VOGONS


First post, by keenerb

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Only paid $10 for it at an estate sale, brought it home, turned on but wouldn't display anything.

I assume there was some huge battery on this sucker that went bad, I can hear somethign rattling around on the inside.

🙁

Reply 3 of 10, by Fimbulvetr

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Looks like another victim of a Maxwell bomb... far too common in those computers for the artery backup battery to blow and take out the computer.... and it is almost always a Maxwell branded one.

Reply 4 of 10, by cj_reha

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keenerb wrote:
feipoa wrote:

Looks like you'll be looking for a new SE/30 motherboard.

I'm actually considering parting it out and stick a 10" LCD and raspberry pi in it and run a Macintosh emulator...

If it's just the board, why go through the hassle? It's gotta be easy to find someone with a spare good board. Plus, you'll probably need to mod the Mac in the first place for the Pi, making it irreversible even if you do find another good board.

Last edited by cj_reha on 2018-04-22, 02:24. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 5 of 10, by feipoa

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If you find spares for cheap, let me know. I need another. Problem with these boards is that the battery leaks everywhere. If not the battery, then those caps leak everywhere. My caps leaked everywhere and ate up the traces.

Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.

Reply 6 of 10, by keenerb

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cj_reha wrote:
keenerb wrote:
feipoa wrote:

Looks like you'll be looking for a new SE/30 motherboard.

I'm actually considering parting it out and stick a 10" LCD and raspberry pi in it and run a Macintosh emulator...

If it's just the board, why go through the hassle? It's gotta be easy to find someone with a spare good board. Plus, you'll probably need to mod the Mac in the first place for the Pi, making it irreversible even if you do find another good board.

Based on the damage and the size of the battery, this is reminiscent of pinball board rot. I'd expect there's far more dead motherboards than bad cases. I'll be keeping an eye out but we'll see.

Refurbishing this Mac is pretty low on my priority list anyway, but it would make a pretty neat portable RetroPie box, to be honest...

Reply 7 of 10, by Eep386

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Oh nooooo!
That's a sad death for a quite grand old Mac. I used an SE/30 in grade school, and it was actually pretty slick and responsive for a 16MHz system.

Life isn't long enough to re-enable every hidden option in every BIOS on every board... 🙁

Reply 8 of 10, by Fimbulvetr

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SE/30 boards are expensive and hard to come by without damage, and always must be recapped. However, if you don’t mind the downgrade, you can just put an SE board in the case instead. They are cheap and easy to come by, rarely need recapping (and are not SMD like the SE/30) and they are much more reliable. If the CRT is fine in that case, find a gutted one to use for hacking instead. It would be a shame to junk a functioning CRT.

Reply 9 of 10, by keenerb

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Fimbulvetr wrote:

SE/30 boards are expensive and hard to come by without damage, and always must be recapped. However, if you don’t mind the downgrade, you can just put an SE board in the case instead. They are cheap and easy to come by, rarely need recapping (and are not SMD like the SE/30) and they are much more reliable. If the CRT is fine in that case, find a gutted one to use for hacking instead. It would be a shame to junk a functioning CRT.

Well the CRT didn't illuminate at all. Not sure how to test that. Should I see any pattern or brightening on powerup with these?

Reply 10 of 10, by Fimbulvetr

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I don’t know how to test it, mine all have functioning motherboards, but someone at 68kmla.org could definitely help out there. I usually ask the guys there when I have retro Mac problems...