Macintosh SE/30 New Power Supply (PSU): SEASONIC

[@iamdkk]

Thanks for this guide - I used it to replace the internals of my Astec power supply. As someone else mentioned I used an old IEC cable and soldered one end to the external IEC socket. I wired the green ATX and ground to the (now removed from mains) existing power switch. I also decided to keep one molex + berg from the seasonic to power extra devices. With the Astec there is a mounting post in the way on the base of the PSU. Instead of cutting it off I cable tied the Seasonic to the lid of the PSU.

[@JDW-]

Thank you for the information. Since you used an Astec PSU instead of the SONY that I used, it might be useful for others if you ever decide to share photos of your setup. Feel free to post a link to a collection of photos on Flickr or Google, etc., if you like.

[@ccedraro3878]

last night see the other one but this is much better jejej , I forgot to mention that I follow your tutorial of the Imac 27, I have 2 Imac 27 2011 , I did the GPU paste issue following your excellent tutorial, pls post the recap of the SE motherboard/analog Rgds

[@JDW-]

Thank you for watching and for your kind comment, C Cedraro! Currently, I am working on a new video about recapping the SONY power supply. This is different from my "New Power Supply" video because the SEASONIC is a complete replacement for the SONY (or Astec) circuit board. Some people may want to keep their machine in close to "stock" condition, and recapping the stock power supply will accomplish that. The stock power supplies offer enough power for a basic SE/30 configuration with HDD and a single PDS slot connector. Anyway, once that PSU recap video is done, my video after that will be recapping the Analog Board. And after that I will consider a video on recapping the SE/30 logic board (motherboard). I don't earn any money off KZbin, so naturally making videos is just a hobby for me, so please be patient. The videos will come in time. I'll try to post them sooner rather than later, of course! :-)

[@dannycivic02]

Fantastic video sir my se/30 has stopped working recently nothing on screen I suspect the video side because I can hear the hard drive working would love a video on fixing the analog board.

[@JDW-]

Thank you for watching and for your kind comments. If you have a means to measure voltage, I would suggest you measure at the floppy disk connector as shown in my video. Use a paperclip and attached the red/positive probe of your meter. You can put the black/ground the bolt hole. Probe around in that connector and you will also find a 12V line, or at least it should be 12V. If you are seeing a rock solid 4.6V or more and 11.5V or more in that floppy connector, your PSU is probably okay, which means the root cause of your problem is something else, most likely the capacitors on the logic board. Those are usually first to go. The liquid electrolyte leaks out, rendering most of those capacitors useless, which is why all manner of unexplainable problems can occur. Of course, nothing in the screen could also mean a problem on your analog board too. I will be making another video about the analog board, showing how to recap it, what specific capacitors to use, and I have a board that needs a new flyback transformer too. So please keep an eye out for that.

[@classiccomputers6211]

Sounds to me like failed solder joints, possibly at the yoke connector. Try banging/pushing on the left side of the case and see if the video starts flickering/coming back.

[@santospoland]

Brilliant work! You covered so much surface here. Thank you so much!

[@JDW-]

Thank you for watching and for your very kind words, Alex!

[@rendlesham1]

Any chance of a diagram with colours for the connector cable of the black seasonic to the apple white connector. thanks in anticipation.

[@JDW-]

Please see 12:13 in my video for the 10-pin connector pinouts, and then my Flickr photo of the black SEASONIC connector here: www.flickr.com/photos/66071596@N00/53999930692/in/dateposted/

[@stripey2005]

I tried a similar trick using an ATX power supply just to try and get the computer to power on. When I powered it on with the new power supply I heard an audible click and the analog board started to smell like burning electronics. I triple checked everything, and it was wired up correctly. Do you think the +12V sweep would have anything to do with this issue?

[@mikewottle8893]

Any other options for the PSU, since the Seasonic seems to be out of stock now?

