Macintosh SE/30 Capacitor Leakage Repair and Recap 

Thanks! Yes, it is running very smoothly compared to the PCs of the time. And the OS was light years ahead in terms of simplicity and speed. :)

Oh, thank you! Glad you enjoy the videos. Lots more to come still. :D

Thanks! I'll definitely have more Mac videos soon. Got a lot to explore myself. :)

Oh, nice! Pretty hard to get those today in good nick, I guess. Had to fiddle around quite a bit to write the old HFS disks. I thought it would be easy with my MacBook and an USB drive but OSX dropped support for HFS some versions ago and only supports HFS+ now. Had to use bash and dd the image files to the disk. Which in the end worked very well. I found out later that most Linux's supports HFS natively. Maybe I'll do a little video about that some time.

Thanks! I was a bit hesitant about the dishwasher but will try next time (maybe with a less valuable board at first). :)

Dishwasher with a mild non-abrasive soap solution.

douro20 whoa, that's a coincidence.. You commented just now, and guess what? I'm washing x4 Commodore PET motherboards now :)

Thank you! I'm planning to do a couple of Macintosh videos in 2018. :)

Bought my first Mac - a Mac Plus for $5000 in '89 and it became a career. Even worked at Apple.

Thanks! Hope you get your Mac fixed. As far as I know, the leaking caps are VERY common with these models. Fingers crossed!

Oh, glad I could help. I found that SMD caps that date back to the nineties almost all leak today. They used pretty inferior quality (I think there was a shortage at the time). I'll try to show SMD soldering a bit more in depth the next time I do it, too.

Thanks! They are lovely indeed. :)

Haha, yeah, lovely machines indeed! There's going to be at least another video about this one some time. I need to recap the analog board, too. Plus, I really want to try retrobrighting the case.

Thanks! The bypass wire was actually added after the test run I'm showing in the video. It broke down again and I had to add the wire. Edited the picture in because I didn't film adding it. ;) I had it sit for some days after washing. Should have made that clearer in the video, I guess. The little cavities in the connectors take a while to dry. You could also put it in an oven at a low temperature to speed up the process.

That's the Simasi Mac symptoms. I had that briefly when the lifted pad broke off again. It's most likely to do with the 1uF capacitor. It connects the sound and also hooks into the reset circuit (if I remember correctly). I would check that one first. (I'm not very experienced though obviously as this was my first Mac repair ever...)

cb meeks have you checked the voltages coming off the external floppy port? You need +5v +12v and -12v. If you have low voltages then it won't start and the get the weird pattern. I suggest recapping the analogue board.

I don't remember the exact specifications. I do remember that I bought good Panasonic ones with the highest temperature rating and lowest ESR I could find. Any caps with the right capacitance and the same or higher voltage rating as the originals will do in this machine though.

@@JanBeta Cheers for the info! I'll make sure to look for ones with a good esr and temp rating. Thanks again for the great vid!

Thank you Sir. I would usually use distilled water but didn't have enough and my usual impatience kicked in. Cleaned it thoroughly with alcohol after rinsing it though so I think it's going to be alright.

They were pretty fragile on mine, too. I think leaky caps degrade the PCB in a way that the pads become really brittle. Experienced the same thing on my A1200. Lifted only one pad and it was one on a small cap that had leaked pretty badly.

Oh, thanks for the tip. I'm going to get in there and recap the PSU and analog board some time. Will have a look at the Quantum, too. :)

Ahh those ball mouses at 25:50 ... we sure have rubbed our balls a lot back then, cuz you know it had to be clean for game play... tsk tsk xD

I think I had it on approx 350C in the end. Started out a bit lower but the higher temperature worked better for me. I guess it depends a lot on your way of doing it, how quickly you move the hot air gun and also on the PCB and the used solder etc... Probably requires some experimentation. I practiced on broken PCI cards for a bit.

Thanks! Yeah, I was aware of the risk and had a look inside before I used the hot air station for the first time. Mine was actually wired alright. I will eventually make some slight mods to make it safer though (such as making a better ground connection and adding a proper fuse).

I thought I'd say something in case people watching don't know. Same goes for some cheap solder stations.

Oh ja, ich habe über die ROM SIMM Probleme gelesen. In der Beziehung hatte ich Glück. Die Dinger nachzukaufen ist ja leider recht teuer. Vielleicht reicht es ja, den Slot ordentlich zu schrubben. Ich hatte an einigen RAMs ganz ähnliche Probleme, die sich durch Reinigen lösen ließen.

