Thread
Can dead battery cause hard disk trouble?
It does boot off the floppy-I once said that it was "Sad Maccing", that was my bad boot floppy, not the drive. Floppies are the only thing that give my mac life!
Disk does spin up, the problem is that it spins down again before the mac can boot. Please review the boot timelines posted on the 10th of June.
Um... there is no voltage lost on the logic board. Please review the voltages posted on the 1st of July-ignore, however, the statement of the 12V rise, as this was a meter error.
No thanks, I'm done with this thread.
I've tried to help you as much as I can but you're not listening to anything and think you know best - good luck with getting it fixed.
I know when I'm wasting my time.
UPDATE:
Over the past few days, I've found out more information which may or may not help to diagnose the problem.
Three or four times, the hard disk has spun and and stayed spun up. The mac booted quite fine, and, once running, there were no problems. I made various system backup floppies, which I can boot it from, and it did that fine. The disk was like it always was. I did some warm restarts and, as long as the disk kept spinning, it kept working.
But, as soon as I switched the mac off, only five seconds later the disk would not stay spun up. On the times when it doesn't work, there is a quiet "click-click, pause, click-click" noise coming from the drive, about twice a second.
Why does the drive sometimes work perfectly and then not at all? And what is making the feint clicking noise?
Over the past few days, I've found out more information which may or may not help to diagnose the problem.
Three or four times, the hard disk has spun and and stayed spun up. The mac booted quite fine, and, once running, there were no problems. I made various system backup floppies, which I can boot it from, and it did that fine. The disk was like it always was. I did some warm restarts and, as long as the disk kept spinning, it kept working.
But, as soon as I switched the mac off, only five seconds later the disk would not stay spun up. On the times when it doesn't work, there is a quiet "click-click, pause, click-click" noise coming from the drive, about twice a second.
Why does the drive sometimes work perfectly and then not at all? And what is making the feint clicking noise?
I think you know the answer by now.
If it's clicking, s***'s dead. Drive is a goner. Replacement.
I'm not going to waste my time doing something without knowing if it's going to work. Something which will work 100%-fine, but not wasting money on something which doesn't actually help in the end.
If anyone can proove this to me, then maybe I'll consider it. But, for as long as there's an "if"-no go. I am prepared to keep my mac working, but my budget is tight, so I can only spend money on things that'll solve the problem for certain (once you've wasted money on something that doesn't work, you can't get it back).
Capacitors, even whole power supplies, and whole hard drives for these old things are generally fairly inexpensive. If you can't afford to buy a new PSU (or a recapped one) for your machine in order to troubleshoot this issue, then you should sell or recycle the machine and use a more modern machine which is less likely to have little electrical components failing.
If you're not willing to troubleshoot this issue (and unfortunately for many people starting with their first old Mac, who only have one Mac so far, or who are reducing their collections) this does often involve "buy another Mac" or "buy some spare parts" then I don't see how it'll be possible to make a determination as to which part is failing (presuming it's only one) and suggest a specific course of action.
As IPalindromeI says-- that shenanigans is dead. The hard disk almost certainly needs a replacement, and even if you buy one and find out it is the power supply, having a spare hard drive is never a bad thing.
If you're not willing to troubleshoot this issue (and unfortunately for many people starting with their first old Mac, who only have one Mac so far, or who are reducing their collections) this does often involve "buy another Mac" or "buy some spare parts" then I don't see how it'll be possible to make a determination as to which part is failing (presuming it's only one) and suggest a specific course of action.
As IPalindromeI says-- that shenanigans is dead. The hard disk almost certainly needs a replacement, and even if you buy one and find out it is the power supply, having a spare hard drive is never a bad thing.
No-one can give you the guarantee you are looking for. You've been given the best advice this experienced community has to offer. Either try it, or don't. Asking the same question over and over isn't going to change the answer.
Firstly, sorry about the late reply-I've been unwell, so I was keeping off the family computer so as not to "infect it with viruses"!
Could this be related?
I have been running off of a RAM disk from time to time. It works quite well, and I can run my favourite programs from floppy. That was until the morning two days ago :-/ .
I switched it on, waited for the hard disk to click and spin down, then popped my floppy in as usual. It started, the RAM disk loaded, then as soon as the RamDisk INIT was supposed to eject the floppy, the machine froze. So I reformatted the boot disk using an image of a good version (I assumed this one to have become corrupted-I change settings sometimes).
Then, of course, the hard disk decides to go, so I use that insted (without testing the boot floppy yet). I load the program-no problem. I open the file (file's not corrupt-tried other files too, and they also had a problem) and the program quits/crashes. Afterwards the Finder's menu bar is all greyed out, and when I open a menu, I get all sorts of red, green and blue smudge underneath!
Could these both be signs of RAM trouble, and could that be linked to failing capacitors?
Even stranger, it booted fine from the RAM disk, and loaded the file, soon afterwards, and hasn't shown trouble again since then :?: .
Could this be related?
I have been running off of a RAM disk from time to time. It works quite well, and I can run my favourite programs from floppy. That was until the morning two days ago :-/ .
I switched it on, waited for the hard disk to click and spin down, then popped my floppy in as usual. It started, the RAM disk loaded, then as soon as the RamDisk INIT was supposed to eject the floppy, the machine froze. So I reformatted the boot disk using an image of a good version (I assumed this one to have become corrupted-I change settings sometimes).
Then, of course, the hard disk decides to go, so I use that insted (without testing the boot floppy yet). I load the program-no problem. I open the file (file's not corrupt-tried other files too, and they also had a problem) and the program quits/crashes. Afterwards the Finder's menu bar is all greyed out, and when I open a menu, I get all sorts of red, green and blue smudge underneath!
Could these both be signs of RAM trouble, and could that be linked to failing capacitors?
Even stranger, it booted fine from the RAM disk, and loaded the file, soon afterwards, and hasn't shown trouble again since then :?: .
REPLACE The capacitors... period... story ended...
I have now. It fixed the RAM problem, the sad maccing and the whistling through the speaker. However, the hard drive still spins down after power up, and it doesn't seem to ever work (although only time will tell). Once, it did the other thing where it would play half the death chime before playing the happy chime and asking for a boot disk (I don't know why it's doing that-anyway).
How could I fix the hard disk trouble? (So far I've tried a PRAM battery and a recap)
Get a new hard drive.
if there is data on it you can quickly perform the head un-park trick, but other than that you toss it and buy another one. I recommend the older IBM SCSI drives. I never had one die. I can only say the opposite on the new "deskstar" series though.
Unfortunately, I tried that the other day and my clumsy finger scraped the top platter :I 
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