Hello! First post, pleased to meet you.
I am the caretaker of a Macintosh SE/30 from 1989, and a lovely girl she is. Next time I have hand surgery (uh... tomorrow actually), I am blocking eBay on my router, because I have low impulse control when bored and on pain meds.
Petey (Pencil Test, or PT) came from eBay recapped with a replaced PRAM battery, five whole MEGABytes of RAM, a functional, newer-than-the-SE Quantum HDD that boots System 7.0.1, and a floppy drive that makes sounds like a disgruntled rabbit chewing on a power cord. No super concerning video artefacts out of the box (albeit a little bit of flickery flicker when booted from a cooldown).
So I shut her down and ordered new bits: a BlueSCSIv2™ internal, a new ROM SIMM (because I intend to get 128MB of RAM later), and a silenx fan. While I waited, it was time to open her up and print some stuff on my 3D printer. I also hacked apart an ATX power supply extension dingus so I could have the MLB on my bench later.
The TL;DR for where I am is:
Petey boots when the ROM is held in place correctly. The BlueSCSIv2™ activity light does not light, and the SCSIProbe 4.3 claims SCSI is not terminated properly. Until that happens, I have no drive to use and that is sad.
I won't be able to actively work on this for the next two weeks or so, and needed to get my thoughts down and collect suggestions on what to do next. Details follow.
Brain surgery on all-in-one toasters has a frission of danger and voltage that I do not enjoy. Once upon a time, I wore a stupid T-shirt behind a big corian bar and tried to avoid replacing power supplies on eMacs. So I know how to do it. Flathead, alligator clip, take out piercings, hand behind back, poke the sparky bit. (Yes, there's a bleeder resistor. eMacs had them too. Didn't stop them from trying to murder me. I smell like undercooked chicken when mildly electrocuted and I find that disturbing.)
Anyhow. The MLB was recapped, but not cleaned, or at least not well. Leads on the video multiplexers were pretty yuk. The analog board is untouched; functional and ok for the moment, but caps are on order. Sony Power Supply: same deal, caps on order.
I used fine tipped lint-free swabs and 99% iso alcohol with a microscope to clean the leads and traces on the main board.
The recapped logic board is cleaner than it was, and I have replaced the ROM. The 60 pin ROM SIMM clip is pretty trashed. The ROM she came with was dirty in more ways than usual; someone had hot glued it into the SIMM *and* then jammed two B-flavor PotatoFI mounts over the cold hot glue, which warped the mounts so that they don't work after being removed.
After spending a few hours with an Xacto knife and 99% iso alcohol, I have removed the hot glue and checked the connectors with a microscope; they aren't broken at least. *BUT*... Despite the SIMM being a decent thickness according to my calipers, PT doesn't POST chime and displays thick horizontal bands if the SIMM isn't pulled forward in P R E C I S E L Y the right amount. So I have deployed a pair of rubber bands for the moment, because I wanted to see how BlueSCSIv2™ does.
BlueSCSIv2™, as it happens, does not. Yet.
I have two device images on the SD card (System 7.1 and 6.0.8), and confirmed that the Pico likes them (log.txt is my friend). Basilisk mounted and booted from them in testing. Power light lights up when I boot from the ROM disk. The activation light does not. Light, that is. The termination jumper is set. But Petey does not see the device.
When I boot from the ROM disk and run SCSIProbe 4.3, it complains that the SCSI bus is not terminated. This, with *or* without SCSI cable and BlueSCSIv2™ attached. Hmm. Welp.
That is as far as I got. Grump. I have thumb surgery tomorrow, and it will be a few weeks before I will be able to work with both hands; I didn't want her sitting open to dust and the elements (read: cats, and their fur), so I have reassembled Petey and put components into a project box for the next week or two.
Thoughts from the last few minutes as I write this:
I have not tested the fuse at F1 on the MLB yet (because I only just now found that suggestion in The Dead Mac Scrolls, and time stubbornly moves forward for me despite the complaints I have lodged with The Management). Similarly, there are no jumper resistors installed at J3 and J5 near RP2 and RP3 on the MLB, and there shouldn't be; but if there were that would tell me that someone diddled with the SCSI chain. Also, I forgot to test with the Quantum SCSI hdd I replaced with BlueSCSIv2™ before I reassembled Petey; it *did* work before all this so that would be useful to try next time.
To sum up:
* I used some iso to swab clean parts of the main board, and I want to make sure to clean it more better later without upfucking it. I do not have an ultrasonic cleaner. I do have distilled water. Suggestions?
* rubber bands hold my ROMinator in place right now, and if it's stupid and works it isn't stupid. I will try printing new clips with tighter infill and dimensional stability whatzit for next time. If that doesn't work... replace the SIMM socket?
* BlueSCSIv2™ is not inside Petey rn. I do not know what to do next on this part of the project, but until it is solved, Petey is just an attractive box on my desk.
When the tendons in my dominant hand have stitched themselves back together, I will be able to take the next steps. Until then, I live in hope.
