2 Dec
2009
2 Dec
'09
7:07 p.m.
On Wed, 2 Dec 2009, Seth Morabito wrote:
Indeed, there seems to be a mass die-off of vintage
Macintoshes going on
right now judging by the buzz on 68K mac enthusiast message boards. My
own SE/30 refused to boot about a month ago, showing the classic
"Simasimac" zebra-stripe failure. On inspection I found that _every_
surface mount electrolytic cap on the board was leaking. I had to re-cap
the entire board -- only 11 caps, but my smd hand soldering skills are
just fair to middling. I chose smd tantalum capacitors, the solution
used by most of the folks on the boards, and brought it back to life.
But this hilights something that's going to be a serious, on-going
problem for anyone who has a lot of 1980s gear in his collection (like
me, alas)
This is one of my great worries, though I've been thinking of the batteries
and not the caps. I finally have my collection out of storage, and into the
garage. The problem is, I don't have time to start digging into these
machines. My SE/30 would be one of the machines I'm most interested in
keeping running.
Is this a problem with Commodore computers? I wonder if this is what is
wrong with my Amiga 500 (I haven't had time to even look at it). The only
80's computers I've spent time with the past few years are my PDP-11's and
my one Commodore 64.
I know I need to inspect my Amiga 3000's for leaky batteries. I had to fix
that on my Lisa 2/5 when I got it.
The sad thing is I *REALLY* do not have time to deal with this, and this is
yet another indication that I should get out of the hobby. :-(
Zane