Hard Bombing SE

I'm not usually phased by crashing vintage compact macs but my SE has got me really annoyed.

I am on my third hard drive installation in this thing. They are used drives out of LC575's (160mb).

I am trying to initialize one in my SE and it appears to work than the mac crashes with the flickering blank bomb rectangle on the screen.

Usually it happens just by moving the mouse slightly. I have tried at least 4 different hard drive utilities and have always used the appropriate SE interleave.

But its always the same thing...move the mouse or restart and its crashed.

Is this a symptom of a dead soldered pram battery or something else?

Thanks.