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More Mac SE issues

O

Ozfer

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 26, 2013
28
0
New England
So I was going along using my mac se that I had all those issues with in my last thread and I was using my zip drive and then... blank.... and the screen went out. Yep. More issues, now my mac SE will not turn on and makes no noises when I hit the on button. No fans come on no lights come on the screen is blank and the hard drive doesn't spin. I have tried disconnecting things re-seating the memory and plugs on the inside and no matter what it will not turn on when I hit the power button :( . So maybe the power supply died... I am pretty good with electronics but I am pretty new with this old mac collecting so does anyone have any ideas on what I can do? :confused:
 
If it's not ticking or chirping, a common failure I used to see was the power switch at the back itself.

Pretty hard to find a direct replacement. I had to place a special order with C&K switches to get them.

Or, it could be the fuse inside the power supply. But that gets tricky. If the fuse has blown, it may have done so because the bridge rectifier has shorted and replacing just the fuse could do more damage to the power supply.

Did it die with a pop?
 
No it made no noise when it died. It just kinda went blank. Also I used a multiplier with the fuse and it gets pretty accurate readings so I don't think its blown. I've been having nothing but trouble with this system since I got it :( would the power switch not working be something that instantly breaks and switches a mac off? I could try to fix it if that is what is wrong. I opened up the power supply and I don't see any obvious signs of a capacitor leaking or burning smell.
 
Ozfer said:
No it made no noise when it died. It just kinda went blank. Also I used a multiplier with the fuse and it gets pretty accurate readings so I don't think its blown. I've been having nothing but trouble with this system since I got it :( would the power switch not working be something that instantly breaks and switches a mac off? I could try to fix it if that is what is wrong. I opened up the power supply and I don't see any obvious signs of a capacitor leaking or burning smell.
Click to expand...

The switch wouldn't normally fail with that symptom.

If you take the fuse out and measure it with your multimeter, what reading do you get?

See if you can take a pic of the fuse. If it looks black, that's bad news and means other components are damaged.

It may be a ceramic fuse which looks white, and are impossible to tell how bad other damage might be, since they're not transparent.
 
Yes it's ceramic so I can't see inside of it. When I test it for ohms it gets under 1. If it's cheap I can just replace that and see if everything works.
 
okay

So I kinda bypassed the power switch and the mac turns on :D yeay :). Okay now where do I get a replacement switch? It doesn't look like it can be opened to fix and I can't find any replacements online. I suppose I could manually unplug it but that's not very nice.
 
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Yeay!@!@!@

So I had the power supply opened and I had figured out the switch somehow died as I stated in my last post. So at that point knowing it is really hard to find a replacement switch and with nothing to lose I popped the cap off the power switch and saw how it works inside.

It is basically just 2 arms on a pivot with a ball resting on them that moves back and forth with the position of the switch.

I noticed that one ball had popped out somehow while I was using it and was able to put it back in place and put the cap back on. When you get the cap on right the switch makes a nice normal clicking sound to let you know you got it. After this I tested it and now my mac is working great :D .

No need to find a replacement switch. If anyone else has this problem you don't even need to open your mac to fix it. All you have to do is pop the switch off and align the balls.

Now my mac se Is finally working great, and I am hoping I wont have to make this into the not working mac se trilogy... Thanks for your helps guys
 
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I'm pleased to see that it's going again. Another MacSE power switch failure.

Fingers crossed everything continues to work.

Well done! :)
 
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