Thread
SE/30: Endless startup loop?
Hi everyone:
I've encountered a boot problem with my Macintosh SE/30, and given that I'm a novice with these machines, I'm hoping someone here can help me troubleshoot.
The logic board of the machine had Simasimac when I first acquired it, so I recently had it re-capped by forum member Phreakout (thanks again!) Phreakout tested the board on his SE/30 and it worked as expected.
When I received the logic board, I reinstalled the battery (and double checked that it was oriented correctly), reinstalled the RAM and ROM SIMM chips and re-connected the board to the SE/30.
When I first powered on the SE/30, the black arrow appeared in the upper lefthand corner, followed by the "Mac Question Mark" icon, indicating that it could not find the operating system on the hard drive. This was troubling because the hard drive was operating normally prior to the "Simasimac" problem that developed shortly after I first bought it. I then powered off the Mac and double checked all connections between the hard drive and the logic board. When I powered on the Mac again, the black arrow appeared in the upper lefthand corner, followed by the normal "Smiling Mac" icon for 2-3 seconds. But then the "Smiling Mac" disappeared, and the black arrow reappeared, followed again by the "Smiling Mac" icon for 2-3 seconds. This loop repeated endlessly and the machine would never fully boot. I left it on for over an hour to test but with no success.
Thanks in advance to anyone with suggestions!
I've encountered a boot problem with my Macintosh SE/30, and given that I'm a novice with these machines, I'm hoping someone here can help me troubleshoot.
The logic board of the machine had Simasimac when I first acquired it, so I recently had it re-capped by forum member Phreakout (thanks again!) Phreakout tested the board on his SE/30 and it worked as expected.
When I received the logic board, I reinstalled the battery (and double checked that it was oriented correctly), reinstalled the RAM and ROM SIMM chips and re-connected the board to the SE/30.
When I first powered on the SE/30, the black arrow appeared in the upper lefthand corner, followed by the "Mac Question Mark" icon, indicating that it could not find the operating system on the hard drive. This was troubling because the hard drive was operating normally prior to the "Simasimac" problem that developed shortly after I first bought it. I then powered off the Mac and double checked all connections between the hard drive and the logic board. When I powered on the Mac again, the black arrow appeared in the upper lefthand corner, followed by the normal "Smiling Mac" icon for 2-3 seconds. But then the "Smiling Mac" disappeared, and the black arrow reappeared, followed again by the "Smiling Mac" icon for 2-3 seconds. This loop repeated endlessly and the machine would never fully boot. I left it on for over an hour to test but with no success.
Thanks in advance to anyone with suggestions!
Try booting up from a system disk.
That's yet another hitch: When I purchased the machine, the boot disk wasn't included because the operating system was on the hard drive. The machine was running OS 7.5.5.
What's the easiest/fastest way for me to obtain a boot disk?
What's the easiest/fastest way for me to obtain a boot disk?
Check the PRAM battery voltage and see if the PRAM battery is OK first. If it is, then you can proceed with trying to reinstall a system.
The easiest way is to buy a disk set on eBay for $8-$15, which IMHO is a total ripoff.
This is modified from an earlier reply that I made to somebody with a different (but kind of similar) situation. This is if you were to do this procedure on a PC with XP:
The easiest way is to buy a disk set on eBay for $8-$15, which IMHO is a total ripoff.
This is modified from an earlier reply that I made to somebody with a different (but kind of similar) situation. This is if you were to do this procedure on a PC with XP:
-JI assume you have a PC with a floppy drive, right? If so, you need to stop by http://68kmacwin.googlepages.com/winmac, a very useful page made by a fellow soldier who goes by the UN benjgvps.
First things first, download the Floppy Image Writer program on that page. I'm pretty sure this works better with an internal floppy drive, but an external one will suffice.
You'll need Stuffit Expander 5 here.
Then, you'll need the Network Access 7.5 file, which you can find here.
Run Stuffit Expander. You'll see a menu like this:
Find the Network Access 7.5 file, and drag it to the Stuffit Expander window. One of the two items you should get from the resulting decompress operation is the actual image file.