[@JDW-]

Mike, here's one on NewEgg: www.newegg.com/seasonic-ssp-300sug-300w/p/N82E16817151157 And here's one on EBAY: www.ebay.com/itm/Seasonic-Alimentatore-Mini-1U-80-Bronze-da-250W/274504556944

[@mikewottle8893]

@@JDW- Awesome. I've got an old SE on the way. Planning on taking a look to see how everything looks before deciding what to replace. SD2SCSI is on the way, ordered analog board capacitors to likely recap that, as well as a new cooling fan. Waiting on the PSU. And will probably try to retrobright the case since looked pretty bad in the pictures. Anything else you'd recommend for restoration?

[@JDW-]

@@mikewottle8893 If the SE is on the way, I assume that means you haven't had a good look at it yet. Most likely when you do you will find other things. For example, there's a connector on the analog board that is often burned. If it is burned so badly it is falling apart, you would need to replace that connector. Re-soldering all the solder joints on the backs of connectors is very important, even if they don't look cracked. The biggest job is recapping though because you have caps on the motherboard and on the analog board (and power supply too, if you decide to recap that instead of using the Seasonic), plus you have caps inside the keyboard and mouse too. There are even caps inside the floppy drive. Make sure you remove the old motherboard battery if it has one. Hopefully that hasn't exploded. You could also swap the fan for a quieter version. I have a video on that if you haven't seen it. These machines take a lot of work, so after you get the SE, feel free to write me back with what you find.

[@richardbrobeck2384]

@@mikewottle8893 Enjoy your new SE/30 and mine came with 4MB RAM, 80MB Hard disk

[@richardbrobeck2384]

@@JDW- I got my first Apple computer in 1984 in my Collection I have 5 Apple computers

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

My SE has started locking up and behaving pretty strangely, so I'm really curious about exploring different power options to replace the aging Sony unit inside mine. I honestly don't imagine that system with all the upgrades would draw more than 150w AC, I wonder if a Pico PSU might be a better fit? it uses a lot less space in the PSU cage, even if you mod the accompanying laptop charger to put inside. It would also get rid of the need for a fan, as the power brick doesn't require active cooling like standard 400+ watt supplies would.

[@JDW-]

Before we dive into power requirements, we need to discuss WHY your SE is locking up. If you've not recapped the motherboard (and yes, those axial caps do indeed need to be replaced), then such could explain the lockups you're having, especially since you implied having an upgrade of some kind installed, which puts even more stress on those capacitors. It's also important to note that capacitors on the analog board play a role as well, and then the PSU power stability is yet a third consideration.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

@@JDW- My SE is a stock unit with a HDD and Floppy, it already had slight video issues before the problems started, but after a few hours of using the Floppy Emu it started having issues that don't change even if I remove any of the storage options (and the added load they produce on the PSU). The new problems are that it won't get past the 'Welcome' screen on either the hard drive or 800k images. When I use 400k images, it gets passed that screen and into the desktop but the mouse refuses to work. For all these things to happen at once places my suspicion on the PSU failing, it doesn't rule out the possibility of components failing on the logic or analog boards - but with the limited resources I currently have, I do not have much else to go on.

[@JDW-]

Thank you for explaining, Amir. You need a multimeter so you can measure DC voltage at the external floppy connector, putting the black probe into a bolt hole and connecting the red probe to a paper clip that you carefully insert into various holes of that floppy connector. You must take extreme care not to short anything during such testing! You need to measure the 5v and 12v lines. If one or both are very low then I would suspect the PSU, but if the voltages are good, I would suspect the caps.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

@@JDW- I've been meaning to get a multimeter, I rarely deal with component level issues so I don't have the equipment to measure voltages and the like. For now though, going back to the PSU replacement options - do you think a Pico PSU would be good enough for an SE? Pentium 3 systems came with 200w supplies so I think a laptop brick would be able to power a 68k machine fine even when upgraded with 040 CPUs and Ethernet cards.

