Mac SE/30: The Resurrection 

I wrote my PhD on an SE/30 (2 Mb - 40 Mb) in 1990 with SuperPaint 2 and MS-Word 3. I still have one in the lab and boot it from time to time to impress the students - Success guaranteed 100%. Thanks for reviving this beautiful machine

Really fun video with very pleasing camera work. Great job saving that poor SE/30! Shocking to see the damage endured to that second SE/30 from that battery!

I recapped my SE/30 a few years ago. I picked up a ROMinator, a SCSI2SD, and some other goodies and have been happily click-clacking away on this old bird ever since. I love the thing. It has been in my life for a very long time. I will never get rid of it. I was lucky that my SIASIMAC issue ended with the re-cap work. Thanks for the video.

Great video. There's just something about classic Macintoshes that makes me happy. My favorite operating system is actually System 7, its aesthetic simplicity and ease of use, combined with great applications totally make it. Also, that SE30 boots faster than my XPS 15!

Wow... can't believe it was just the RAM. Awesome lead-up, I am so glad that you resurrected that machine. Amazing work.

That backlit shot where you pulled it from the IsoBath was beautiful...

Your content is always so detailed and satisfying to watch. Your scripts are thorough but easy to follow, and your video to accompany it is a treat. Keep up the great work!

Personally; even if the board-level work on the SE/30 wasn't required to get it operational, at least you've got peace of mind that it's unlikely to just up and die on you any time soon, especially giving it that isopropyl bath to clean it up as you did.

Very stoked I just found this channel! SUBSCRIBED! I have an SE/30 and an SE - along with a Wifi modem I use to get online with it from time to time. Great fun!

Really good video. It demonstrates how persistent you are and continue to be. One of the best videos do far.

My gawd, this channel is bringing back some memories. Back in the early 2000s I was big into vintage Macs, probably owning over 20 at one stage. Eventually space concerns and commonsense took over and I sold them off. One that I kept long term was an SE/30 I’d bought for a mere $25. For a few bucks more I maxed the RAM at 32Mb, popped in a (apparently rare) PDS Ethernet card and used it on and off for years. It too suffered from the display issue, but only if it didn’t get switched on at least once a month. I was under the impression is was an issue with the analog board... sometimes it’d need 10-20 mins to warm up before the sync circuitry worked properly. Thanks to the surge in old Mac collectibility after Steve’s passing I ended up selling for over $400.

I had every MAC from the Lisa forward to the IIFX and threw them out in 2002 all were in working order... I was a Mac tech for many years... aligning that screen is a cakewalk

Wow! All that works just to realize that, sometimes, the solution to the problem is very simple. We're just didn't see it at first. Still, great work on this project!

My first Mac ! bought in 1989, with a student plan... I have used this machine for 9 years (System 6 through 7.5). Perhaps the best desktop computer I ever used. Thanks for the video. François (in Paris).

Great job for sticking with the restoration on this Mac! I like seeing old hardware restored to working order.

Thanks for sharing your adventure with us. I have a couple of Macs that have similar issues that seemed to daunting to get into, but you make it seem a lot more approachable.

Man, I don't know why but the sound of old hard drives is so incredibly soothing to me.

I had this exact same problem with my Mac SE/30 this week but I only saw this video after I'd also figured out that faulty RAM was the problem. Glad to find someone else who had an SE/30 with simasimac that was also caused by the same problem as everything I found online about the problem made no mention of faulty RAM being a potential cause.

As for the retro brighting issue of the yellowing returning.... this is because in nearly all of those cases people used the UV method of retrobrighting, which causes a unique property of computer plastics to go screwy. Electronics plastic discoloring comes from two sources, good old oxidation which is usually very gradual and dependent on the type of plastic creating a soft faded appearance. And then there is the fire retardant chemicals in the plastic, which causes the harsh dark yellowing were all familiar with. There are two methods for retro brighting, Heat and UV. With the Common UV method, the H2O2 will remove the plastic oxide discoloring on the surface. However the UV then reacts with the retardant caused discoloration by literally destroying it, it then leeches out of the plastic and then the H2O2 fully oxidizes it removing the color. You get a fresh look on the surface, but congrats you've also now exposed the next deeper layer of unaffected fire retardant to UV light from CFL bulbs and the sun! And unlike the top layer you just removed, you won't be able to retrobright the new yellowing as easily a second time with the same method, as the UV will again destroy it, BUT! It won't be able to leech out as effectively and the H2O2 can't penetrate down to oxidize it. This is why you need to use the heat method, use 130-150F hot water/ H2O2 bath to promote rapid surface oxidation of the plastic. The heat causes the plastic to expand on the molecular level allowing the H2O2 to penetrate deep enough to reach the damaged retardant and oxidize it... BUT the retardant remains intact and isn't completely destroyed as in the UV concentrated method, thus it does not leech out as its molecules are to large in its intact state. The result? Uniform brightening for one, AND with thr surface layer of retardant intact the deeper layers won't be exposed to UV light and so if it yellows again you can use the Heat method to effectively re retro bright it back to normal with little trouble and the effect lasts longer. However regardless no matter what, yellowing will eventually return. It will oxidize to oxygen and ANY UV light exposure over time will darken it. So in conclusion it you intend to retro bright it....don't expose it to sunlight or CFL bulbs as they will yellow them the same as they had been.

