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Found SE/30 can it be fixed?

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Frozen001

Experienced Member
Joined
May 31, 2009
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101
I found this SE/30 laying around at work. Turned it on, and got some sounds, and then this is what shoed on the screen
 

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Yea did some internet research and found some similar answers. Going to take it appart and see if it is something easy.
 
If re-seating the RAM and ROM SIMMs doesn't fix the problem, your SE30 may be suffering from bad capacitors on the motherboard. This seems to be a particular problem for the SE30s. The capacitors can be replaced, though that takes patience and more than a little skill with a soldering iron.

Bloated capacitors (look like little round metal cans) or any signs of a sticky residue on the motherboard are good indicators that the caps are bad.

Try searching Google for simasimac (the Japanese term for this condition) or "re-capping SE/30", and you should find lots of info.

--
wthorbjo
 
You'll also get that screen if the filter network next to the external floppy port is blown.

Just beware, Apple used some incredibly heat resistant solder on those boards. To desolder things on them you'll want to add some solder first to the joints. Make absolutely sure you cleared the holes totally or you'll pull plate thrus.

You can remove that filter network (usually a yellow Dale brand cap/resistor network, but may be black on some boards) and run the board without it.
 
OK, So I opened up the case, and found a simm was loose. So I pulled out the motherboard, and reseated the simm, and put it back together. I turn it on, and now I get a screen with an image of a floppy in the middle with a blinking question mark. I assume this is because it needs a boot disk since the either the hard drive is shot, or just needs a reformating. Now moving forward. I do not have any other Mac's and I know I can download os's from apple, but how do I make the floppy disks. Is if possible from an XP machine? Also I do not have a keyboard or mouse. I assue any apple keyboard and mouse will work?
 
The instructions say to creake the disks using Disk Copy, which from the link on the site appears to be a MAC program.

This is my First mac, so this is all new to me.

I tried sticking a floppy in the drive just to see if it worked... i.e. spins. Well it sounded like it spun up then it stopped and sounded like the disk door slammed shut. not I get nothing out of the floppy. I am going to assume this means the floppy is shot.
 
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Frozen001 said:
The instructions say to creake the disks using Disk Copy, which from the link on the site appears to be a MAC program.

This is my First mac, so this is all new to me.

I tried sticking a floppy in the drive just to see if it worked... i.e. spins. Well it sounded like it spun up then it stopped and sounded like the disk door slammed shut. not I get nothing out of the floppy. I am going to assume this means the floppy is shot.
Click to expand...

When I first got my SE/30 the floppy drive didn't work. I opened it up and found dust bunnies clogging the unit. I gave it good vacumn to get rid of the dust, cleaned the heads with a cleaning disk and it then worked just fine.

I'm not saying this is the problem, but it's worth giving the drive a good clean if you haven't already.

Tez
 
Frozen001 said:
The instructions say to creake the disks using Disk Copy, which from the link on the site appears to be a MAC program.

This is my First mac, so this is all new to me.

I tried sticking a floppy in the drive just to see if it worked... i.e. spins. Well it sounded like it spun up then it stopped and sounded like the disk door slammed shut. not I get nothing out of the floppy. I am going to assume this means the floppy is shot.
Click to expand...

Macs use software eject mechanisms. When the OS is loaded, you drag the image of the disk to the trashcan to eject it. There should be a small hole beside the drive to do a manual "emergency" eject though.

I can't seem to remember ever creating Mac floppies on a PC though. I know it's possible, but I'm not familiar with the proper software. I suppose worst case you could get the disks mailed to you. It's only 4 for System 6.08. The SE/30 will run up to System 7.5.5. Which OS you want depends on what you want to do with the machine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7

Apple has System 7.5.3 available for free on their site. It's 19 disks though.

I'd be happy to help for cost of disks & postage if you can't get it going any other way.

Good luck!
__
Trevor
 
There is a program called TransMac that you can get a time-limited trial of that will let you format and read/write to/from on a PC to make disketes (and CDs) for a Mac.
 
Is there a hard drive inside it?

If so, do you hear it spin up?

If it's not spinning up, you can give it a whack to unstick it long enough to boot and copy the drive off to another small SCSI hard drive. Sticking heads were a VERY common problem on those old drives.
 
You can make the Mac eject the floppy by holding the mouse button down while powering up the computer.

I seem to remember making a set of System 7 floppies for my SE/30 using Linux, but that was a long time ago and I can't remember exactly how I did it.
 
channelmaniac said:
Is there a hard drive inside it?

