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Centris 650 Won't Boot - "?"

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Could be an intermittent floppy drive. With how much dust there was, I wouldn’t be surprised if the heads were dirty.
 

ExplorerZ

Well-known member
Assuming your using the 7.5 floppy you talked about, the second error means that there are no system files it recognizes to boot from. Error 41 means that Finder is missing on the disk. As for the 4th one I do not know.
 

1200XL M.U.L.E.

Well-known member
I tried booting from System 8 one more time and got error #10 now. Might as well add it to the list.

IMG-3555.jpg

I ordered a ZuluSCSI Mini from Rabbit Hole. If I can boot from an image on the Mini then I know my main issue here has been with the floppy drive.
 

joshc

Well-known member
I ordered a ZuluSCSI Mini from Rabbit Hole.
Great choice. This should make your life a lot easier.

I wouldn't bother with the floppy drive personally, they are unreliable at best and a pain to work with, too slow to do an install that way.

Where were you getting your install images from? Sounds like some of them may have been incomplete or corrupt.
 

Juror22

Well-known member
You will be happy with the ZuluSCSI, but did you ever disassemble/clean/re-grease the floppy drive before you tried the floppy drive?
 

1200XL M.U.L.E.

Well-known member
@joshc I have been downloading images wherever Google finds them. Searching for "mac 68k boot disk" or "mac 68k disk image" helps.

@Juror22 I partially disassembled the drive and cleaned the heads and rails.
 

joshc

Well-known member
@joshc I have been downloading images wherever Google finds them. Searching for "mac 68k boot disk" or "mac 68k disk image" helps.
There are only two sources of OS images I trust, Apple's Legacy Recovery CD, and Apple's Mac OS Anthology DVDs. Both are available on Mac Garden. There are a couple of images on Legacy Recovery which are wrong I think (but most of them work) - so the Anthology ones are the most reliable.

The other thing to bear in mind is that your 650 cannot boot every OS version, Macs are locked to specific versions. The 650 can boot 7.1 to 8.1.

There are also different kinds of images. Some are floppy images, and some are disk images with a boot partition and drivers. But an incorrectly written floppy image, or with a corrupt/partial OS will not boot. Similarily, when you come to setting up your ZuluSCSI, a disk image without a boot partition/driver will not be bootable - a lot of images available online are missing these.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
This discussion is getting a bit off the rails. Let's eliminate one variable at a time.

Assuming your using the 7.5 floppy you talked about, the second error means that there are no system files it recognizes to boot from. Error 41 means that Finder is missing on the disk. As for the 4th one I do not know.

This is only true absent hardware failures, and the fact that the error changes each time means that something else is happening. I wouldn't believe what the errors are saying except on the very strictly pedantical level.

(The fourth one means that the system tried to execute a floating-point instruction without an FPU being on the bus. Again, might be strictly true, but isn't entirely useful unless you know why it's trying to execute that instruction).

I ordered a ZuluSCSI Mini from Rabbit Hole. If I can boot from an image on the Mini then I know my main issue here has been with the floppy drive.

This is a really sensible option. Eliminate one variable at a time. Good decision.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
There are only two sources of OS images I trust, Apple's Legacy Recovery CD, and Apple's Mac OS Anthology DVDs.
Joshc - the Anthology DVDs are a mess, 7.1 and 7.1.1 are missing the Fonts disk, 7.6.1, 8.0 and 8.1 are HFS+ meaning you can't use them from an older OS than 8.1!

There are other things as well but I forget. I've been meaning to do a tidied up version.

Edit : 7.1.2 is the PPC version, it will update the 68k version of 7.1, but will only do clean installs to PPC.
 
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joshc

Well-known member
Joshc - the Anthology DVDs are a mess, 7.1 and 7.1.1 are missing the Fonts disk, 7.6.1, 8.0 and 8.1 are HFS+ meaning you can't use them from an older OS than 8.1!

There are other things as well but I forget. I've been meaning to do a tidied up version.
Maybe I've got them mixed up and it's the Legacy Recovery ones which are OK? I remember the thing about 7.1 missing the Fonts disk but I thought that was a problem on Legacy Recovery.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Maybe I've got them mixed up and it's the Legacy Recovery ones which are OK? I remember the thing about 7.1 missing the Fonts disk but I thought that was a problem on Legacy Recovery.
I don't think I've ever looked at the legacy recovery disk/s. I was working from the Anthology DVDs, but forget which release.
 

Paralel

Well-known member
Joshc - the Anthology DVDs are a mess, 7.1 and 7.1.1 are missing the Fonts disk, 7.6.1, 8.0 and 8.1 are HFS+ meaning you can't use them from an older OS than 8.1!