[@JDW-]

@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 I would suggest instead that you use the Seasonic PSU I used, because other people have used it too with success. It works well. But you still should buy a multimeter too because you need to verify voltages are correct even if you swap out the PSU. amzn.to/3a9BdSV

[@paulsimundza2376]

Hi JDW is there a reason you dont just recap/repair the old power supply instead of buying a new one?

[@JDW-]

Yes. As mentioned in my video, if you have a lot of upgrades and accelerator cards which draw a lot of power, you can benefit from a power supply that’s more powerful than the stock version. Also keep in mind there is more than one manufacturer of the stock power supply, and Sony is considered to be the best one, but not everyone owns the Sony version to recap. Even so, I also have a recapping video about the Sony version power supply here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pIS9aYSpg7qreq8 The benefit of recapping the stock power supply is that it is completely fanless. Any modern power supply you use will come with a fan, which may or may not be annoying for you.

[@gregmun5595]

looks like the connector has 26 pin connection on power supply. all of atx connectors on ebay are 24 pin connections. I bought the power supply from ebay not thinking about the harness and it didn't come with harness with it. now what?

[@JDW-]

I'd complain to the EBAY seller if it truly had no harness because your right about that black connector being a non-standard 26-pin. If his listing mentioned the harness and you didn't get it, you have a right to it. If you can't get it from the seller, and if the seller is selling them as new, not used, maybe filing a complain with the manufacturer in Taiwan might help, and maybe they could ship you a harness. They responded to me by email very nicely a week ago: Seasonic Support Desk

[@Egg-gk5zk]

hey boss, which camera are you using?

[@JDW-]

Panasonic GH5, shooting in 4K 10-bit HLG, edited in Rec.709 using FCPX (mainly because many people still lack the means to watch videos in HDR). Although my workflow has changed since I made the following video (I no longer use proxies, for example), you can still see the camera kit I use here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r6PRgImmbNKLqNU

[@Egg-gk5zk]

@@JDW- awesome, thanks for the detailed response just found ur channel because i got myself a macintosh as well. Love the vids.

[@JDW-]

@@Egg-gk5zk Since you are commenting under my SEASONIC PSU video, it could be that you are investigating power supplies for the SE and/or SE/30. If so, my latest video, which is lated to go Public within the next 24 hours, may be of interest to you. In that video, I review a new power supply that was released in July this year, and I talk about how to upgrade your Main Wiring Harness to get higher voltages at the motherboard, which is especially important if you have PDS cards or other upgrades installed.

[@Egg-gk5zk]

@@JDW- badass, ill check it out.

[@MikieLAX]

What pin on the floppy drive port did you use to measure +12 volts?

[@JDW-]

Pins 7 & 8 are +12V. All of my voltage tests are shown at 31:55. Pin-out chart of the external floppy connector is here: allpinouts.org/pinouts/connectors/data_storage/macintosh-external-drive/

[@MikieLAX]

@@JDW- Thank you for the reference link, which gives me all the information I need. At 32:45 the multimeter shows 12 volts, but there is no video of you moving the clip from pin 1 to "a different pin" which must be pin 7 or 8! thank you again for a good video!

[@MikieLAX]

@@JDW- Is there a Pin-out Diagram for the connector from the power supply to the motherboard?

[@JDW-]

@@MikieLAX I only have a pin-out diagram of the connector that comes from the PSU, which connects to the Analog Board, shown in my 68kMLA post here: 68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/modern-psu-for-the-se-30.30945/page-7#post-338512 Could be that Googling the J12 connector will yield something, but I'm at work right now and lack the time to investigate that further.

[@CrazyTechReviews]

gosh it costed you less to ship that internationally than it costed for me to ship something to me from the neighboring state

[@JDW-]

I assume you are talking about the Seasonic power supply shipping prices on either Amazon or Ebay, right? Sometimes sellers charge pretty crazy shipping fees and I simply do not understand why. But normally it is the international fees that are crazy, while domestic US shipping charges are somewhat reasonable.