1991 Mac Classic B&W Memory Manager Error?

[Macman756]

Hey guys,

I have a Mac Classic B&W from 91 that used to work great, but now, it will chime and startup to grey screen with mouse, say welcome to Mac, Then the icons start, The first three appear fine, then a 4th comes up, a little toolbox with a hammer, then I get the bomb message and it says " Memory Manager Error, Ive tried removing the expansion card of ram, and removed the ROM (I think) from the Mobo. Thanks for any help!!

P.S. I will try for pics or a video

 

[lee4hmz]

Reboot the machine while holding down Cmd-Opt-X-O. This should force the Classic to boot from ROM, and then you'll (hopefully) be able to see what's on the HDD. It could be that the drive is failing and causing an extension to not load properly -- if it's got the original Quantum or Conner 40MB HDD, this is definitely something to look into.

Is the sound working? Is there any goo or green "rust" under the caps?

-lee

 

[Macman756]

Sound works fine, I hear the chime fine. Ive had the Mobo out a bunch today, not seeing any rust. Ive tried booting from the ROM, nothing, From the beginning I thought it was hardrive or software, but no keyboard commands make a difference, Cmd-opt-x-o does nothing. Well, neither does anything else.

 

[Macman756]

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!

On a whim I just switched the cable from the CLassic to the keyboard to the right port, was on the left near the option apple keys. Any boom! ROM bootup to a desktop and said "Are you sure you want to rebuild the desktop? I said yes and its doing that now. Anything else I should do?

 

[Macman756]

Update, it rebuilt the desktop and restarted regular, back to beginning, Memory Manager Error. So hardrive failure? or software corrupt?

 

[superpantoufle]

I'd say software, as long as it boots fine from the Rom disk, and you're internal drive mounts in the Finder. But it's just me.

Have you tried to simply boot with extensions off (Caps at atartup)? If it boots, you could then begin to troubleshoot your System the old-fasioned way, removing all extensions from the Extensions Folder (System 7) or the System Suitcase (System 6) and putting them back one by one until you find the culprit.

 

[Scott Baret]

Look for an icon in the system folder similar to the one that crashes your Mac on startup. Remove that one first and see what happens.

 

[Macman756]

Holding Caps made no difference. Its the bottom left key right?

 

[Dog Cow]

Holding Caps made no difference. Its the bottom left key right?

Yes, but I think you're supposed to hold down the shift key, not caps lock.

 

[MrMacPlus]

Holding Caps made no difference. Its the bottom left key right?

Yes, but I think you're supposed to hold down the shift key, not caps lock.

I think caps has the same effect, I haven't tried, though.

 

[Macman756]

Well, someone said check the System Folder when I had it booted from the ROM, well, I open Macintosh HD and its basicly empty, just one folder, Works, or something like that. I think I have some stuff missing from the OS. How would I get a clean install of OS 6?

 

[Macman756]

Where can I get OS 6 floppies? Thanks

 

[tomlee59]

Before you get too far along that path, it may be valuable to open up the Classic and carefully inspect the logic board for capacitor leakage. Every Classic that I have opened up recently (working or not) has exhibited this problem. It's just a matter of time before symptoms appear if they have not already done so.

 

[Macman756]

OK, will do. Where should I look? Just any capacitors on that board?

 

[tomlee59]

Goop leaks from the electrolytics, so you can start there. But it's not a large circuit board, so just look carefully at the whole thing. Won't take long!

 

[macgeek417]

If I remember correctly, when the icon appears, that means that the INIT (extension) has been loaded, not that it is loading. This means that it is probebly the next INIT that is causing your problems. Do you remember what icon used to show up next??? If so, try removing it and see what happens. It might not help, though - not all INITs show icons. Also, some installers (ClarisWorks 1.0, anyone?) install INITs directly into the system file. So, does the icon show up on the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen, or a blank screen with the desktop background? The icons that show up during the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen are the ones (if any) that are contained within the system file. If all else fails, back up any INITs/fonts/DAs/cdevs/etc that you may have on it, delete the system folder (or just move it to an external HD, if you have one!) and copy the system from the ROM disk to your HD. That should solve your problem.

Sorry for the long post!

Good luck!

 

[Mac128]

Well, someone said check the System Folder when I had it booted from the ROM, well, I open Macintosh HD and its basicly empty, just one folder, Works, or something like that. I think I have some stuff missing from the OS. How would I get a clean install of OS 6?

If the Classic boots from ROM, I find it hard to believe it is a hardware issue that is causing it not to load from the hard drive. However, it is also hard to imagine a hard drive that starts the bootup procedure and actually loads extensions, but no System folder is present. Change the HD window to list view in order to see the itemized contents of the drive. It has to have a System folder. Sometimes, the icons get stretched off the window (in which case there should be scroll bars at the top and/or bottom). That memory manager error sounds more like a bad software call to me made by an extension that is missing resources or loading improperly.

As for available disks, you can download them directly from Apple, or you can copy the contents of the Classic's ROM disk onto it.

 

[Dog Cow]

If you are getting tired of having to do the XO thing to boot from ROM, you can do that, then goto Apple menu -> Control Panel -> Startup Device and click ROM Disk as the startup device. As long as the Classic's battery is working, it will start up quite zippily without any necessary key presses.