Thread

Beige G3 floppy issues

68kMLA Troubleshooting 13 posts Nov 2, 2008 to Nov 4, 2008

#1 Sun, 2 Nov 2008 - 00:52 68kMLA

I've been tinkering with my beige G3 running 9.2.2 as of late and discovered it is having some issues with its floppy drive.

Specifically, whenever I eject a floppy, it spits it out, then shows the floppy initialization screen. It doesn't matter if I click on eject or initialize. It goes through the motions of what it would normally do, but remember, there's no floppy in the drive!

The floppy itself works fine (I am able to copy and run programs without issue) it just goes haywire when I eject.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem? I'm thinking it may be software related...

Thanks in advance...

#2 Sun, 2 Nov 2008 - 01:51 68kMLA

I would first just remove the drive and clean all the dust out of it. Then insert a disk into the bare drive and manually eject it a few times to try to observe any problems. Could be something to do with the microswitch that tells it if there's a disk in there or not. Clean that part especially well.

#3 Sun, 2 Nov 2008 - 20:05 68kMLA

Try rebuilding your desktop.

#4 Sun, 2 Nov 2008 - 22:44 68kMLA

I would never have thought of that. Is there some specific reason behind that suggestion, Bunsen?

Are you suggesting to rebuild the desktop on the HD or the floppy, or both?

#5 Sun, 2 Nov 2008 - 23:50 68kMLA

I had been planning on putting a fresh copy of an OS on there, and I ended up putting 8.5 on my G3. Ejecting floppies doesn't appear to be a problem any more.

I really wonder if it is OS 9.2.2 that caused the issue...

#6 Mon, 3 Nov 2008 - 03:38 68kMLA

i have ran into these issues before, sometimes the driver extension can get messed up, sometimes it can be the eject system getting gummed up, or a bad cable connection.

i think it was more of a issue with the drive or the driver pref file or something other in the OS and not the OS itself.

the only floppy drive i had issues with was the one in my P475 not ejecting due to being gummed up inside due to not being used, working it a little bit and cleaning it out solved that issue.

#7 Mon, 3 Nov 2008 - 05:33 68kMLA

There is no extension for the floppy drive. Its driver is built-into the ROM of the Mac, and may also be inside the system file somewhere. The CD-ROM has an extension. Neither likely have prefs files either though.

It's possible that the system file was screwed up in such a way that it acted goofy with floppies. It could also have been the Finder, but we'll never know for sure. There could still also be a hardware issue that shows up only in Mac OS 9, so there are a lot of different places this problem could have been.

#8 Mon, 3 Nov 2008 - 16:39 68kMLA

It's driver is on the hard disk. It's .Sony

#9 Tue, 4 Nov 2008 - 03:45 68kMLA

Is there some specific reason behind that suggestion, Bunsen? / to rebuild the desktop

It rang a vague bell with something I've encountered before.

#10 Tue, 4 Nov 2008 - 17:39 68kMLA

Hah, I remember that about the .Sony driver now. Cool.

Certainly doesn't ever hurt to rebuild the desktop Bunsen, might as well try it and automatically fix a few other problems in the process.

#11 Tue, 4 Nov 2008 - 19:01 68kMLA

This is more trivia now, but it used to be in the old days of System, and I think this is System 6 and before, you could really mess up a Mac by creating a file named .Sony.

#12 Tue, 4 Nov 2008 - 20:13 68kMLA

YEAH! I think I read that in Mac Secrets or something. I have 2 of the 5th edition of that book. It is a GREAT book. It even lists each Mac model. You can get the PDF of that book pretty easily I think. I remember that it came with the PDF of 4th edition on the CD. Very cool stuff.

We should pick out little secrets from that book and surprise each other periodically.

#13 Tue, 4 Nov 2008 - 22:55 68kMLA

I have an old edition, (2nd, I think) It's from 1994 and covers the very first Power Macs, so that's where I read it.