Macintosh SE makes hissing sound and has no video

[ewleonardspock]

Hi, All.

I ordered a Macintosh SE from eBay the other day in working condition. As I'm sure you've all experienced before, USPS really doesn't care about your packages, so when I saw the USPS guy throw it off the truck I had a feeling it wasn't going to work... and I was right.

When I connect power and flip the switch, the computer makes a fairly loud hissing/whistling sound. I'm not entirely sure what's causing it. Here's the sound:

The screen doesn't display anything, it doesn't even seem to be turning on (I haven't felt any static on it afterwards). The first time I turned it on it made a bunch of clicking sounds as well. After trying a few more times, it doesn't make the clicking sounds anymore and it does successfully play the boot chime, although without a screen I'm not sure whether it's actually booting or not. I'm hoping the hard drive still works, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I took the case off, and I don't see anything that looks specifically broken. There don't appear to be any burst caps, although I wasn't able to remove the logic board, so I couldn't really check that.

Here's some pictures I took with the case off:

And here's some 'fly-by' videos I took of the case, one is with an extra light, one is without:

And lastly, I recorded a video with the case off while turning it on. I couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from, but when I turned off all of the lights I noticed that the very tip of the picture tube seems to be flickering (only barely visible at the very end).

I'm really hoping I'm able to fix this because I've wanted an SE since I was quite young.

 

[mikemike690]

I'm nowhere near an expert but from a quick Google search it seems as though your CRT picture tube has cracked https://goo.gl/LnGPW7

 

[MacTech68]

Sadly, yes. My bet is the teat at the very back of the tube (where the little board plugs on) has been cracked.

I've seen this a few times specifically with the SE in transit.

 

[Johnny365]

Sounds like air rushing out

 

[MacTech68]

It's the high voltage arcing inside the tube, since there is no longer a vacuum inside the tube.

Very common with the SE. When Apple upgraded the fan to a square axial fan (instead of the original noisy barrel fan), the clearance was severely reduced between the fan and it's mounting frame to the CRT board that plugs onto the back of the tube. Flexing in transit seems to be enough to hit the board and snap the teat of the tube.