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pgreenland

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2022
3
2
Hi All,

I've recently joined the classic mac owners club, with three fixer upper SE/30's in various states of decay.

Having selected the best logic board of the three, with no leaking caps or exploded battery. I've cleaned and recapped it. Not yet recapped the analog board or PSU but have checked the rail voltages, which all seem pretty close.

It boots happily from floppy to MacTest SE/30 and seemingly passes all the tests which don't require additional hardware (serial loopback cable for example).

There's something funky going on with the video hardware or CRT that I was hoping someone might be able to give me some pointers on.

Here's the CRT at the MacTest desktop.

IMG_8183.jpg

The desktop is visible under whatever's going on. Of the three systems I have two CRTs that work and display largely the same thing.

I dropped a logic analyser on the video, hsync and vsync signals and wrote a bit of software to decode them.

Leading to the following:

img_0.png

It could well be my questionable quality python, but there are similarities between what's shown on the CRT and the image extracted from the raw video signal present on J12.

Thought there might be an issue further upstream, so moved to the video ram data lines, shift register load line and vsync. Some minor python adjustments and I ended up with:

006.png

To my amazement the video ram does indeed contain a valid image.

So I'm thinking the problem lies somewhere between the video ram and the signals present on J12 for the CRT. As well as possible other problems on the analog board that I've got even less knowledge on than the video generation hardware.

Any pointers / advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Phil
 

pgreenland

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2022
3
2
Quick follow up for future internet travellers.

It was suggested on another forum that I check out the display shift register UE8. Swapped it out for a spare and all it well again.

Seemed the bytes in didn't match the bits out.

IMG_8214.jpg
 
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pgreenland

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2022
3
2
Looking at a Mac SE myself.......😬

Is this normal for the display, i.e. is it just because it's taken with a modern camera...?

View attachment 2053988
Hey,

From my all be it very limited experience working on my SE/30, yep, the CRT is a nightmare to take a picture of.

The pic I took above was the "best" of many.

I don't remember this being such as problem with "modern" PC CRTs, so may be related to refresh rates etc...then again the last CRT I took a picture of wasn't with a modern iPhone :p

I found video worked a bit better, if you were looking to view a mac you were looking to buy.

Happy computing,

Phil
 
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MarkC426

macrumors 68040
May 14, 2008
3,557
1,990
UK
Thinking it may be a 'money pit' if things start going wrong (30+ year old Mac).
Not really handy with a soldering iron.
Hence deleted post.

Your reply must have just beat me to it.....;)
 
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