Mac SE/30 revival

[bcc]

Have recently picked up a Mac SE/30 I have been attempting to restore. (It called out to me).

I have zero experience with old Apple products as I was focused on CP/M-80 and The PC's of Dell for years.

The system had the HD stripped out of it, no Keyboard, mouse or diskettes of any kind.

Managed to pull the board and replace the capacitors and Battery.

Sourced a keyboard and mouse (shaky/jerky response)

Replaced one SIMM socket that was busted.

Restored/rebuilt the 1.44 Sony DS/HD Floppy drive with auto inject/eject issues.

Replaced the std ROM with a 32 bit "clean" rom module and bootable drive using CTL-R into 7.01

Upgraded Memory Simms from 5Mb to 68Mb.

Finding some difficulty in locating a suitable SCSI drive adequately sized and able for the OS to format...have an 18GB 10K Quantum SCSI non-Apple drive but understand if I ever install OS 7.6 I would need about 70-80 GB drive just to install that OS...true?
I have been targetting install of System 7.5.3.

Understand a modified Disk utility can format non-Apple HDs (but running into OS mismatch issues and lack of an installed HD is also a short term problem).

Still search for a suitable SCSI drive, but now considering installing SCSI2SD drive. Is there a particular recommended supplier and/or thread on this topic?

Also picked up an Assante card suitable for the SE/30, but finding it extremely difficult to locate the chassis bracket to mount the I/O connector board (see pictures). Any help appreciated on locating one of these...Is there a way to know if that bracket exists in a system by Partnumber? How were those brackets supplied?
Anyone have a spare to sell?

 

[Al Kossow]

Is there a way to know if that bracket exists in a system by Partnumber? How were those brackets supplied?
Anyone have a spare to sell?

pn is 805-0989-B
it should have shipped in every SE/30 so the easiest way is probably going to be just find a gutted SE/30 chassis

just noticed it's not a separate part in a SE chassis
https://www.ebay.com/itm/141921034664

 

[clh333]

Finding some difficulty in locating a suitable SCSI drive adequately sized and able for the OS to format...have an 18GB 10K Quantum SCSI non-Apple drive but understand if I ever install OS 7.6 I would need about 70-80 GB drive just to install that OS...true?

I think that your estimate of a 70-80 Gb requirement is high. I have a Mac Quadra 650 running OS 8.1 on a 1 Gb hard disk. According to the system only 1/3 of the capacity is used at this point.

I have a Mac G3 with OS 9.2 and it is running on a 9.x Gb hard disk.

So your 18 Gb Quantum should be plenty, if you want to dedicate it for that task.

-CH-

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Finding some difficulty in locating a suitable SCSI drive adequately sized and able for the OS to format...have an 18GB 10K Quantum SCSI non-Apple drive but understand if I ever install OS 7.6 I would need about 70-80 GB drive just to install that OS...true?
I have been targetting install of System 7.5.3.

Jesus no. System 7.x is limited to partition sizes of 4 GB, and 7.6.1 takes up like 40 mb at most, typically a lot less. I would recommend to either run System 7.0.1 or 7.1 on a SE/30 because 7.5.x incorporated a lot of bloat at a time when Apple was on a buying spree of 3rd party software to incorporate into the OS. System 7.6.1 isn't recommended because it's more geared to run on 68040 and PowerPC based Macs and will be a lot slower.

Understand a modified Disk utility can format non-Apple HDs (but running into OS mismatch issues and lack of an installed HD is also a short term problem).

Still search for a suitable SCSI drive, but now considering installing SCSI2SD drive. Is there a particular recommended supplier and/or thread on this topic?

Yeah there is a custom version of Apple HD SC setup which will format non-Apple BIOS'd drives. I think I have a copy of it somewhere still because most of my 50 pin SCSI drives don't have Apple firmware on them.

Also picked up an Assante card suitable for the SE/30, but finding it extremely difficult to locate the chassis bracket to mount the I/O connector board (see pictures). Any help appreciated on locating one of these...Is there a way to know if that bracket exists in a system by Partnumber? How were those brackets supplied?

If you can get the dimensions of this part, I can print one out for you. If you're in Austin, TX, I could try and measure your case and internals to make designs for the part.

