1988 Macintosh SuperSE Project: Part 2

The SuperSE’s boards have returned with fresh caps… will it all work?

Earlier this month, I shipped the analog board, logic board, and power supply from my upgraded 1988 Macintosh “SuperSE” to Amiga of Rochester in New York for a recap. While the SuperSE was working fine, I decided to go ahead and tackle the job to prevent the cap goo from potentially damaging the boards.

The boards arrived back from New York today. As usual, I quickly unwrapped everything and went to work on reassembling the computer.

Parts from the SuperSE.

I encountered a couple issues when reassembling the machine. First, the analog board wasn’t wanting to line up with the chassis/bezel properly, causing some issues. Thankfully, I figured it out and was later faced with a similar problem: fitting the logic board in the chassis. Thanks to the Mobius 030 accelerator card, the logic board is an extremely tight fit. I have to (carefully) force the board into the rails.

The recapped analog board, minus the Sony power supply.
The recapped logic board, minus the Mobius 030 accelerator card.
Speaking of issues, a blown trace on the logic board (for the SCSI bus) required rework, including a patch (or “bodge”) wire.

There were a couple of other minor problems. I left the hard drive activity indicator LED out, as the wires going to the aftermarket Maxtor drive had came out of the connector on the drive and the LED was originally haphazardly taped onto the case. I had to leave one case screw off as the metal clip mounted on the lower edge of the analog board was not allowing me to insert the screw.

The “leftover” parts – a case screw and the hard drive activity indicator LED.

Otherwise, the machine buttoned up nicely. When testing the machine, I was greeted with the usual dragon “Welcome!” screen before it booted into System 6.0.5.


While the boards were away being recapped, I had planned on cleaning and lubricating the machine’s stock 800k Sony floppy drive. The drive is extremely dusty and doesn’t work well at the moment. I collaborated with a fellow Macintosh enthusiast in Kansas City in hopes of resurrecting the drive, but unfortunately I got half way there before realizing I had left the SuperSE’s drive at home. (Don’t worry – it wasn’t a wasted trip. I cleaned/lubricated the Classic’s 1.44MB SuperDrive, which worked fine before but now works even better.)

The dirty floppy drive requires cleaning and lubrication to resurrect it.

Therefore, I hope part 3 will pick up on cleaning/lubricating the floppy drive – in addition to attempting to reinstall the drive indicator light and getting the SCSI-2-SD up and running.