A bite late to the Retro Challenge party however I have been hard at work fixing up my SE/30,
Before I get into the weeds of the restoration I feel some explanation regarding the project is in order.
In 2021 I documented the restoration and repair of a Macintosh Classic which you can read about here following the project I quickly became frustrated with the Classic, unfortunately the Classic wasn’t a particularly powerful machine even when it was new - meaning even relatively simple tasks could take quite some time.
So in 2022 I purchased an SE/30 with the intention of upgrading it as much as possible.
You might notice now though that it is currently 2024, and I am only now talking about my SE/30.
When I purchased the machine I had a specific set of upgrades in mind, and it has taken me over 2 years of searching to amass all the components required for this project.
The upgrades I wanted the most are as follow:
1: A graphics card capable of driving the iMacs original CRT in greyscale
2: An upgraded CPU
3: An Amber CRT
The Amber CRT and Greyscale card in particular are incredibly difficult to find, over the years I’ve only found a single greyscale card listed online, and it was well over $2000 USD!
The good news though is in September I was running a small table at VCF Midwest, where I was lucky enough to run into the venerable ZigZagZoe, a very active member of the 68k MLA community, and he just so happened to have a backpack full of some of his newest products.
I acquired from him a greyscale card of his own design, as well as a 50Mhz drop in CPU replacement for my SE/30.
The one thing I am still waiting on is the Amber display, however I’m getting very close and should hopefully have one sourced in the next couple months!
Now that the backstory is out of the way let’s get into the weeds of the restoration!
Unfortunately I do not have many pictures of the process, as it was all filmed on my camera which I have left at the office, and I wanted to get this post out before the end of October.
When I purchased the SE/30 it was still working, however after pulling it out of storage I discovered that the poor girl no longer powered on reliably, and when it did there was no sound.
The cause? The same thing it always is with vintage computers! Bad Caps!
This was my first time recapping an SE/30, much to my surprise the process was very straightforward as only the capacitors on the logic board seem to ever fail, of which there are very few.
After recapping the machine was now powering on, so it was now time for the next step of the project.
Pictured below is all the components I hope to fit into my SE/30
After disassembling the machine I installed a new Rominator II, 128MB of RAM and the new 50Mhz CPU into the Logic Board, thankfully my CPU was already socketed, so this made the process very straightforward.
I acquired a MacEffects clear case for my tired old SE thanks to @DigitalRampage, I’ve always loved the look of these clear cases, however I wanted to do something special to make my SE/30 stand out.
I came to the conclusion that if the inside of the computer was going to be visible, then I aught to make it as presentable as possible. This means that the corroded and scratched internal frame simply wouldn’t do.
I decided to completely disassemble the machine and spray paint as much of the chassis and drive cages as I could (In the Classic Aperture Science colour scheme of course!)
Pictured below is some photos from the process of painting and re-assembling the machine
I’m very happy with how the paint job turned out! makes the machine feel much more modern and even has that “New Computer Smell” we all know and love.
Here’s some photos of it all put back together with that incredible greyscale card!
This projects not done, there’s still plenty more I’d like to do with this computer, I’m currently working on a nice big YouTube video which should be out in a couple months covering the process in more detail.