One of your best videos yet, I hope this gets more views because it was a pleasure to watch this go from faulty to fixed.

That was satisfying to watch, Colin. Great refurbish and video!

I only ever used a Mac SE as a kid, so when you hit that switch and it made that soft little chime rather than that fierce ancient BEEEEEP, that seemed like an anachronism.

I may be making a pilgrimage to this "Free Geek" place. If they've got old Mac keyboards and SCSI drives, I wonder what other goodies they might have... Brilliant show sir, I'll definitely be following some of your tips when I finally get back to work on my SE/30. That hard drive isn't going to last forever, unfortunately, and that SCSI to SD thing looks awesome!

Love to see another SE/30 rescued. As a owner of a working one for 32 years now, I must admit it is something special to turn on from time to time...

OMG that demo of the audio settings!!!! It's like I was still there. Thank you so much!!!

This reminds me my first Mac. It was an SE 4/40 that had been used by a Marine Biology TA at the University of Hawaii in the late 1980's. The last thing he'd written was a resume, which lent a poignant note to this Mac's old life. At the time (mid 1990), I was a Windows-only computer user who wondered what color the grass was on the other side of the digital divide. Thanks to a college classmate who was a veteran Apple II user from way back, it was time to search eBay for parts to upgrade this old Mac. After a year of adding this and that, the unit was an SE/30 32/540 that might surf the Internet if I could find a rare display board. I stopped the upgrade and gave it to an unfortunate Pckard Bell desktop PC user. Then I began searching eBay for a "portable Mac." This led to the lowendmac website and information about Mac laptops. After some false starts and lost bids, I bought an ex-middle-school Mac PowerBook 1400C. This led to an ex-Canadian PDQ PowerBook, and finally to a 2012 MacBook Pro. It has been "a long, strange journey" with many interesting tangents to Lenovo ThinkPads.

I have an se/30 that I plan to upgrade, and I didn't know about the aftermarket rom chip. Also nice to see a hard drive conversion in action. You earned a sub from me👍

The SE/30 was the best Mac investment of the late ‘80’s. it stayed current much longer than many other Macs. I do love my Color Classic w the the mystic pizza mod

This guy is through and obviously a hardware fanatic. Highly skilled.

The hard drive actually came out of that SE/30, it was wiped in an external SCSI enclosure which must have handled the termination and scsi id for it. Glad to see that the parts from the second SE/30 were able to help you get this one up and running. I am in the same boat when it comes to retro-brite, for the most part I am ok with the discoloration on computers in my collection, but I do want to try more experimentation with it.

Worked for a DJ company back in the 90’s and used this machine. Loved it! I remember the external hd was 40 mb!😀 Also had a Classic too. Boss had a Power Book 5300. Amazing what it could do. We’ve come a long way !

I like the yellowing tbh, has character and charm.

I did a write up on what I called the Ultimate System 7 years ago back when I was in high school. The Mac SE cost a small fortune back then, and was a very nice computer. My first Macintosh was a mac classic. In school we used mac plus and even had a scanner. Mac's are so much fun! Just seeing a pixelated scanned image back then was awesome!

Holy cow, Just found your channel and completely loving it. Plus to find out your in the twin cities/near loving it.

A quick recap is in order Also you; replaced the capacitors in the last video I see what you did there Colin...

Glad to see you taking things in stride, while still figuring things out. If I didn’t know any better, you and 8 Bit dude are friends, but you handle yourself with much less arrogance, which I greatly respect.