There are other things as well but I forget. I've been meaning to do a tidied up version.

Edit : 7.1.2 is the PPC version, it will update the 68k version of 7.1, but will only do clean installs to PPC.

Small correction on 7.1.2, there are three separate versions. One is PPC, one is 68k, one is Performa specific. The 68k one indeed will only act as an update, it won't do a clean install. The Performa specific builds will only work on the Performa for which they are intended. The same is true of the PPC version, it will only install on the models for which it was intended. The best version of 7.1.2 68k to work with is on the Legacy Recovery CD. If you try to use the 7.1.2 PPC version on anything but the models of PPC it is intended for, it will just outright not install due to installer limitations. The same is true for 7.1.2 68k Performa.

Also, just recently, I was able to prove that 7.1.2 68k and 7.1.2p 68k are different versions of the same OS. So 7.1.2 68k is its own discreet entity, unlike what is widely believed.

I am a rabid 7.1.2 68k evangelist...
 
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Phipli

Well-known member
Small correction on 7.1.2, there are three separate versions. One is PPC, one is 68k, one is Performa specific. The 68k one indeed will only act as an update, it won't do a clean install. The Performa specific builds will only work on the Performa for which they are intended. The same is true of the PPC version, it will only install on the models for which it was intended. The best version of 7.1.2 68k to work with is on the Legacy Recovery CD. If you try to use the 7.1.2 PPC version on anything but the models of PPC it is intended for, it will just outright not install due to installer limitations. The same is true for 7.1.2 68k Performa.

Also, just recently, I was able to prove that 7.1.2 68k and 7.1.2p 68k are different versions of the same OS. So 7.1.2 68k is its own discreet entity, unlike what is widely believed.

I am a rabid 7.1.2 68k evangelist...
I can double check, but I'm fairly sure the version I'm talking about installs on PPC and updates 68k, like I said. Faff to check because I only have one machine that supports 7.1.2 PPC and isn't an upgraded 68k.
 

Paralel

Well-known member
I can double check, but I'm fairly sure the version I'm talking about installs on PPC and updates 68k, like I said. Faff to check because I only have one machine that supports 7.1.2 PPC and isn't an upgraded 68k.

Do you know where you got it? I've never seen an installer like that.
 

Paralel

Well-known member
Jan 24, 1994? I'm honestly amazed that it works on 68k. The Jan 1994 release of 7.1.2 is the PPC release.

The 68k release was Jun 22, 1994.

Screenshot_20230206_122946.png

This is quite interesting. Even the sizes of the anticipated installs are different, but they both have the stipulation that they are upgrades only, not clean installations.

I appreciate your effort with regard to this discussion. I have learned something I wasn't aware of before regarding the 7.1.2 installers.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Jan 24, 1994? I'm honestly amazed that it works on 68k. The Jan 1994 release of 7.1.2 is the PPC release.

The 68k release was Jun 22, 1994.

View attachment 52031

This is quite interesting. Even the sizes of the anticipated installs are different.

I appreciate your effort with regard to this discussion. I have learned something I wasn't aware of before regarding the 7.1.2 installers.
It says it is version 3.4.4 of the installer, but file size-wise, be aware that it is the British localised version.

That era is a complicated mess. There are versions of the OS with the same version number and different versions of the finder. I think, but might be confused, that I saw early 7.5.x installer CDs with the boot System 7.5.x and Finder 7.1.2, others with 7.1.3 and multiple files sizes and created dates for Finder 7.1.2... version control was past the Info box versioning.
 

Paralel

Well-known member
It says it is version 3.4.4 of the installer, but file size-wise, be aware that it is the British localised version.

That era is a complicated mess. There are versions of the OS with the same version number and different versions of the finder. I think, but might be confused, that I saw early 7.5.x installer CDs with the boot System 7.5.x and Finder 7.1.2, others with 7.1.3 and multiple files sizes and created dates for Finder 7.1.2... version control was past the Info box versioning.

They chose the British version for the anthology? That is an odd choice.

The versioning is crazy. There is no less than 4 versions of finder between the various versions of 7.1.1 and 7.1.2, being 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.3, & 7.1.4.

That's one of the interesting thing about 7.1.2 68k, it has Finder 7.1.4, same as System 7.5.0. I think this is why so many pieces of software that say they require 7.5 work on 7.1.2.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
They chose the British version for the anthology? That is an odd choice.
It's the same in the US folder, I just made my own CD of the British versions and so have it to hand.

The Anthology disks have many localised versions, it's a single set. Many versions are missing though. They feel like an intern project!
 
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