Planning my SE/30 Reloaded build

[sunvalleylaw]

Would love anyone's help and/or thoughts in planning out my Mac SE/30 Reloaded build.

I purchased from a guy who didn’t’t need it his purple Reloaded board with these additional parts:

(6) PLCC 20 sockets, (4) PLCC 68 sockets and (1) CPU socket, I have a NOS MC68030RC33B, 33MHz CPU, and I have a battery bombed Iivx I can harvest some stuff from. Maybe even use its CPU instead. I might probably do the Quadra conversion on the Iivx some day. But may as well use some of the Custom ICs & ASICs/proprietary, and through-hole components that I already have with this machine I found at the Boise Reuseum e-recycler.

Here are is the board and sockets and the NOS CPU.

I will need to decide if I want to try to do this myself, down the road after I do some practice building on easier stuff and improve my soldering skillz, or if I want to send it to someone to build for me. I may also find some help through my local vintage computer club, tvvcc.org the Treassure Valley Vintage Computing Club. I have started to study some threads here, and will study more closely, another person 's thread over on another forum I found, on his journey. I don't plan on being in a hurry, and the process and learning is a large part of what I hope to gain from this. I have a working SE modded to SE/30 already anyway.

I think I will use a new power supply. And maybe as much new parts/stuff as I can. I think, but have to look and be sure, that I have the analog board to recap also, but may look for a reloaded one. If I don't have an analog board, I will get one. I will want to find a good accelerator, and plan to find and use one day a ZigZagJoe color display kit, with the ability to drive a separate color monitor, if he makes more, or I can find one used, or something similar. As far as ethernet/internet, thinking I might end up using a Zulu SCSI Pico 2 slim as I am not sure I really will care that much about doing that much internet stuff on this machine.

I plan on using a SE/30 faceplate I have, and hope someday to find a clear SE enclosure for the back, if I can find one of those at some point. And I plan to max all the rest out over time too.

Shoot me your ideas or thoughts if you have any! This is definitely only in planning stages, and will be a work in progress.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Yay! Found a donor board, or rather its current owner, who is relatively local to me, found me via 68kMLA and my post there! And he has built reloaded boards and can assist me down the road. Awesome!

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Unless you plan on using the machine for testing, I'd avoid using the PLCC sockets, except for the ROMs. It's just one additional point of potential failure, especially if you're using chips harvested from a bombed board Unless the legs on those ICs are perfect, you're likely to have connection issues.

And SMD PLCC sockets are a real pain to solder. I don't recommend cutting the base out of the sockets, because it both weakens the socket, and can allow the chips to sink too far down and have connection issues.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Unless you plan on using the machine for testing, I'd avoid using the PLCC sockets, except for the ROMs. It's just one additional point of potential failure, especially if you're using chips harvested from a bombed board Unless the legs on those ICs are perfect, you're likely to have connection issues.

And SMD PLCC sockets are a real pain to solder. I don't recommend cutting the base out of the sockets, because it both weakens the socket, and can allow the chips to sink too far down and have connection issues.

Ok, good consideration.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Getting slowly closer. Confirmed a person nearby (also a forum member here) who has a donor board for me, and more than one local person who can help me with the harder stuff. Still a ways off from lift off on the project, but putting things together.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Oh, and also I have sourced my video card (one for each of my machines) and one accelerator card.

 

[Steve Rieck]

Potentially unpopular opinion but I like sockets on PLCC chips provided two things:

1 - They're very well installed. very clean soldering etc.

2. - You need to go in with an X-Acto kinfe under a microscope and physically pull each contact on the socket outward a bit ensuring strong contact to every single chip pin.

I just finished a reloaded board and socketed the following PLCC's - GLUE, FPU. SWIM, VIA1, VIA2, SCSI, SERIAL, ASC....also socketed are the CPU, Video ROM, Video PALS, Video RAM, Sony Sound Chips and of course the ROM and RAM.

Went down a troubleshooting rabbit hole for months when the culprit was just ...poor socket contacts. So it can work, you just have to be careful. And the contacts may weaken over time but at least I'll know what it is.

Even had one weisenheimer on the Facebook VAME tell me it absolutely would never work sort of shaming my post........well.

It works reliably so far and there are advantages to using sockets especially when you suspect bad chips. Again, you just have to install them well, manually pull the contacts on the sockets out a bit and of course, make sure the chips are clean.

Sockets or not, GOOD LUCK! Never quit!