9.1 CD not able to initialize hard drive

[thinkdifferent]

I have a Power Mac 8500 that has had a dead hard drive for the last year. I finally got around to ordering a replacement hard drive on eBay (a whopping 700 MB 50-pin internal SCSI), and I installed it in my 8500.

The first problem arose when I tried to boot from a System 7.5.3 disk - the CD didn't even spin up, so I'm guessing it's an incompatible type or something. Or maybe System 7 can only boot from floppys..?

Anyways, I put in the 9.1 CD and I was able to boot it. I opened the disk tools application, but when I selected my hard disk it said something like: "Cannot initialize because this disk is in an unsupported drive."

I don't really understand why that hard drive would show up as unsupported, since it has an Apple logo on it and was clearly pulled from some kind of vintage mac. I don't have any other SCSI-50 macs around that I can try to initialize it with, so I'm stuck. Any suggestions?

 

[24bit]

I recall a 7.5.3 CD floating around and I think it was not bootable, but only carried the disk images needed for installation.

The first retail CD to boot Power Macs which I am aware of was 7.6.

For your HDD, one never knows what the seller did with it before, Apple branded or not.

I would try a third party HDD low level utility, there are some around. Siverlining and Lido were always working for me.

 

[mcdermd]

I have a bootable retail 7.5.3 install CD with a System software installer. It boots my 8500 with no issues.

 

[uniserver]

that is an interesting issue you have there.

- an apple rom hd, saying unsupported. in Mac OS 9.

 

[NJRoadfan]

The version of Drive Setup included with 9.1 should work with non-Apple ROM drives without a problem. That is how I formatted the 9.1GB SCSI drive that is in the 8600 I have now. Silverlining and FWB were out of the question since their driver causes problems with XPostFacto and MacOS X on these machines. Does the machine have enough RAM in it? Have you tried moving the RAM around? Also sometimes zapping the PRAM can help with booting troubles. Also is your CD a legit retail copy of 9.1 (orange aqua "9" on the disk)? 9.1 Restore CDs (usually gray in color) that came with new Macs aren't always bootable.

 

[thinkdifferent]

Yes, the disk is a retail version of 9.1. I am going to try again with a Mac OS 8 CD, and if that doesn't work I'll probably just buy a new hard drive. The seller who sold me the hard drive gave me a full refund anyways so if I spend $20 on a new one I won't be losing any money!

 

[CelGen]

Follow the instructions to patch Drive Setup using ResEdit and use that. It will then format just about anything.

 

[thinkdifferent]

Is this the guide you are referring to?

http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/drvsetup.html

I will try this tonight. Since the OS 9.1 CD is read-only, I'll have to copy drive setup from the CD, patch it on another mac, and then put it on a floppy disk...

 

[NJRoadfan]

The version of Drive Setup included on the 9.1 CD is much newer and doesn't require patching to work with non-Apple drives.