Unzip the FLW (what the image writer will now be referred to at this point), and open it up. Have a floppy disk on hand; PC floppies are A-OK.
Click Browse in Write Flopy
-Desktop (or wherever the image is)
-click on the network access image
-Open
Then, stick your floppy in and press Start and Yes.
Insert the floppy inside your SE/30. It should load correctly.
If so, open the disk and copy the system folder to the HD. Seperate the Finder from the old System Folder (drag it to the desktop and keep it there). Rename the old system folder "Old System Folder". "Bless" the new system folder on the HD by dragging the Finder out of it, and dragging it back into the new System Folder. Rename it "Temp System Folder". Restart.
Your SE/30 should restart to a bare System 7.5 install, which you can use as a platform to natively decompress System Disks.
Then, on your PC, download the PC Exchange and the Stuffit Expander 4.0.1 links in the page previously mentioned. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT STEP!
Open the FLW.
Click Load Image
-Desktop (or wherever else the image is)
-click on the PC Exchange image
-Open
Then, stick your floppy in and press Write Image.
The following is quoted from benjgvps himself:
Next, download Disk Copy 4.2 here. IMPORTANT STEP #2!
Now, copy it to a PC floppy.
Now, on your Macintosh SE/30, put the Disk Copy floppy in, copy Disk Copy to the HD, and open up Stuffit Expander. Click "File", "Decompress", and find the file you copied. Open it.
click on the resulting Disk Copy .smi when it's on the hard drive.
Disk Copy will self-uncompress and turn into the real program. Feel free to trash the compressed files now.
After that, feel free to download the system files of your choice on your PC, copy them over, decompress them with Disk Copy/Stuffit Expander, install, and enjoy!
Check to see if there is an Apple support group locally, if so somebody probably collects old macs in it and could provide a set of boot disks.
You can doanload OS 6.08 and 7.01 from Apples website and if you have another mac around with a floppy drive dump them to disk. Basically you just want to make sure the machine will boot from floppy not run it from floppy long term.
I sent you an email, dita. It should give you some tips to try. If you need System 6 or 7 on floppy disks, let me know. I still think it could be the hard drive. Drive "stiction" (pronounced stick-shun) is quite common amongst hard drives that are older than 10 years. I had it happen to a 700MB Quantum SCSI once after not using it for over a year. The drive is in my SE/30 and running System 7.0.1. I ended up slapping the side of the machine in order to get the drive to spin up and work.
73s de Phreakout :rambo:
73s de Phreakout :rambo:
My LC III runs through something similar when i turn it on. it happy macs, then reatarts andboots normally.\
:?:
:?:
That means it needs a good PRAM battery AFAIK.
Hmm, my SE does something similar when the System file is present but not the Finder file. Not sure if this is related though.
So that bumps the amount of dead pram batteries I have up to 3?
Yeah. 
Eh. Not like I'm gonna bother replaceing them... The only time i will do that is when I get a mac that needs them to startup.
I'm cheap. $30 is the most I'd pay for an old mac. (Unless it was like a 128k or some other rare one.)
I'm cheap. $30 is the most I'd pay for an old mac. (Unless it was like a 128k or some other rare one.)
When I worked on ditabeardmemo's board, I made sure to check the battery out. It was reading about 3.67 to 3.68 Vdc. So his battery isn't the issue. I also reset the PRAM while I was at it. I still believe it is a problem with either his hard drive or the fact that some data became corrupt. I'm still working on getting floppies made of System 7.5.3 so I can send it to him, but I'm having trouble trying to get the images to cooperate with me. Most of the disk images are of a "part.bin" filetype and neither OSX or OS 7/8/9 will recognize them. Not even Disk Utility will open them.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
Um, thats a segmented cd image. I have a .dsk diskset of 7.6 and the 7.6.1 update, complete with disk tools disks. PMming
While I am awaiting Phreakout's OS disk set, I recently got my PC back up and running Windows XP. Since I can now read and write floppy disks, I checked out JLW's detailed post regarding a method to get the SE/30 to boot from a Network Access system disk. Unfortunately, however, I'm having a lot of trouble.
