Thanks - I read that stuff about "blessing" the System Folder. It tells me I need to insert the "Boot Disk". Unfortunately, what Boot Disks I do have pop out of the floppy drive as soon as the happy Mac icon appears. I wonder how to get a Boot Disk that will agree to boot up a Quadra 800 that was running System 7.1. After one attempt, I got an error mesage that basically said that this machine can't run on 7.1, and I needed to insert a later version's boot disk. I don't really care what system's boot disk is needed to get the Hard Drive open because, once I get it open,

I can reposition the system stuff and be on my way. I'm wondering if it's some sort of timing sequence thing . . . .

I'm starting to think that I need to find a local old mac guru store/person who has a stack of old boot disks for the various Quadras/Performas/Centris/LC68040s and just keep trying different ones until the machine agrees to boot up ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

I have a good copy of system 7.6.1 in a folder on my zip disk, but I'm sure it is way too large to fit on a floppy. I'm not sure how to trim away the surplus stuff to just get the bare bones critical stuff.

THANKS !!!!