💾 Archived View for uscoffings.net › retro-computing › collection › mac-se30 captured on 2023-09-08 at 16:09:00. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I bought this from the original owner on the east side of Salt Lake City in the early 2000s for (IIRC) $125.
It came with a 500 MB drive, and a surprisingly white case. It was clearly a loved machine.
Running MacOS 7.5.3 with much original software.
[](20160131-mac-se30-system.jpg)
[](20160131-mac-se30-about.jpg)
The capacitors were leaking (as expected).
Soon after purchase, the screen started displaying vertical bars of garbage: 16 columns of junk, 16 columns which were a CORRECT copy of what the prior 16 should have been, etc, repeating. Here is a [thread describing this problem](http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7\&t=17321).
This seemed similar (but not identical to) the [SimasiMac described here](http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~shamada/fullmac/repairEng.html#SimasiMac).
Based on the advice I got in from the 68kmla thread, I bought some new SMT 74253s from Mouser. I started by replacing the one that seemed the most corroded by the exploded capacitor. Unfortunately, this didn't fix the problem, but worse, I was not pleased with my soldering job. Solder didn't want to stick to the corroded pads, and the pads were lifting so scrubbing them clean wasn't easy.
Ultimately, I set this motherboard aside (for the mythical day that my soldering skills will be far better) and bought another SE/30 off eBay. This machine was yellowed and unloved, but the motherboard was good. I recapped this motherboard too, swapped, and am back up and running with good video.
Clue to my future self: After swapping the bad motherboard into the "unloved" case and powering it up, the sound seems to be going too. The board mostly looks clean, and it has new caps, so it's probably a good guess that the video and sound share a common cause.
De-soldered all old caps, taking care to not lift the pads.
Used rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to scrub the worst of the leaked electrolytic capacitor goo.
Repeatedly scrubbed the board under running water with Q-tips, toothbrushes, and baking soda to neutralize the last of the leaked capactors. My wife was surprised and almost certain I was destroying the board (but in the end, it powered up fine.)
[](20150321-000-mac-se30-replacement-mobo.jpg)
Mouser:
(9) 47uF 16V (1) 1uf 50V
On the second motherboard, I had a hard time getting solder to stick to the pads where I removed the old leaking capacitors. The best method I found to fix this was to take a copper solder wick, press it against the dirty pad with a hot soldering iron, and "wipe" it across the pad while hot. This sucked up the old nasty solder and simultaneously mechanically scrubbed the pad clean and bright.
Then be liberal with the flux, and pre-tin the pads, then press a SMT cap down with my finger while reflowing the solder into it. Beautiful.
8 * 16 MB, 120 ns, 30-pin memory
OWC (Other World Computing, aka macsales.com) used to sell 16 MB 30 pin SIMMs for this machine.
The SE/30 ROM is not 32-bit clean, so install MODE32 which is a software patch. Apple used to have it on their FTP site, but NetBSD still has it.
Tempting to run NetBSD on this machine, since it supports 128 MB RAM. But for the time being, my Quadra 700 is the NetBSD machine so this one can remain original.
[Repair Macintosh SE/30](http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~shamada/fullmac/repairEng.html)
[Joe aka Phreakout replaces SE/30 caps](http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7\&t=12018)