in, so I could, in theory, take pictures of the boards, but I'd rather not, because it's kinda difficult to take it out and put it back in due to the fact that my big, obnoxious hands have trouble reconnecting the internal SCSI cable. :lol:

Thoughts?

 

[James1095]

Unless it was owned by another collector, it is extremely unlikely that the capacitors were ever replaced. Quiet sound is a classic indicator of bad caps, personally I would re-cap it before bothering to do any other troubleshooting.

 

[macosten]

Uh oh, I guess I'll need to send the board over to uniserver. Unless I learn to cap it myself, which seems unlikely as I've never touched a soldering iron in my life before... )

Big question is: can it wait another week or two (or three, if things really don't work out)?

Then again the speaker pins were a little bent, but... I wouldn't see how that would affect it so much, I guess.

Although I do think that it would likely be a good idea to get it recapped.

On another note I love how the SE/30's SimpleBeep is like Mac OS 9's Simple Beep. From what I can tell, at least... I did hook it up to a pair of external speakers.

I also found what appeared to be a peach pit inside one of the computers. Funny, I don't think I'll be growing any Apple trees with it. :b&w:

 

[James1095]

It's probably needed it for several years, a few more weeks won't hurt anything.

The capacitors are always bad, these are ~25 year old machines, they were never intended to last that long. It's one of those things I don't even bother testing, I just replace the capacitors whenever I work on one of them. Sort of like I'd replace the belts, hoses, brakes and fluids on an old car that had been sitting around for years before driving it around much.