Thank you! :)

Haha, yeah, it's a lot easier and less destructive with the heat gun. Learned that now. ;) Hope your recapping of the SE/30 goes well. Really nice machines they are. :)

Thanks! Looked it up a while ago and that stuff is really expensive. I guess I'll keep doing botch wires for a while... ;)

I'll look into the cost of the stuff - but in regards to retro perhaps it's worth it ? Can you really sleep at night knowing there a bodge wire in that thing lol . I know in my prime of soldering I've taken some pads off the boards of playstation pcbs but in my defence I didn't know I could lift a pad and secondly how fast they life if you apply heat for too long . Of course since then I've learned a lot . My worry at the moment is taking caps off old hardware such as amigas and in your case a Mac which could lift a pad - the twist method might of saved you this time because the heat helped lift it ? It's really hard to know honestly lol twist or heat - hmmmmm I wonder if you could make a video on some unwanted capped board how durable both methods are and which one causes more stress . Chris

+Ohplease I managed to lift one pad per machine with both methods so I don’t really know. Maybe it’s just bad luck. Both pads were the most corroded ones on the PCB in each case though. I guess if you would do it REALLY properly you‘d have to preheat the board and use hot air. I don’t mind botch wires in my own machines. Would have given me a bad conscience if I had done this to someone else‘s machine though. That’s why I seldomly work on other people’s stuff. ;)

Jan Beta ah I feel you man . Well there's always another video of using a USB microscope and giving her a new pad lol .

Haha, yeah that's a good idea. :)

Thanks Leland. I saw people use tantalums but I decided to go with good brand electrolytics this time (although tantalums would obviously work just fine). A sonic cleaner is definitely on my wish list. I cleaned the board thoroughly with IPA after rinsing it with water (didn't show it on camera though) and let it dry for some days (while waiting for the new caps to arrive).

Oh, and I also plan to put new capacitors on the analog board some time soon. That's for another video. ;)

I figured you would. Most people attend to only cover the mainboard/motherboard of the Mac and never touch the analog/CRT board. To this day im still kicking myself for letting all of my old computers and parts go. Then again I would be stuck re capping everything lol.

Haha, it's tedious work indeed but I think it's worth it. I still have quite some recapping to do myself. ;)

+Recep Ünal Thank you!

I just used the water to rinse the vinegar off and cleaned it more thoroughly with alcohol afterwards. Could have used alcohol only but it would have taken half a liter or so and I didn't have much left at the time. ;) The stickiness of the PCBs is caused by the alcohol dissolving the solder mask (usually epoxy) a bit.

Water is fine with electronics, used throughout the manufacturing. Water and electricity is the bad thing, not electronics. Ensure there is no power, no batteries and then dry in a warm cupboard for days before applying power.

The q3

They probably are leaky. Many (or most) of the SMD caps from that era are (at least from my experience).

Thanks! I'm still experimenting with different methods.The heat gun worked really well for me on all other pads. I think the pad that lifted must have been cracked before I even started desoldering. The corrosion around there was pretty bad. I have yet to try the "two iron" method. Have an old broken graphics card to experiment with here atm. ;)

Cool

What temp do you use hot air? It looked like you were able to heat those caps pretty quick! It takes me 2-3 min per cap to get it loose! 280deg C

Thanks! I have done some A1200 videos in the past. Check out my playlists, they are conveniently sorted by system. ;) I don't have a C64G but recently got an ALDI C64 I'm going to make a video about.

Yes! The performance was way ahead of its time for sure. I wish I had one of the color graphics adapters for it which would enable using more software (that was made for more recent machines). Thanks for the battery tip, I'll put it on my list.

No, it's the same board. I edited the picture of the jumper wire in later. The system worked fine for the first test (that I filmed) and then broke down again so I had to add the wire.

Ok thanks :)

Haha, it's only half true. I guess the German language would sound harsh even without any of those actually. ;)

@@JanBeta Harsh? I know everyone says that, but I don't really agree honestly, when I hear my German friends talk amongst each other it doesn't sound harsh at all. Try Dutch! We can sound like we're getting ready to spit with all our "lovely" G's :-P. I most certainly wasn't going to go for French as a third language (it's so blasé). So I did the only logical thing and decided I should study Polish... which was painful (but I adore speaking it)! It's odd that Europe is often perceived as difficult. I love Europe, get a group of Europeans from different countries in one room, and it's always lots of fun! Euringlish flying around, the friendly banter and misunderstandings.

Oh oops, I forgot to actually ask what I wanted to ask. What temp did you set your hot air to? I tend to go for 300c and use some no clean liquid flux (topnik rf800) to help things along. I always get nervous working with hot air as I don't want to damage anything.

Thanks! I'm up and running on System 7 but I'm looking into getting a SCSI drive for more convenience anyway so thanks for pointing me to the ISOs. :)

Thank you for the Mac OS Library info.

Not yet. I know it's important for storing some settings etc. so I'll replace it soon. There's some more work to do on the machine anyway so I'll probably make at least another video about it.

It's the messy kitchen in my flat actually. I don't have a proper workshop at all, just my (even messier) desk. ;)

I do now, this video is ancient! :D