Thanks for the suggestions,
@bobo68: I installed a brand new PRAM battery (verified with meter it is putting out 3.6v). Also zapped PRAM at startup w/ comand-option-P-R several times and performed the mob reset procedure as you mentioned. No change.
@Hotdog: Yes, you are right the long black screen lag at boot up is indeed due to the 128 MB RAM installed - when I only have 32 MB in there it comes to life much faster. (I'm glad that is normal).
I was able to make a System 7.6 Disk Tools 1 floppy and boot from that. At least that gives me an active desktop. Interestingly, one time it gave me a dialogue box saying the internal HD was not recognized as a Macintosh format and asked me whether to initialize. The message suggested it was either improperly formatted OR it was protected by security software. (Is that a generic message?) I got very excited because at least it saw there was an HD! When I clicked "Yes" I saw the green access light on the HD light up, and I got the "Creating Directory" message, but it hung there for nearly 4 hours with the green light lit before I finally gave up and powered down.
When I hooked up the same HD externally to my G3 I was able to initialize it, which took only seconds (!) and I created a 1 GB Mac OS Standard partition and successfully wrote/read files to it and had Disk First Aid verify it looked OK. So I am sure the HD itself is good. I then used the System 7.1 Installer CD on my G3 to install a system to the HD before hooking it back up (tried both internally and externally) to the Quadra. No change: the Quadra still does not see it.
My last test was to take the HD from my Mac Iici that has a good bootable System 7.1 on it and hooked that up to the Quadra. Still no recognition at all.
So what I've concluded:
(1) The Quadra can see that HDs are connected to the internal and external SCSI busses, but it treats the drives as unrecognizable and fails to mount them.
(2) The CD-ROM drive behaves the same way. A known good external Apple CD300 drive acts the same - will either spit out the installer CD or tell me that the disk is unrecognizable and ask me whether I want to initialize it (which is strange to me since it is a CD).
(4) It's NOT a defective SCSI cable.
(5) It doesn't seem to be a termination issue since the HDs work with my IIci and G3 w/o messing with terminator power or jumpers. - But maybe the Quadra is THAT picky?
Here's another possible twist that I haven't explored yet but might be worth mentioning: The Quadra came with a National Instruments NB-GPIB-P Nubus IEEE 488 controller card installed. I had removed that and set it aside prior to recapping the mobo and then forgot all about it until just now. Is it possible that because the system was previously configured with this bus card, the SCSI busses now cannot function without it installed? I have to dig it out from storage to reinstall it, but if it is extremely unlikely this is reason then I won't bother.
@uniserver: yes I am tempted to install a Nubus SCSI card if the Quadra's native SCSI buses remain unusable. However, I'm not familiar with how such a card would be initially installed - would an ATTO or FWB card function as the sole SCSI bus, or do they depend on the computer booting from an alternate drive first to load up drivers before they become active?
Thank you all again for your input - this is a nice Quadra and I still can't rule out that I'm just dealing with SCSI voodoo versus a truly fried/broken SCSI controller.
I really hope to get it up and running with SCSI to make it usable!
Howie
@bobo68: I installed a brand new PRAM battery (verified with meter it is putting out 3.6v). Also zapped PRAM at startup w/ comand-option-P-R several times and performed the mob reset procedure as you mentioned. No change.
@Hotdog: Yes, you are right the long black screen lag at boot up is indeed due to the 128 MB RAM installed - when I only have 32 MB in there it comes to life much faster. (I'm glad that is normal).
I was able to make a System 7.6 Disk Tools 1 floppy and boot from that. At least that gives me an active desktop. Interestingly, one time it gave me a dialogue box saying the internal HD was not recognized as a Macintosh format and asked me whether to initialize. The message suggested it was either improperly formatted OR it was protected by security software. (Is that a generic message?) I got very excited because at least it saw there was an HD! When I clicked "Yes" I saw the green access light on the HD light up, and I got the "Creating Directory" message, but it hung there for nearly 4 hours with the green light lit before I finally gave up and powered down.
When I hooked up the same HD externally to my G3 I was able to initialize it, which took only seconds (!) and I created a 1 GB Mac OS Standard partition and successfully wrote/read files to it and had Disk First Aid verify it looked OK. So I am sure the HD itself is good. I then used the System 7.1 Installer CD on my G3 to install a system to the HD before hooking it back up (tried both internally and externally) to the Quadra. No change: the Quadra still does not see it.
My last test was to take the HD from my Mac Iici that has a good bootable System 7.1 on it and hooked that up to the Quadra. Still no recognition at all.
So what I've concluded:
(1) The Quadra can see that HDs are connected to the internal and external SCSI busses, but it treats the drives as unrecognizable and fails to mount them.
(2) The CD-ROM drive behaves the same way. A known good external Apple CD300 drive acts the same - will either spit out the installer CD or tell me that the disk is unrecognizable and ask me whether I want to initialize it (which is strange to me since it is a CD).
(4) It's NOT a defective SCSI cable.
(5) It doesn't seem to be a termination issue since the HDs work with my IIci and G3 w/o messing with terminator power or jumpers. - But maybe the Quadra is THAT picky?
Here's another possible twist that I haven't explored yet but might be worth mentioning: The Quadra came with a National Instruments NB-GPIB-P Nubus IEEE 488 controller card installed. I had removed that and set it aside prior to recapping the mobo and then forgot all about it until just now. Is it possible that because the system was previously configured with this bus card, the SCSI busses now cannot function without it installed? I have to dig it out from storage to reinstall it, but if it is extremely unlikely this is reason then I won't bother.
@uniserver: yes I am tempted to install a Nubus SCSI card if the Quadra's native SCSI buses remain unusable. However, I'm not familiar with how such a card would be initially installed - would an ATTO or FWB card function as the sole SCSI bus, or do they depend on the computer booting from an alternate drive first to load up drivers before they become active?
Thank you all again for your input - this is a nice Quadra and I still can't rule out that I'm just dealing with SCSI voodoo versus a truly fried/broken SCSI controller.
I really hope to get it up and running with SCSI to make it usable!
Howie