I Hope you do another video on this Mac, and do a Retro-bright on it, the 8-Bit Guy use this process with a very high success, maybe you could ask him for some tips, but if you watch a few videos on his channel you will get the way on using retro-bright. I really like your videos and the way you speak and explain everything. I'm a big fan from Brazil!

I changed the batter holder in my SE/30 to a CR2032 Battery holder which now I don't have to worry about exploding battery. The screen alignment you can adjust that on the analog board were the CRT gets its high voltage, there should be a paper guide covering the bottom of the board.

What a relief to see that little guy finally boot

Hey man! I'm new to the channel, and really enjoying your content so far. Very cool retro tech videos, and the production quality is superb.

Oh darn. This video is SO well done (really professional) and so thorough, that I now feel compelled to find the two semi-broken SE/30s I’ve got in storage and get on with my project to make them happy. 😊

Those floppy drive whirring noises make me happy. :')

I worked on one of these at my second newspaper job. It also had an external monitor... that was the same as a legal sheet of paper (8.5 x 14). And the monitor swiveled between portrait and landscape! It was amazing to work with, and much more versatile than "coding" text with a Compugraphics typesetting system.

Great video, Colin. Really glad it worked out in the end - very well deserved.

Working on these machines machines in the 90's I remember that ram was finicky, that it had to be the right ram chip. So I'm not surprised by what you had to go through. So fun to see that machine. There was programs like cricket and I think SPSS at the time for statistical analysis. But I remember cricket was so cool to use and super fast. I wonder if there's any copies of cricket out there.

Farrrrr outttt...... solid work mate, very persistent, well done

I love the word "troubleshooting". It reminds me of duckshooting in an arcade 😁. But seriously, thanks for a great video! Your commitment and love of these old machines is amazing!

YES! You did it! I was hoping we’d get an update about this soon.

Great job.. in 1989 I didn’t even know computers really existed.. I had other interests at the time. Thanks it was entertaining to watch you.

Congrats on getting it working. I have a couple SE's (Not SE/30's) I'm working on restoring. Another great video as always.

That's neat. I appreciate your appreciation for vintage hardware.

I wish I had the room to set up a separate retro office, at which point I'd very much like to once again have my Mac Plus 1MB, or a similar such as the SE30, etc... I do currently have other retro machines packed away, but my first computer was made when I was, back in 84. It was new to me by around 1990, and it was my world. Purchased second hand from the actual inventor and patent holder of Miracle Ear hearing aids, as well as some other items, it came with so so much. Image writer 1 and 2, accessory fan that mounted in the carry handle area and turned the Mac on with a top mounted switch rather than the typical rear one. Everex 20MB external SCSI HDD... Two external floppies along with the internal of course... and every bit of software ever made for the platform, quite literally. From database to CAD to office to games to any and everything.. all with their original spiral bound books and cases. And I just gave it all away back in the late 90's after getting my first PC in 97, seeing no value in it then... being a young asshat. The diversity, rarity of many items, and complete nature of the set would have easily netted thousands in value today, and I just tossed it. So seeing this, especially it booting from floppy... man is that a familiar and fondly remembered sight. The thing that made it magical back then though, was the learning... It was just this entire world unfolding as I taught myself, well... everything. Then given my age and timeline, my schools all had LC computers... LC1 through 3's, which I was always able to migrate "newer" software from, System and Finder versions, etc... copy them to floppies, bring em home, and improve on my old 1984 platform, which was truly no lesser than the LC's back at the school, simply less a color screen. Which MY GOD did I long for. I used to fantasize about swapping CRT tubes out, etc... I wanted color in the worst of ways back then, lol. Needless to say, when I got that Packard Bell Multimedia 233MMX in 97, the world and it's limits grew exponentially. Allowing me to teach myself how to overclock, what 3d cards were, how to overclock those, how to water cool with peltiers, surgical tubing, pumps / reservoirs, etc. What a time. . . A time that no matter how many old things I get today, I can't replicate.

My memories of personal computing in the decade of the 80s tended to revolve a lot around being frustrated with storage device speeds - whether floppy or harddisk Putting a modern solid state storage device in place of those old 80s spinning relics is just the tonic to kind of give those computers a new lease on life - makes them significantly better than they were back in the day. That's actually kind of a fun part of the retro computing hobby - hopping up those old 80s retros with some select modernizations here and there (but I suppose that kind of offends the sensibilities of those that are totally into the authentic restoration side of things)

My favorite Macintosh of all time.

