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Color Classic - Startup problem after proper start
Posted by: RJC on 2020-05-26 14:58:45 Hello 🙂 Some weeks ago I got a color mac from the waste on the street. Yesterday I found out that this mac has to be started with a keyboard. As I did not had a keyboard I found a solution to start the mac without a keyboard and it has started the system after 15-20min. boot time. Then I turned the mac off by the power switch. Before I thought the mac was broken as nothing happens when I switched the power button on the back. Today I got a keyboard and mouse and I started again the machine. Now the happy mac is showing first and after some time the floppy disk? symbol is on the screen. When the mac starts I can hear the hard disk for short time reading and then it stopps. I am not sure what exactly the problem is. File system damaged after hard power off yesterday? Hardware problem after one day? I tried to clear the PRAM without any result. Unfortunately I have no floppy disk I can use. I was so much looking forward to start the mac today 🙁 Any help I would appreciate! Best Roman View attachment 20200526_234209.mp4
Posted by: JRL on 2020-05-26 15:13:04 When this has happened to me (Happy Mac then question mark) it's almost always been an issue with the System file on the hard drive (but not always). Easiest way to fix the issue would be to reinstall system software, and at the minimum I would boot from a Disk Tools disk of some sort to see what's going on. If you have a Windows PC with a floppy drive you can use HFVExplorer to write floppy disks from images.
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-05-26 15:27:34 Ahhh, the Colour Classic is one of my favourites. Now the happy mac is showing first and after some time the floppy disk? symbol is on the screen This means that it could find the first bit of the code to boot it up but not the second bit, generally. So either the OS installation on the disc is damaged (as per @JRL above) or the hard disc itself is disintegrating. If the first time you powered it up it took 15-20mins to boot, that suggests to me that the hard disc might be very unwell and you might need to get a new one. But try booting from Disk Tools and/or reinstalling the OS first.
Posted by: RJC on 2020-05-26 15:36:20 Thank you both for yor quick replies. I fully understand the issue now. I thought there would be perhaps a way for starting a repair mode withot a floppy disk. So I will need to buy a floppy usb drive. I never thoght I would use them again in my life 😀.
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2020-05-26 15:42:43 I thought there would be perhaps a way for starting a repair mode withot a floppy disk Unfortunately not. Fortunately, though, the CC has a 1.44 meg floppy drive, which means it's easy to make floppies for it using a PC 🙂
Posted by: RJC on 2020-05-26 15:55:37 Yes it should be easy. It there a recommended tool that I can use as disk tool? It would be nice to repair the file system if the hard drive has no hardware damage. I want to know what was on the computer. I think if I do a new installation of the OS I can not keep programs and personal data that was on the hard drive? I am new in this mac area 😀
Posted by: RJC on 2020-05-27 13:23:06 NEWS: I bought a USB floppy drive. After several tries to build a proper boot disk I downloaded a Mac OS 7.5 floppy image from www.macintoshgarden.org and created a DiskTools floppy with WinImage on Windows 10. The DiskTools First Aid disk tool showed me that it can not access to the Macintosh HD. On the dektop I can access to the Macintosh HD and browse trough the folders. On the HD I have found Norton Disk Doctor. The software is now scanning the disk. I think the Hard Drive has a lot of bad sectors. The conclusion will be to put a new SCSI HD into the Mac or a SCSI2SD adapter. The SD adapter would also put down the noise a lot. I have forgotten how loud this old drives were.
Posted by: JRL on 2020-05-27 13:37:03 Excellent! Yeah, Quantum drives do have some long term reliability issues unfortunately. This is one of the methods used to recover data from them but i don't know how much it'd differ since your drive does seem to work initially before throwing a blinking floppy.
Posted by: RJC on 2020-05-27 13:45:59 Thanks for the video! It seems that this time Norton works well. I think I tried a lot of disk repair programs like that im my life and the have never worked. Norton repaired some bad sectors and also repaired a lot of other stuff. The result: The Machine is running 🙂.
Posted by: JRL on 2020-05-27 13:49:43 Thanks for the video! It seems that this time Norton works well. I think I tried a lot of disk repair programs like that im my life and the have never worked. Norton repaired some bad sectors and also repaired a lot of other stuff. The result: The Machine is running 🙂. Awesome! Yeah, NDD works great. Enjoy the CC, they really are great machines. 🙂 They do need to be recapped eventually though.
Posted by: RJC on 2020-05-27 15:19:44 Yes a recap would be good. But I am not sure if I have enough skill for that. I think i need more equipment to remove parts properly.
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