I followed the instructions to the letter: I downloaded StuffIt, the Network Access archive and the Floppy Image Writer. I bought some new Double Sided, High Density 1.44 MB floppy disks. I formatted the a floppy as a 1.44 MB FAT disk. I then decompressed the Network Access archive, and successfully (I assume) copied it to the floppy using the Floppy Image Writer.
When I popped the floppy in the SE/30 and switched on the unit, however, it would not boot. It simply spit the disk out after a few seconds. I tried the same process with a different disk and had the same result. I also tried the same process on a Mac Classic that I recently acquired, and no dice. The Macs would not boot from the Network Access 7.5 floppy.
Can anyone shed some light on this? Is there a step that I missed?
I followed the instructions to the letter: I downloaded StuffIt, the Network Access archive and the Floppy Image Writer. I bought some new Double Sided, High Density 1.44 MB floppy disks. I formatted the a floppy as a 1.44 MB FAT disk. I then decompressed the Network Access archive, and successfully (I assume) copied it to the floppy using the Floppy Image Writer.
When I popped the floppy in the SE/30 and switched on the unit, however, it would not boot. It simply spit the disk out after a few seconds. I tried the same process with a different disk and had the same result. I also tried the same process on a Mac Classic that I recently acquired, and no dice. The Macs would not boot from the Network Access 7.5 floppy.
Can anyone shed some light on this? Is there a step that I missed?
I was doing that from memory, so I might have done something wrong. However, right now I have my copy open here, and you have to do the following:
1: Make sure you have a file called Network Access.image.
2: Open up the Floppy Image program.
3: Under Write Floppy, click Browse.
4: Locate the image file and click "Open"
5: Click "Start"
Tell me if you still have any problems after that, and I'll send you a different bootdisk image.
1: Make sure you have a file called Network Access.image.
2: Open up the Floppy Image program.
3: Under Write Floppy, click Browse.
4: Locate the image file and click "Open"
5: Click "Start"
Tell me if you still have any problems after that, and I'll send you a different bootdisk image.
Thanks JRL. The only difference I encountered with those instructions is as follows:
1. Wen I de-compress the Network Access archive using StuffIt Expander (per your original instructions), one of the files that appears is called "Network Access.image".
2. When I open the Floppy Image Writer, the only files it allows me to write are with ".img" and ".imz" extensions.
3. I change the "Network Access" extension from ".image" to ".img".
4. I then select "Browse" under "Write Floppy," locate the image file and click "Open," click "Start," and in less than a minute the program makes a sound indicating success.
After following this process, however, the floppy disk I created will not boot in either my Mac SE/30 or my Classic.
Thanks again for your input!
1. Wen I de-compress the Network Access archive using StuffIt Expander (per your original instructions), one of the files that appears is called "Network Access.image".
2. When I open the Floppy Image Writer, the only files it allows me to write are with ".img" and ".imz" extensions.
3. I change the "Network Access" extension from ".image" to ".img".
4. I then select "Browse" under "Write Floppy," locate the image file and click "Open," click "Start," and in less than a minute the program makes a sound indicating success.
After following this process, however, the floppy disk I created will not boot in either my Mac SE/30 or my Classic.
Thanks again for your input!
I don't believe you will be able to use a FAT formatted floppy as a boot disk. It must be formatted HFS.
That was a thought I had, but JLW's original instructions stated that PC floppies are fine, so I never changed the formatting.
Dita, did you say earlier you have a Mac Classic, recently acquired? If so, is it a Classic 1 or Classic 2? If it's a Classic 1, then try the following:
Step 1: Restart the Classic.
Step 2: After the startup tone, press and hold down Apple (Command), Option, Letter X, and Letter O. (The Classic 1 came with System 6 Software built-in on the ROM chips. I think it is version 6.0.5 or 6.0.8, afaik.)
