Upgrading RAM in SE

[equill]

Whether you remember touching the brightness control or not, check that the front-accessible brightness control is not fully anticlockwise. A quote from Apple for AASPs:

'Screen is dark; audio and drive operate:

1 Turn brightness control clockwise.

2 Check video cable connections.

3 Replace analog board.

4 Replace video board.

5 Replace logic board. Retain customer’s SIMMs.

6 Replace CRT.'

de

 

[MacTCP]

1 Turn brightness control clockwise.

Tried That

2 Check video cable connections.

Will try that now.

3 Replace analog board.4 Replace video board.

5 Replace logic board. Retain customer’s SIMMs.

6 Replace CRT.'

Hope I didn't break one of those…

 

[MacTCP]

Video connections all seem good. Guess I'll have to throw the mac away.

 

[tomlee59]

Don't give up quite yet. First, take a break. Watch a dumb sitcom. Eat some donuts.

After you return refreshed from that mental health break, double-check your work. Did you properly reconnect every cable that you disconnected? Make sure that you didn't reverse or offset anything. Also, verify that you properly set the memory configuration jumpers for the amount of ram you now have.

In stubborn cases, when troubleshooting this sort of problem, it's a good idea to roll back to the last known good configuration. Put the original ram back in (reset the jumpers, too), and see if it starts working again. It may be helpful also to disconnect things that are not strictly necessary for basic power up. Disconnect the HD, for instance, and see if that makes a difference.

Check the most common cause of a blank display: degraded solder joints at the 4-pin yoke connector. If they were marginal to begin with, they could've failed as a result of the amount of jiggling you inevitably had to produce to disassemble the thing. It's a good policy to freshen up those connections (and the flyback solder joints, too) while you have it open.

"Never give up. Never surrender." -- Galaxy Quest

 

[MacTCP]

I'll try those things tomorrow. Tonight, it's Nick at Nite and a box of Pop'Ems.

 

[tomlee59]

Now *that's* a plan!

Enjoy!

 

[MacTCP]

That was great. Now I'm going to open up the SE. What cable lets the CRT and motherboard interact?

 

[tomlee59]

There are several cables that do the job. One goes to the small square PC board at the base of the crt. That one is easy to dislodge, so check it carefully. Make sure it's seated firmly. It also marginally protects the "exhaust nipple" used to seal the crt after pumping down to a hard vacuum. If the nipple gets cracked, you'll hear an angry hiss for a few tense seconds as air fills the crt, killing it. If you didn't hear the hiss, you didn't crack it.

Another is the 4-wire "yoke" connector I mentioned earlier. There's an assembly around the neck of the crt -- that's the yoke. A four-wire cable runs from it to the analog board. The connector end that resides on the analog board is infamous for failing over time. Just resoldering -- with fresh solder -- the four joints often fixes things. While you're at it, refresh the semicircle of flyback transformer connections, too. All of these joints can fail in ways that are not obvious to the naked eye -- hairline cracks can be very small, so just solder, even if you don't think there's a need. Can't hurt, and it could help.

Yet another is the wide connector that you found difficult to pull out. That conveys signals between the analog board and the logic board. Make sure that it's seated properly. Make sure that it's not shifted by one pin, and make sure that in your efforts to remove it that no wires got pulled loose out of the assembly (rare, but it happens).

Hope the Pop 'Ems were tasty. Now you're ready for some troubleshooting!

 

[MacTCP]

I never heard a hiss. [] ]'> Right now, I'm trying to put it back together with old RAM, and floppy/hard drive disconnected. While I was doing that the other end of that hard-to-get-out wiggly plug with a clip came out from the other end by itself. The looseness may have been causing the problem. But I don't know where the other end of that plug plugs in.

 

[MacTCP]

Nevermind! Just got it in! Now to see if it works.

 

[MacTCP]

It works! ;D

 

[MacTCP]

But now the HD is finally dead after many almost-deaths. :-/ hohum.

I'm NOT replacing the HD because I'd have to put my hand VERY near, possibly on, the CRT. I'll just get an external.

 

[tomlee59]

Congratulations on getting it back up and running! Score another success for persistence (and TV + junk food).

Don't worry about the CRT. I know it's a scary thing (because many people make it out to be that way), but really, there is no danger as long as you have pulled out the power cord. All the HV bits are extremely well insulated, further reducing the already-small likelihood of a human-HV encounter.

This is a good opportunity to put a multi-GB drive into that compact. Go find one, partition into <2GB chunks, and you'll have a sweet little mac!

 

[MacTCP]

I'm just getting a 160mb one. I wouldn't use up all that space.

 

[LCGuy]

I'd like to back up what Tom Lee said about the CRT...although i've never worked in an SE, i've had the HD out of my Classic II many times, and i never ever had to handle the CRT, or put my hands anywhere near it, and it has the HD in the exact same place as the SE. Even so, the HV parts you'll be working near are very well insulated...i've touched the back of a few CRTs before, and no shock. Just keep away from obviously uninsulated parts (such as the deflection coil) and you should be fine. Even so...just touching the back of a CRT isn't really going to give you that great a risk of shock...lets face it, you can't get a shock by touching the glass on the front of a CRT, right? Same for most of the glass at the back.

 

[MacTCP]

I just took the cradle out easily, so I'm no longer afraid. I'm getting this drive. I doubt I would ever need more space than that, but I always have my Zip Drive.

 

[LCGuy]

Good to hear! See, we said it was easy!

 

[MacTCP]

Turns out I'll be getting a 500mb one. Plenty for System 6, right?

 

[LCGuy]

Heaps! Hell..even a 40 is hard to fill up with System 6!

 

[tomlee59]

It will take you a *long* time to fill up a half-gig drive with system 6 apps! That's plenty of space for all of your favorite apps, as well as for ones you will never, ever use.

Enjoy!