 

[bcc]

pn is 805-0989-B
it should have shipped in every SE/30 so the easiest way is probably going to be just find a gutted SE/30 chassis

just noticed it's not a separate part in a SE chassis
https://www.ebay.com/itm/141921034664

The bracket looks like it screws in, so if you had no need for it, I can see it laying in the corner of the garage because it's sort of in the way of things if you don't need it.


Yeah, but the SE chassis covers up the expansion euro connector needed by the main Assante Net card...

 

[bcc]

I think that your estimate of a 70-80 Gb requirement is high. I have a Mac Quadra 650 running OS 8.1 on a 1 Gb hard disk. According to the system only 1/3 of the capacity is used at this point.

I have a Mac G3 with OS 9.2 and it is running on a 9.x Gb hard disk.

So your 18 Gb Quantum should be plenty, if you want to dedicate it for that task.

-CH-

I think you are right, must have been MB I was thinking of instead of GB...

Thanks

 

[bcc]

Thanks for all the replies.


Gigabite,

I'll target System 7.01

It would be great to get a modified copy of HD SC Setup knowing I will target System 7.01
Currently unable to complete that modification with what I have working on hand.

I'll keep looking for a scrapped chassis that might have the bracket, but will keep your offer in mind if I'm unable to locate...and thanks very much for the offer.

 

[3pcedev]

Patches for HD SC setup are available here: http://lowendmac.com/2007/format-any-hard-drive-for-older-macs-with-patched-apple-tools/

Note that I have had limited success with patching HD SC setup and trying to initialise a SCSI2SD. The way HD SC setup does it's drive check is very basic; it just looks at the SCSI vendor ID and the product ID of the device, goes to a lookup table of approved drives and checks if it is there. When patched it supposidly skips the check; however I have found that it still doesn't work with certain drives.

I found that Drive Setup works much better and is more likely to work with a given HDD. It also requires patching; however it's native list of supported drives is much longer.

There is a lot of good info on it here, as well as setting up a SCSI2SD (scroll down a bit for the drive setup info): https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/27215-fitting-a-scsi2sd-in-a-68k-mac/

When initialising a SCSI2SD in my macs I usually refer to the approved drive list in the above link, set the SCSI2SD to something like 'QUANTUM' which works instantly (even unpatched).

 

[3pcedev]

The bracket looks like it screws in, so if you had no need for it, I can see it laying in the corner of the garage because it's sort of in the way of things if you don't need it.

I think your right; most people remove them and don't bother reinstalling. As I recall they get in the way when trying to disconnect the fdd cable or something; even when the bracket isn't populated. I know I have to remove mine when taking out the logic board; but it does also have a network card header attached.

2 of my SE/30's had them missing when I purchased them; when I bought a network card the seller was nice enough to include the bracket and screws for free.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I think your right; most people remove them and don't bother reinstalling. As I recall they get in the way when trying to disconnect the fdd cable or something; even when the bracket isn't populated. I know I have to remove mine when taking out the logic board; but it does also have a network card header attached.

2 of my SE/30's had them missing when I purchased them; when I bought a network card the seller was nice enough to include the bracket and screws for free.

If it's not too difficult, could you make measurements of the bracket so I can make a model of it?

 

[bcc]

Gigabite,

I took some measurements on the chassis and on the I/O plate holes as follows...there are 3 holes in the chassis that mount the bracket.

Looking from the rear of the chassis, the 2 lower right holes are 29mm apart, center to center and appear to be one above the other. The top one could be considered to be "0,0" origin.

The left side mounting hole is not in line with the top one on the right (the origin). It sits 115.6mm to the left and 13mm up from there (-115.6, +13.0) to the center of the hole.

I have no relationship from any of the 3 chassis bracket mounting holes to the I/O panel hole locations relative to the origin,
but the distance I measure between the 2 holes on my Assante I/O panel is 105mm center to center.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Sorry for the long delayed reply. I had several goes at trying to reproduce the bracket with no success. I tried to extrapolate the dimensions of the bracket on the picture using your dimensions and it just wouldn't work since the bracket in the picture is on an odd angle.

An example would be the mounting holes, the dimensions you gave between the two holes on the right is 29mm, but I get 36mm from my measurements using the picture and a different measurement between the top right and middle left hole.

Without having hands on access to a SE/30 to do my own measurements, or the physical bracket in hand to duplicate it in modelling software, I won't be able to duplicate it, sorry.