Step 3: Wait for the "Happy Mac" icon to show up on the screen and shortly later, the Finder desktop will appear.
NOTE: Make sure you don't hold down the keystrokes for very long or you'll be sending the command to "Rebuild the Desktop" (Apple/Command and Option at the same time.). If you do, It will ask you if you want to rebuild. If you pick Rebuild, then the Mac Classic will crash.
Step 4: Insert a blank 1.44MB floppy disk and erase it completely.
Step 5: After it's done erasing, open up the icon for the Mac's ROM. It will be the first icon mounted up on the desktop, before inserting a floppy disk.
Step 6: Copy the System Folder to the blank floppy disk.
Step 7: Open and close the System Folder located on the blank floppy disk. This will "bless" the System Folder and allow you to boot any Mac that will boot from a 1.44MB floppy and System 6, like the SE/30, for example.
Give this a try only if the Mac Classic is a Classic 1. I don't believe that the Classic 2 contains the same feature, but I could be wrong. This is why Apple gave the Classic 1 a code name of "XO". Strange but true.
Let me know, asap.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
Step 1: Restart the Classic.
Step 2: After the startup tone, press and hold down Apple (Command), Option, Letter X, and Letter O. (The Classic 1 came with System 6 Software built-in on the ROM chips. I think it is version 6.0.5 or 6.0.8, afaik.)
Step 3: Wait for the "Happy Mac" icon to show up on the screen and shortly later, the Finder desktop will appear.
NOTE: Make sure you don't hold down the keystrokes for very long or you'll be sending the command to "Rebuild the Desktop" (Apple/Command and Option at the same time.). If you do, It will ask you if you want to rebuild. If you pick Rebuild, then the Mac Classic will crash.
Step 4: Insert a blank 1.44MB floppy disk and erase it completely.
Step 5: After it's done erasing, open up the icon for the Mac's ROM. It will be the first icon mounted up on the desktop, before inserting a floppy disk.
Step 6: Copy the System Folder to the blank floppy disk.
Step 7: Open and close the System Folder located on the blank floppy disk. This will "bless" the System Folder and allow you to boot any Mac that will boot from a 1.44MB floppy and System 6, like the SE/30, for example.
Give this a try only if the Mac Classic is a Classic 1. I don't believe that the Classic 2 contains the same feature, but I could be wrong. This is why Apple gave the Classic 1 a code name of "XO". Strange but true.
Let me know, asap.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
No, the issue at hand is that you're not supposed to change that extension (even if it seems as small as image. to img. no matter what.
phreakout's suggestion is very good (I forgot about that), and you should try that.
phreakout's suggestion is very good (I forgot about that), and you should try that.
OK guys, excellent suggestions. I have some good news and some bad news.
The Macintosh Classic I have now is indeed a Classic 1. Following Phreakout's instructions, I successfully booted from the ROM, formatted a new 1.44 MB floppy disk, copied the System Folder and "blessed" the System Folder. I then ejected the disk and inserted it in my SE/30, which I then powered on. While the SE/30 booted to a Happy Mac, it shortly thereafter displayed this message:
"This startup disk was created with a "Minimum" installer script and will not work on this model Macintosh. Use a standard installer script to update the disk for different models." Then it prompted me to restart, after which it automatically ejected the floppy.
JRL: When writing the "Network Access" disk image to a floppy, why will the Floppy Image Writer program only allow me to write files with ".img" and ".imz" extensions if I'm not supposed to rename the extension? Is this abnormal?
Thanks again for your help!
The Macintosh Classic I have now is indeed a Classic 1. Following Phreakout's instructions, I successfully booted from the ROM, formatted a new 1.44 MB floppy disk, copied the System Folder and "blessed" the System Folder. I then ejected the disk and inserted it in my SE/30, which I then powered on. While the SE/30 booted to a Happy Mac, it shortly thereafter displayed this message:
"This startup disk was created with a "Minimum" installer script and will not work on this model Macintosh. Use a standard installer script to update the disk for different models." Then it prompted me to restart, after which it automatically ejected the floppy.
