Color Classic's Floppy drive works externally but not internally, Why???

[KMM]

Hi there,

I found the strange issue on color classic. After cleaning and changing a gear in an original 1.4K floppy drive came with color classic, assembled it back and restarted, everything seemed to be alright. I turned it on, screen showed question mark floppy, I put boot disk (100% work with other macs) in but it didn't booted and ejected disk smoothly.

I took floppy drive out, test it with LCIII with the same floppy boot disk, it worked flawlessly. Then, I put it back to color classic case, it showed question mark floppy again, putting the same boot disk, it didn't booted and ejected disk no matter how I tried.

I really appreciate in advance.
KMM.

 

[finkmac]

are you sure that particular floppy will boot a Colour Classic?

are you using the same floppy cable on both machines?

have you recapped the colour classic?

 

[KMM]

are you sure that particular floppy will boot a Colour Classic?

are you using the same floppy cable on both machines?

have you recapped the colour classic?

Thanks @finkmac for your help.
1. Yes, I tried 1.4K boot floppy disk with another color classic and it works.
2. I did not. When I took floppy drive out and try with LCIII, I use LCIII's cable. I took out just only floppy drive not cable.
3. I did not.

Thanks.

 

[finkmac]

any colour classic that has not been recapped should be considered broken and and in need of repair.

period.

recap your machines and come back to this later.

I sure hope your LC III has been recapped

 

[KMM]

any colour classic that has not been recapped should be considered broken and and in need of repair.

period.

recap your machines and come back to this later.

I sure hope your LC III has been recapped

@finkmac
Thanks again. Recapping is a hard work for me since I'm a newbie. I would like to troubleshoot from the easiest way first.

More additional information, on color classic with floppy drive installed, it showed question mark picture when turn on. I then inserted a 100% working system 7.5 floppy boot disk, question make picture changed into a happy mac for a while before ejected floppy disk out, screen flashing a little bit and showed question make picture again.

Thanks.

 

[finkmac]

Thanks again. Recapping is a hard work for me since I'm a newbie. I would like to troubleshoot from the easiest way first.

no. wrong. you are wasting your time here.

your boards are full of leaking capacitors, the electrolytic fluid is sitting on the boards slowly damaging everything in their immediate area.

without recapping them, the bad capacitors could be causing any number of problems.

your boards are broken. fix them.

 

[killvore]

What our very direct friend here is trying to say is that the symptoms you are describing means it is most likely that the issue is with the Color Classic logic board, not the disk or disk drive (since these work ok elsewhere). Since capacitor leakage is by far the main cause of logic board damage and subsequent failures, and computers from this era are now very likely to be suffering from it, this is something you should get done as soon as you can. You don't have to do it yourself, though - there are good people all over the world who can do this for you. So you can weigh whether this is something you want to learn (and buy the equipment for and take the risk of messing up a computer), or if you outsource it because you are more interested in using a working retrocomputer than maintaining one - a totally reasonable position!

I was in a similar situation last year - I had never done a recap, had only a single SE/30 as my retrocomputer, which had been working but then the sound got faint, and realized I had to bite the bullet. I bought a kit from console5 and a bad soldering iron, pulled a pad on the logic board, freaked out but learned my lesson, and got help from someone on the forums to fix it. Now I've recapped almost thirty machines So it is definitely something you can learn even if you have never worked with electronics before, though maybe start with a machine you don't care so much about to begin with

 

[KMM]

What our very direct friend here is trying to say is that the symptoms you are describing means it is most likely that the issue is with the Color Classic logic board, not the disk or disk drive (since these work ok elsewhere). Since capacitor leakage is by far the main cause of logic board damage and subsequent failures, and computers from this era are now very likely to be suffering from it, this is something you should get done as soon as you can. You don't have to do it yourself, though - there are good people all over the world who can do this for you. So you can weigh whether this is something you want to learn (and buy the equipment for and take the risk of messing up a computer), or if you outsource it because you are more interested in using a working retrocomputer than maintaining one - a totally reasonable position!

I was in a similar situation last year - I had never done a recap, had only a single SE/30 as my retrocomputer, which had been working but then the sound got faint, and realized I had to bite the bullet. I bought a kit from console5 and a bad soldering iron, pulled a pad on the logic board, freaked out but learned my lesson, and got help from someone on the forums to fix it. Now I've recapped almost thirty machines So it is definitely something you can learn even if you have never worked with electronics before, though maybe start with a machine you don't care so much about to begin with

@killvore
Thank you very much for your explanation, I really appreciate it. Now I understand what @finkmac and you trying to teach me.

Thanks.

 

[ESM-NL]

A Color Classic needs System Enabler 401 in the system folder.

 

[Phipli]

A Color Classic needs System Enabler 401 in the system folder.

Not having a system enabler results in a message saying the computer is too new, rather than just a flashing question mark. If I remember correctly.

Recap.

 

[ESM-NL]

a message saying the computer is too new

That is the message you get when missing the enabler. When you put the System Enabler 401 file in the system folder on the disk, it will finish the startup without an error message.

 

[Phipli]

That is the message you get when missing the enabler. When you put the System Enabler 401 file in the system folder on the disk, it will finish the startup without an error message.

Right... That is my point. So if you read the description of their issue, they're stuck at the flashing question mark, not the not supported message.