Beater SE was an interesting Mac to look at. The hard drive wasn't on a special 3-drive bracket at all, but looked to be pulled directly from some other Mac. The date on the drive was 1994 (with the 1993 copyright/firmware) and it was mounted to the lower floppy drive on an unusual sled. The drive was powered by this really strange, thin, white power cable and was connected to the logic board with a multicolored SCSI cable. It was mounted in the rear of the computer, far away from the floppy slot. There was actually a floppy sitting on top of the drive, which someone must have shoved inside the slot thinking there was a second drive there.
The board itself wasn't original but was instead a SuperDrive board. This came as a pleasant surprise (and also a sigh of relief, as it means no soldered batteries). The SuperDrive and the board both have a manufacture date of 1989.
The anode cap also looked a bit different than usual--it seemed to be more translucent than a standard anode cap. I know this analog board has some problems (the monitor flickers constantly) so for now I've set it aside. I have a few other working analog boards I could stick in there (in fact, I have the parts to completely rebuild this machine, but given the poor condition of the case, I'm not sure if I'd want to). The CRT itself seems fine and will probably go into the parts pile, especially since I have only one other extra Revision A CRT at the moment.
This has to be the strangest Mac I've ever worked on. I'd love to know its history, especially when these upgrades were installed. Parts used to sit around for years before anyone would take them, so this 1989 board may have been installed much later in the computer's life.
The board itself wasn't original but was instead a SuperDrive board. This came as a pleasant surprise (and also a sigh of relief, as it means no soldered batteries). The SuperDrive and the board both have a manufacture date of 1989.
The anode cap also looked a bit different than usual--it seemed to be more translucent than a standard anode cap. I know this analog board has some problems (the monitor flickers constantly) so for now I've set it aside. I have a few other working analog boards I could stick in there (in fact, I have the parts to completely rebuild this machine, but given the poor condition of the case, I'm not sure if I'd want to). The CRT itself seems fine and will probably go into the parts pile, especially since I have only one other extra Revision A CRT at the moment.
This has to be the strangest Mac I've ever worked on. I'd love to know its history, especially when these upgrades were installed. Parts used to sit around for years before anyone would take them, so this 1989 board may have been installed much later in the computer's life.