Amazing video. I've been a lurking fan for a while now. Your editing is amazing. And you are a very natural speaker. I wish I had that talent. Maybe with some more practice. Thanks for this amazingly entertaining video!

Great, splendid, WONDERFUL :) Thank you very much for this very very intereting video. I'm an Apple fan since I'm maybe 4 years old, I was nearby born with the Macintosh (I'm from June 1984), and my first one was an SE/30. I really want to begin restoring some old Apple computers for years but could not find the time to begin dealing with this. Now I have place at home (a great garage), I can start this and my first projets will be a Macintosh Plus and my old SE/30... Hope they will come back to life. Also, i always wanted to restore a Lisa but never saw one in real since I was maybe 3 or 4. I have discovered a new Computer museum 30 km from home, which has received old Apple ones and at least 3 Lisa's but no one knows if they are working, they must be tested prior to be powered on, and, of course, beginning with the power Supply. This is a chance, they need a fan and I need the computers to be repaired, we are speeaking about doing it together. Great project as Lisa's are really very difficult to find today, or crazilly expensive when you see people trying to sell one "Non-Working exemplar" for two thousands or more dollars... Thanks again. Michel

It's a beautiful machine, no doubt. I have one myself and just love passing by it everyone and again.

Congratulations on the finish project. For me I won't have the patience to repair it.

I was looking foward to see this Mac again! Love it!

That the video I like! Great quality, entertaining, and useful as well. +Like

you're the man!!! you have motivated me to unpack my se30 and get it going again!!!

I'm glad you save it!

One of the better classic macs. Thanks for the video!

that scuff you removed was Woz signature

You deserve more subscribers. Your content is great!

Regarding the terminator, a lot of older SCSI devices relied on external termination. Basically a special terminator block at the last connector on the SCSI chain. But you came out pretty good without it!

Amazing work as always! Who knew it would be so simple?

Thank you for the good video - it explains a lot and the simple solution is always the best one! I have worked on many SE/30s (and compact Macs for that matter), and I cringed at a few things whilst watching this video (btw I am not having a go at you): 1) 2:14 - You didn't show the part where you removed the power cable from the logic board, but you should always remove the little analog board on the back of the tube to prevent any damage. Trust me, I have broken at least 2 tubes (maybe 3) by pulling the power cable excessively, bumping the little analog board and breaking the nipple on the tube. It's not a good feeling where you hear a big suction for 2 seconds and you know you have broken the tube. 2) 6:08 - The 4x SIMMs on the left appear to be all matched - always recommended. The 4x SIMMs on the right are not only mismatched with brand but also speed (I can't read all the numbers.) To avoid crashes 80ns or slower (90ns or 100ns) should be used. The 70ns will work but will lead to crashes eventually. 3) 11:44 - Whoever opened this Mac had used a flat blade screwdriver, which leaves little marks in the casing. A MacCracker should be used, but I have opened up so many now that I could usually pull them apart by hand ie right hand on the front and left hand on the back and wiggle them apart. I got so used to this method my success was 99/100. I had to use a MacCracker on one of them cos it was too tight. Anyway, apologies for the long comment. I will hopefully have something up soon...

In terms of RAM, which you discovered was the issue. You can always try RAM in stages, just the minimal amount of RAM at a time, not all RAM at once. Troubleshooting is typically about isolation, which simply means removing as many parts as possible to isolate the issue down to a part. Good video, thank you!

I really enjoyed the video and the process of troubleshooting Also I always liked this design it’s very iconic

Really enjoyed watching this! Love seeing retro apple computer videos :) Keep it up!

I’d love one of these.

Thanks, enjoyed you video, matter of fact you've gotten me to look down in our basement to see in what kind of condition our old iMac (Blue) is in... :)

Back in the day, I got a brand new external scsi zip drive - from a floppy maybe 20 seconds to boot (don't quote me, old rough memory) but from the zip drive, boot was finished in 1 or 2 seconds, faster than my octa core i9 current desktop machine on Linux :-D Re your comment at 10:54 or just before... :-) that SD card to SCSI adaptor is super exciting to me, I will have to get one and see if any of my old software is still readable and migrate it to a format I can back up and protect :-) Thanks!

great video Collin

This is going to make me pull out my SE 30. I hope it will boot up. I have a sound tool board in mine. I use to edit music with it.

ram for these is stupidly inexpensive. I maxed out my Performa 200 (4mb) for about $10 from memoryx.com Still need to replace the noisy fan, but that is all that is left. Already replaced the CAPS and HD with SCSI2SD adapter. Replacing the caps on mine restored the speaker noise. It should be easy to test if the speaker is bad or potentially the headphone jack is not working properly and always engaged. As always, your video productions are top-shelf!