JRL: When writing the "Network Access" disk image to a floppy, why will the Floppy Image Writer program only allow me to write files with ".img" and ".imz" extensions if I'm not supposed to rename the extension? Is this abnormal?
Thanks again for your help!
Interesting. Huh.
Just for kicks, try rebooting again, but this time hold down the Shift key. This will prevent any extensions or the like from loading. If this doesn't work, then the message you received might be right. Darn it. In that case, you'll need to wait for the disks I am sending you.
Those disks will go out Wednesday, Dec 2nd, 2009. I mean it. What I was concerned about is that the disks won't start giving you problems. If they do, usually ejecting and reinserting the disks multiple times does the trick. Either the drive or the disks will act a bit flaky, and not want to cooperate. Let me know if that happens.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
Just for kicks, try rebooting again, but this time hold down the Shift key. This will prevent any extensions or the like from loading. If this doesn't work, then the message you received might be right. Darn it. In that case, you'll need to wait for the disks I am sending you.
Those disks will go out Wednesday, Dec 2nd, 2009. I mean it. What I was concerned about is that the disks won't start giving you problems. If they do, usually ejecting and reinserting the disks multiple times does the trick. Either the drive or the disks will act a bit flaky, and not want to cooperate. Let me know if that happens.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
Thanks Phreakout!
I tried booting the SE/30 from a floppy while holding down the shift key, but that didn't do the trick.
While I'm waiting for your OS disks, is there any method I can use to copy a complete Apple OS to a set of floppies using my Windows PC? The complete System 7.5.3 is posted on lowendmac.com as part.bin files, which I saw you mentioned in a previous post. Can I somehow get this onto floppies with the Windows PC?
I tried booting the SE/30 from a floppy while holding down the shift key, but that didn't do the trick.
While I'm waiting for your OS disks, is there any method I can use to copy a complete Apple OS to a set of floppies using my Windows PC? The complete System 7.5.3 is posted on lowendmac.com as part.bin files, which I saw you mentioned in a previous post. Can I somehow get this onto floppies with the Windows PC?
Unfortunately, the suggestions for conversion between Windows & Mac are right on the nose as far as how to do it. I think there still is some underlining issues regarding how the disks are formatted. I believe the program is writing PC format code in the disk's partition.
You will be able to store the part.bin files onto individual floppies, as is. But those files are MacBinaries and are parts of the whole installer. When you use Mac OS9 to open the files, they contain a few "tome" files equalling 30 to 40 megabytes. So expanding them and putting the contents on floppies is out of the question.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
I sent the disks out on Friday. You should be getting them any time now.
Run "Disk First Aid" located on the Disk Tools floppy to see if there are problems with the hard drive or its data.
73s de Phreakout.
Run "Disk First Aid" located on the Disk Tools floppy to see if there are problems with the hard drive or its data.
73s de Phreakout.
So here is my latest dilemma. Thanks in no small part to Phreakout's help, I was able to successfully boot my SE/30 from the internal hard drive, and access the contents of the hard drive. I initially booted from a Disk Tools floppy, ran Disk First Aid, and suddenly the hard drive appeared. After that, I've been able to boot from the hard drive each and every time.
The issue is that I can't seem to copy most files to the hard drive or create new folders on the drive. I always get a message stating that an "error of type -127 occurred." Any idea what this is and how I can fix it?
On a related note, I'm somewhat concerned about the integrity of the 600 MB hard disk installed in this machine, and would love to find a suitable backup drive that I can connect to the SCSI port. Can anyone suggest a good brand or model that can be acquired second hand?
The issue is that I can't seem to copy most files to the hard drive or create new folders on the drive. I always get a message stating that an "error of type -127 occurred." Any idea what this is and how I can fix it?
On a related note, I'm somewhat concerned about the integrity of the 600 MB hard disk installed in this machine, and would love to find a suitable backup drive that I can connect to the SCSI port. Can anyone suggest a good brand or model that can be acquired second hand?