Macintosh SE Restoration video

The 8-Bit Guy

use my email account: dfwgreencars@gmail.com

Lorin Millsap

How do I send you a picture?

The 8-Bit Guy

yes.. I am in need of one.. obviously it has to be an Apple version.

Lorin Millsap

Do you need a 1.44 MB drive? I might have one.

The 8-Bit Guy

No. But I guess it is a moot issue now that somebody sent me a working board. :-) (although I haven't tried it yet)

Have you looked through Larry Pina's books? "Macintosh repair and upgrade secrets" and "the dead Mac scrolls" those two books alone have helped me repair dozens of the old compact macs

The 8-Bit Guy

Well, when I first got it a few years ago, the screen was extremely blurry and dim. After I replaced the caps on it, now whole machine no longer works. :-(

Out of curiosity, what are the symptoms of your Mac plus? You mentioned that you've tried recapping the analog board - usually that's not the issue on the older machines though (it wasn't until the SE that leaky caps started to be a regular issue). Also, if I remember correctly, your Plus was working in an older episode (Apple's mistakes), so is this a recent problem?

The 8-Bit Guy

I'm not sure if I'll do an episode on that or not. I mean, there isn't a lot to cover there. However, I want to get the machine working so that I can do a video where I demonstrate appletalk networks.

Lorin Millsap

I look forward to seeing an episode in that. ;)

The 8-Bit Guy

I know how you feel. I have a Mac Plus with a bad analog board too. I've tried replacing all of the caps but it still doesn't work. However, somebody just sent me an analog board for it so I'm about to resurrect it!

Lorin Millsap

The answer to that is yes. You don't want it plugged it, but you do want it grounded. Ask me how I learned. I made a mistake on my Mac plus working on it. 40,000 volts hurts. I grounded to chassis, but the chassis wasn't grounded, so it decided I was an acceptable substitute.

Lorin Millsap

I used to have a Mac Plus. I painted it a real color both to be custom, and back then retrobrite hadn't been discovered. However something in the analog board went bad and no one I knew of at the time was willing to diagnose at a reasonable price.

The 8-Bit Guy

That would be quite a chore. But it has been done before. Maybe someday I will give it a try.

While watching your video I thought it'd be really cool to have a modern replica of the Machintosh cabinet with modern specs.

Wizardteknik

Fantastic work! I am about to crack open my SE to fix a CRT issue. FYI I use a back to back modem configuration to transfer files even though I have one of the SD to SCSI adapters.

The 8-Bit Guy

After doing the video I had a fan offer to send me an SE/30. So maybe I'll have one eventually.

The 8-Bit Guy

I thought about that. But I'm not convinced the mounting holes are right because they are not uniform spacing.

Dale Mahalko / Plawerth

Bravo on the shop skills, but you didn't need to go through all that work on your SD/SCSI board bracket. It looks like it has 2.5" mounting screw holes, so you just needed a 2.5" to 3.5" flat plate bracket adapter. These are easily obtainable, like NewEgg #9SIACJF54D3092, for $4.50.

@James Sutherland The CRT acts like a giant capacitor. One terminal of the capacitor is the suction cup, the other terminal is local ground. So he did the correct procedure!

James Sutherland

To drain a CRT don't you have to drain it to ground? In the video you drained it to the ground lug but unless the power supply was plugged in there would be no ground there. No path to earth. However it has been a long time since I did this and I'm no expert ... and maybe it was plugged in but the video just didn't show it. No biggie, I'm just curious.

Excellent video David,very enjoyable.

Back in the day I always carried Norton Utilities in my backpack for this reason. I wish I still had a copy.

The 8-Bit Guy

I don't have any way to really test the RAM at this point. If there is some utility on disk maybe I could.

Have you verified RAM is good? My guess is that since it is locking up at various points during boot and disk initialization etc. that RAM could be the culprit.