I am the caretaker of a Macintosh SE/30 from 1989, and a lovely girl she is. Next time I have hand surgery (uh... tomorrow actually), I am blocking eBay on my router, because I have low impulse control when bored and on pain meds.
Petey (Pencil Test, or PT) came from eBay recapped with a replaced PRAM battery, five whole MEGABytes of RAM, a functional, newer-than-the-SE Quantum HDD that boots System 7.0.1, and a floppy drive that makes sounds like a disgruntled rabbit chewing on a power cord. No super concerning video artefacts out of the box (albeit a little bit of flickery flicker when booted from a cooldown).
So I shut her down and ordered new bits: a BlueSCSIv2™ internal, a new ROM SIMM (because I intend to get 128MB of RAM later), and a silenx fan. While I waited, it was time to open her up and print some stuff on my 3D printer. I also hacked apart an ATX power supply extension dingus so I could have the MLB on my bench later.
The TL;DR for where I am is:
Petey boots when the ROM is held in place correctly. The BlueSCSIv2™ activity light does not light, and the SCSIProbe 4.3 claims SCSI is not terminated properly. Until that happens, I have no drive to use and that is sad.
I won't be able to actively work on this for the next two weeks or so, and needed to get my thoughts down and collect suggestions on what to do next. Details follow.
Brain surgery on all-in-one toasters has a frission of danger and voltage that I do not enjoy. Once upon a time, I wore a stupid T-shirt behind a big corian bar and tried to avoid replacing power supplies on eMacs. So I know how to do it. Flathead, alligator clip, take out piercings, hand behind back, poke the sparky bit. (Yes, there's a bleeder resistor. eMacs had them too. Didn't stop them from trying to murder me. I smell like undercooked chicken when mildly electrocuted and I find that disturbing.)
Anyhow. The MLB was recapped, but not cleaned, or at least not well. Leads on the video multiplexers were pretty yuk. The analog board is untouched; functional and ok for the moment, but caps are on order. Sony Power Supply: same deal, caps on order.
I used fine tipped lint-free swabs and 99% iso alcohol with a microscope to clean the leads and traces on the main board.
The recapped logic board is cleaner than it was, and I have replaced the ROM. The 60 pin ROM SIMM clip is pretty trashed. The ROM she came with was dirty in more ways than usual; someone had hot glued it into the SIMM *and* then jammed two B-flavor PotatoFI mounts over the cold hot glue, which warped the mounts so that they don't work after being removed.
After spending a few hours with an Xacto knife and 99% iso alcohol, I have removed the hot glue and checked the connectors with a microscope; they aren't broken at least. *BUT*... Despite the SIMM being a decent thickness according to my calipers, PT doesn't POST chime and displays thick horizontal bands if the SIMM isn't pulled forward in P R E C I S E L Y the right amount. So I have deployed a pair of rubber bands for the moment, because I wanted to see how BlueSCSIv2™ does.
BlueSCSIv2™, as it happens, does not. Yet.
I have two device images on the SD card (System 7.1 and 6.0.8), and confirmed that the Pico likes them (log.txt is my friend). Basilisk mounted and booted from them in testing. Power light lights up when I boot from the ROM disk. The activation light does not. Light, that is. The termination jumper is set. But Petey does not see the device.
When I boot from the ROM disk and run SCSIProbe 4.3, it complains that the SCSI bus is not terminated. This, with *or* without SCSI cable and BlueSCSIv2™ attached. Hmm. Welp.
That is as far as I got. Grump. I have thumb surgery tomorrow, and it will be a few weeks before I will be able to work with both hands; I didn't want her sitting open to dust and the elements (read: cats, and their fur), so I have reassembled Petey and put components into a project box for the next week or two.
Thoughts from the last few minutes as I write this:
I have not tested the fuse at F1 on the MLB yet (because I only just now found that suggestion in The Dead Mac Scrolls, and time stubbornly moves forward for me despite the complaints I have lodged with The Management). Similarly, there are no jumper resistors installed at J3 and J5 near RP2 and RP3 on the MLB, and there shouldn't be; but if there were that would tell me that someone diddled with the SCSI chain. Also, I forgot to test with the Quantum SCSI hdd I replaced with BlueSCSIv2™ before I reassembled Petey; it *did* work before all this so that would be useful to try next time.
To sum up:
* I used some iso to swab clean parts of the main board, and I want to make sure to clean it more better later without upfucking it. I do not have an ultrasonic cleaner. I do have distilled water. Suggestions?
* rubber bands hold my ROMinator in place right now, and if it's stupid and works it isn't stupid. I will try printing new clips with tighter infill and dimensional stability whatzit for next time. If that doesn't work... replace the SIMM socket?
* BlueSCSIv2™ is not inside Petey rn. I do not know what to do next on this part of the project, but until it is solved, Petey is just an attractive box on my desk.
When the tendons in my dominant hand have stitched themselves back together, I will be able to take the next steps. Until then, I live in hope.
Last edited:
