Macintosh SE Hard Drive Issue

[Ajkosmo22]

Hi all,

I recently purchased a Macintosh SE with the flashing floppy disc with the question mark. Knowing it had a bad hard drive, I went and grabbed a parts computer with a known good hard drive. Booted right up, worked great, was playing games and everything. I turned the machine off and came back to it about an hour later and the flashing floppy disc with the question mark came back. I rechecked all of the wires and everything was connected. I inserted a floppy disc and it booted to that. I do not know what to look at next considering everything had just worked. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[joevt]

Do you need a new battery?

When you booted the floppy disk, could you see the hard drive?

Did you set the startup disk in the control panel to point to the hard disk?

 

[Ajkosmo22]

Do you need a new battery?

When you booted the floppy disk, could you see the hard drive?

Did you set the startup disk in the control panel to point to the hard disk?

It is possible that I need a new battery. When I booted the floppy and checked for a hard drive, it could not find one, even though I could hear the hard drive spinning and moving. Could all of this been caused by a battery?

 

[joevt]

Could all of this been caused by a battery?

Probably not. I would check the voltage anyway.

 

[cjbriare]

Had you been using that spare hard drive recently? Does it still work in that parts machine?

I bought a machine off ebay once that worked perfectly when I first booted it, then the hard drive failed literally the next time I powered on, and didn't work in other machines.

That was the only time something like that happened in my experience, even still a lot of old SCSI drives are getting frail.


P.S. If you aren't already aware of them, check out SCSI2SD - a bit pricey and takes some set-up but is a reliable replacement to old SCSI drives.

 

[Ajkosmo22]

Had you been using that spare hard drive recently? Does it still work in that parts machine?

I bought a machine off ebay once that worked perfectly when I first booted it, then the hard drive failed literally the next time I powered on, and didn't work in other machines.

That was the only time something like that happened in my experience, even still a lot of old SCSI drives are getting frail.


P.S. If you aren't already aware of them, check out SCSI2SD - a bit pricey and takes some set-up but is a reliable replacement to old SCSI drives.

The screen was damaged so that's what made it a great parts machine. Could you hear your hard drive spinning and moving even though it was bad?

 

[za9ra22]

The probability is that the replacement hard drive has also now failed. It is not really surprising since these SCSI drives are really old, and very few (if any) would be considered reliable enough to trust. The fact it didn't show up when the system was booted with a floppy very strongly suggests the drive has failed, not just that the system can't find a bootable OS.

Hard drives can be mechanically functional in as far as motor activity, yet still have failed. Heads can stick, and even the platters can. There's also the noise the internal fan in the system makes which can sound like a HD, but obviously isn't.

There are solid state alternatives which are currently available, based on SD or microSD cards:
SCSI2SD - relatively expensive and currently not always available due to supply chain constraints.
BlueSCSI - much less expensive, and easier to set up than a SCSI2SD device.
ZuluSCSI - newest of the options, about the same cost as BlueSCSI, and reportedly also easy to set up.

 

[cjbriare]

Could you hear your hard drive spinning and moving even though it was bad?

Yes the internal mechanics sounded normal but nada on the SCSI bus.

There are solid state alternatives which are currently available, based on SD or microSD cards:
SCSI2SD - relatively expensive and currently not always available due to supply chain constraints.
BlueSCSI - much less expensive, and easier to set up than a SCSI2SD device.
ZuluSCSI - newest of the options, about the same cost as BlueSCSI, and reportedly also easy to set up.

I haven't heard of Blue or Zulu, thanks for posting those I'll have to try them in my hw.

I've gone through through 3 SCSI2SD's that popped + magic smoke.