Surprised you didn't mention the original Mac team's signatures inside the case, including both Steves. I believe the SE/30 was the last model to have them. Just another endearing quirk that adds to the machine's appeal.

Amazing work..! For some people will be very interesting. The problem is , a very tiny number of people of the new generation will be interested on this.. sometimes I think is not worthy doing things like this because almost nobody appreciates.. I have I beeper that from the early 90s that was built to receive text messages from a 1800 operator in the time. That I still have it somewhere. I was a expensive monthly service on the time. I was a teenager and had po pay $25 a month for the service just to get text messages from my girlfriend. I remembered It was very hard for me to keep the service running vs standard beepers that only costed 4$ a month... after almost 30 years I still have it for memories... :(

Regarding SCSI termination, all you need is a SCSI terminator adaptor on the scsi cable.

Believe it or not, Computer Renaissance is still around... there is a location open in Duluth MN.

Thx for the insight about PRAM battery exploding. Now I know why my iMac g3 kicked the bucket lol.

Another super cool computer. I LOVE old Macs 🙂 You are amazing at this! If I had your skills I would definitely be repairing old Macs like this. Would love to have an Apple IIe to use for typing 😂

When it comes to making old electronics work again, certainly the capacitors and cleaning out the motherboard are a priority, but when those plans fail, you have to check the memory and find out which of the ram and storage memory is bad. With only a few mb for the hard drive, certainly there was not much that they could not even get to the point where they would make it display in color. But it shows the history about how the modern computers came into existence and how much upgrades that were done since the old times. Especially when you put the old computer from apple in front of the much newer one from apple.

Good video. Cool that there are still people like you who want to fix an old computer. And yes, I do learn from your video's!

Really enjoy your videos. This looks really great, video-wise. What camera are you using? Thanks.

Loving all these

The SE/30 had a color board you could add to it that would allow you to add a color monitor.

You can adjust the picture by opening up the computer and using a plastic adjustment tool to adjust the position of the screen from the analog board.

Nice one Colin ☺️ glad you could make this machine to work again! I have very find memories of my first Mac, a LC-II that I'd like to have again, and I know it's a newer machine than yours ☺️ btw.. what happened to the tdnc podcast episodes? Ciao!

I have a complete SE/30 that I would like to restore. I used one in a previous job and with 128MB of RAM, it was a great server system. I also have an SE/30 case on its own and I’d like to fit a colour screen and SBC with wireless and USB connections.

I have an se/30 I got off of shopgoodwill, and it has this same issue. I've been planning to do this stuff for a while, so it's good to have a video explaining good places to check.

This was my first modern PC after using an atari 800xl since forever. It's also my first and last apple product.

This is way more epic than it had any right to be lol. Really nice editing.

LC II, LC III, LC 475, LC 575, Mac II series, Mac Color Classic, and other of the early 90s/late 80s macs had that same capacitor issue.

The SE/30 is a beautiful machine. I've restored two of them in the past, even installed an ethernet card in one. Wish I still had them.

I always wanted one!

Great work of love for that machine. Cool video. What do you plan to do with it?

Yeah man.. Very poor troubleshooting applied at this time and it's painful to watch. I'm such a bad person for rubbing it but yeah. We always forget the principles of fine troubleshooting. I certainly have. I'm just starting for the second time to work on old machines. You'd kill for the collection I had back in 2011. I certainly do :-( So now I purchased my first project, a PB180 that I plan to use as my main machine for old gaming and setting up future Macs. It's so sad seeing how the lid struggles to keep itself in one piece every time I try to open. I just received it, disassembled it to do the first assessment, and of course one of the fixing points for the base gave up and came out in pieces. Plastic does degrade and it's so sad. I'll try with crazy glue to keep it together, but won't apply torque when screwing again to avoid further breakage. The machine chimes but I have no disks yet to try to boot it. So far the HD is dead. I ordered the original manual and installation disks and will try to boot it. From there U'll give TLC to the floppy drive and will try open the hard disk too. I'm feeling the need to start my own channel to tell my experiences. Cheers!

I bought one of these new when they came out and did my first (paying) logo design on it. Thought it was the best thing in the world!