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Repair Log: SE/30

Once again it is SE/30 time! This poor board comes from another shop.

Symptoms: No video, no SCSI, no sound

Undoing previous work

It has had tantalum capacitors installed, but as usual we started by removing everything. We then went to probe the clock signals and noticed everything was actually working.

Testing

Now that the system was booting, we put on our BlueSCSI and tested the system. The system booted and loaded Mac OS. However once it got to the desktop it would say it could not initialize the disk. This was perplexing as we didn’t have a floppy connected. I went ahead and tested with my Floppy EMU and everything worked. It booted the OS install disk and presented no errors.

I wanted to see if sound was working, so I went ahead and populated the capacitors and attached the speaker. Upon turning it on, I was greeted with a chime. That’s another issue solved at least.

Checking traces

The board did have some questionable traces, so I went through and cleared the solder mask off. I tinned all the traces and found no broken traces. I also cleaned up some of the vias.

Fixing the floppy issue

I went through and checked all the traces from the SWIM and found no bad traces. I spoke with a friend who also fixes boards and they suggested it could be the resistor pack, thanks Will! Feeling that was easier than removing the SWIM, I desoldered the RP. I then turned the system on and found it booted properly. Satisified this was likely the issue I added a socket and stole another from another SE/30.

Testing again

I went ahead and turned the system on again and waited. The system booted and…loaded the desktop without an error! I was concerned

What Left?

At this point I need to replace the remaining capacitors and move forward with recapping the analog board and power supply.