MrFahrenheit
Well-known member
I’ve been a Mac user since 1990, spanning system 6 through today’s OS X and everything inbetween. I know about drive extensions and blessing a system folder and HFS+.
I have a Zip and a Jaz drive that I use for setting up, testing, and troubleshooting various Macs from a SE all the way to a 8600/300. I had set a bunch of them up on a Quadra running 7.6.1 and everything was great for past 5-6 months.
A month ago I switched my Quadra out (that I use for imaging disks etc) with a 8600/300 running OS 9. I had some issues with freezing and such and as a result I think I had to format some of my disks and recopy the system software back onto them. I say I think because I know I did it to one disk but I don’t remember doing it to others.
I’m smart enough to not format them HFS+.
These disks load and mount just fine on any computer. You can see them and everything is good but last night suddenly all of my boot disks stopped working. I got flashing question mark. It was also at the same time as I put away my 8600/300 and pulled out my IIfx to test. Then I tried a IIci followed by an LC and an LC 475. Nothing worked. I thought at first just Macs were bad, or the drives themselves were bad.
I managed to get into my LC 475 running 7.6.1 and I copied the contents of one of my Jaz disks to the 475 drive and then I formatted the Jaz disk and copied it back. Rebooted and held down CMD-OPTION-SHIFT-DELETE and it booted! So I tried another of my disks with 7.6.1. Flashing question mark. Did the same steps of copying the files off, formatting, and then copying back and it booted no problem.
Back in the 90s I never used both a PPC and 68K Mac at the same time. When I upgraded to PPC I never went back. So I don’t have this experience.
Is there something with formatting a drive on PPC Macs that makes them not bootable on 68k Macs? If so, I may have classified some brand new hard drives I bought as dead because I set them up on a PPC and they wouldn’t boot a 68k.
I seem to recall that Apple rewrote the SCSI manager somewhere along the line. Is that what is at play here ? I guess I’m going to have to go back and copy all of my disks over and format them and copy back.
It would seem a disk formatted on 68k boots a PPC Mac but not the other way around. Am I just going crazy and something else is going on here, or is this officially the reason? I’ve searched but results from google only point at PPC to Intel issues.
I have a Zip and a Jaz drive that I use for setting up, testing, and troubleshooting various Macs from a SE all the way to a 8600/300. I had set a bunch of them up on a Quadra running 7.6.1 and everything was great for past 5-6 months.
A month ago I switched my Quadra out (that I use for imaging disks etc) with a 8600/300 running OS 9. I had some issues with freezing and such and as a result I think I had to format some of my disks and recopy the system software back onto them. I say I think because I know I did it to one disk but I don’t remember doing it to others.
I’m smart enough to not format them HFS+.
These disks load and mount just fine on any computer. You can see them and everything is good but last night suddenly all of my boot disks stopped working. I got flashing question mark. It was also at the same time as I put away my 8600/300 and pulled out my IIfx to test. Then I tried a IIci followed by an LC and an LC 475. Nothing worked. I thought at first just Macs were bad, or the drives themselves were bad.
I managed to get into my LC 475 running 7.6.1 and I copied the contents of one of my Jaz disks to the 475 drive and then I formatted the Jaz disk and copied it back. Rebooted and held down CMD-OPTION-SHIFT-DELETE and it booted! So I tried another of my disks with 7.6.1. Flashing question mark. Did the same steps of copying the files off, formatting, and then copying back and it booted no problem.
Back in the 90s I never used both a PPC and 68K Mac at the same time. When I upgraded to PPC I never went back. So I don’t have this experience.
Is there something with formatting a drive on PPC Macs that makes them not bootable on 68k Macs? If so, I may have classified some brand new hard drives I bought as dead because I set them up on a PPC and they wouldn’t boot a 68k.
I seem to recall that Apple rewrote the SCSI manager somewhere along the line. Is that what is at play here ? I guess I’m going to have to go back and copy all of my disks over and format them and copy back.
It would seem a disk formatted on 68k boots a PPC Mac but not the other way around. Am I just going crazy and something else is going on here, or is this officially the reason? I’ve searched but results from google only point at PPC to Intel issues.