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After getting the SE/30 up and running with some new parts, I added in a few more upgrades.

To begin with, I cleaned off the adhesive residue from the front of the case. This was some serious residue, very chunky and difficult to remove. It took a good amount of Goo Gone and elbow grease, but now there’s no sign of it. I considered retrobriting the case, but decided against it since the process can make the plastic more brittle, and it seemed fragile enough already.

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Back in February, I acquired a Macintosh SE/30. It was in need of a bit of work, and I finally got around to making all the repairs.

The first order of business was to use some cyanoacrylate glue to repair the crack in the front of the case. That had to be the first step because I didn’t want the crack to spread any further.

The next step was to desolder all the electrolytic capacitors from the logic board and replace them with new ones, using tantalum capacitors where possible. On the analog board, I recapped with newer electrolytic capacitors. Fortunately, there are so many online resources for this type of repair, like Recap-a-Mac.

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I just picked up a Macintosh SE/30 from eBay.

Back in the 80s and 90s, I was a PC user. I found the compact Macs to be so constrained in terms of expansion and screen size that I never had any interest in having one. Fast forward to now, and I appreciate their design and engineering. I actually owned a SE/30 back in the early 2000s when I was able to pick one up for cheap. I ran NetBSD on it for a while and had some fun with it before I eventually sold it. Back then, these little machines were plentiful, cheap, and largely intact.

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