Trying to get SE/30 running with Various Issues

[TheCaddyMan99]

I recently got this Macintosh SE/30 from a friend. It had no signs of life prior to me opening it, besides the fan turning on. When I opened it, I found the CRT was unplugged, I plugged it back in, only to find the horizontal scan was not working, just had one line going down the screen. No biggie. Reflowed the analog board, put it all together, now I have a full display. This is where things take a step for the strange.

The hard drive appears to be dead, shocker, I know. And when I start it for the first time within a ten minute span it has this garbbled screen, stays until you turn the machine off. When you turn it on a second time, it all works as should, with some exceptions. I don't hear a startup chime, but occasionally will hear crackles through the front speaker, not sure if that's a speaker issue, but it seems common, as my other Mac SE and Mac SE/30 also have no sound of any kind from said speaker. also maybe of interest, the hard drive sounds like it is trying to work. I have no indication of this, as the status LED doesn't illuminate at all. But I can hear it spinning and I can hear the heads moving, but it reaches the floppy disk with a question mark.

I have not done any recaps as none of my caps are leaking or pregnant, could it be that they're out of spec?

Any advice is appreciated

 

[wottle]

All my SE/30 caps looked good, but I had low audio. When I removed the caps, they had leaked badly underneath and you couldn't see the leakage under the caps. I'd say replace them all now. They are almost certainly damaging components, and are definitely out of spec.

 

[retr01]

@TheCaddyMan99, I agree with @wottle. Replace all caps in any compact Mac. Those are over 30 years old, and usually, things go wrong after one thing after another.

 

[Volvo242GT]

Definitely time for a recap. With respect to the random garbled screen issue, while the bucket is off, move the logic board to analog board harness and see if the computer either restarts, or, if it's already running, freezes. My dual FDHD SE had a harness that had a couple pinched wires. At first, I thought it was bad solder joints on the AB, but, decided to test a theory I had out, by flipping the cable around. Problem moved with the cable to the other end. Bought a cable off of a 68kMLA member. Installed it, and problem went away.

 

[TheCaddyMan99]

Interesting that the analog board could cause all these issues. I've ordered Recap kits for the main board electrolytics and tantalum caps as well as the kits for my power supply and analog board. Will have to do the same for my other two compact macs as well at some point. I will have to thoroughly go through this all at some point.