If so, do you hear it spin up?

If it's not spinning up, you can give it a whack to unstick it long enough to boot and copy the drive off to another small SCSI hard drive. Sticking heads were a VERY common problem on those old drives.
Click to expand...
There is a hard drive inside. I don't hear is spin up, but then again could it just be too quite for me to hear? (I am thinking not)

I am going to take it apart again tonight and see if I can get the floppy working, and go from there.

While I have it opened up I will tap on the hard drive a bit and see what happens.

Also, I dug around some more at work (where I found this), and found an M0110A keyboard and external floppy. Could not find the cable to the keyboard. Is this something I can make up or but somewhere. The keyboard has what looks like an RJ-11 Jack.
 
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The SE/30 should be using an Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) keyboard and mouse. The cables are exactly the same as an S-Video cable, but proper keyboard cables are usually coiled, but s-video works in a pinch.

I believe much older compact Macs may have used RJ-11 cables, and searching google for that model number seems to indicate it belongs with a Mac Plus.

ADB is the same keyboard/mouse system used in the Apple IIgs, Next machines, and almost all Macintoshes until the PowerMac G4s. You might be able to find some cheap in a keyboard pile at Goodwill or another thrift shop for a few dollars.

Is there a Mac Plus around your work? Maybe it would like its keyboard back :p
__
Trevor
 
Frozen001 said:
While I have it opened up I will tap on the hard drive a bit and see what happens.
Click to expand...

If it's not spinning, don't be shy about beating the crap out of it. Seriously. Back in the day, I'd take an SE or SE/30 with a stuck hard drive and violently rock the whole computer back and forth, smacking each side of the bottom of the case on the bench a few times to unstick the drive.

If the case was open, I'd hook up a longer SCSI cable and power cables then do a quick spinning jerk to the drive to unstick it.

Either way works and you don't have to be gentle at all. It'll even work for awhile before sticking again, but it will always stick again. Just copy the data off and put a different drive in.

RJ
 
I plan to get one of the old-style all-in-one Macs like the SE/30, and I want to run StarCraft on it. I believe it requires 7.5 or 7.6 as the OS, anybody recall? Is the SE/30 powerful enough to do that? I know a guy with a bunch of classic Macs I can get from him, but I haven't had the chance to drive up to his place yet.
 
channelmaniac said:
If it's not spinning, don't be shy about beating the crap out of it. Seriously. Back in the day, I'd take an SE or SE/30 with a stuck hard drive and violently rock the whole computer back and forth, smacking each side of the bottom of the case on the bench a few times to unstick the drive.

If the case was open, I'd hook up a longer SCSI cable and power cables then do a quick spinning jerk to the drive to unstick it.

Either way works and you don't have to be gentle at all. It'll even work for awhile before sticking again, but it will always stick again. Just copy the data off and put a different drive in.

RJ
Click to expand...
Well About 6 good "taps" with the butt of a screwdriver and guess what the drive started to spin! turned it off and back on and it booted right up. Now to get a keyboard a mouse... looks like e bay has a few of them nicely priced.

I am still going to take it apart as the floppy I think is hosed, and It seems like I can get a working one relatively cheap. Any way to get these on the internet?
 
I plan to get one of the old-style all-in-one Macs like the SE/30, and I want to run StarCraft on it. I believe it requires 7.5 or 7.6 as the OS, anybody recall? Is the SE/30 powerful enough to do that?
Click to expand...

Absolutely not, and nowhere close, even. I don't recall the exact requirements, but I know it requires a PPC processor and at least a 640x480 color screen... the SE/30 has neither. Also, as far as OS, it may run on 7.6, but that would be the bottom limit... it was released well after OS 8 came out.
 
Frozen001 said:
Well About 6 good "taps" with the butt of a screwdriver and guess what the drive started to spin! turned it off and back on and it booted right up. Now to get a keyboard a mouse... looks like e bay has a few of them nicely priced.

I am still going to take it apart as the floppy I think is hosed, and It seems like I can get a working one relatively cheap. Any way to get these on the internet?
Click to expand...

Well, there are ways of bridging the built in LocalTalk serial ports to Ethernet, but that will be seriously slow (~230Kbps). The better way would be actual Ethernet, but the Ethernet cards for these machine are pretty rare, and often go for significant fractions the price of the machines themselves on ebay, sometimes over half.

__
Trevor
 
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