LC475, resurection or do I use it as a planter?

[dogbiscuit]

Hi all,

I've been away and am just getting caught up.

Both the LC475 and the G3 are inoperable, the LC you know about and the G3 needs a power supply plus I don't know what else.

As soon as I can get a power supply I'l give the G3 a shot but I don't have much hope, I've gathered parts far and wide and there's no telling if it'll do anything when it's powered up. I've got a scsi hard drive (about 8-9 Gb I believe) with a fresh install of Mac OS 9... I'm hoping that will suffice.

If I get the OS 7.xxx install package (Mac original) will it have everything I need? Boot diskette etc? If I can get that installed then upgrading it should be a snap ;^)

The diskette drive from the G3 gives every indication that it's working, when I put it in the LC475. The original LC diskette drive seems defective. The G3 drive can't be a permanent installation in the LC since the connector is in a different place... unless I use the G3 cable as well... hmmmm...

 

[Bunsen]

Beige G3 can use an ATX PC power supply. There's a jumper on the motherboard round back of the PCI slots, marked MAC/PC or something.

 

[dogbiscuit]

I'll get an ATX supply next week and try it... you never know...

 

[benjgvps]

By any chance are you extracting the files to your desktop and then putting them on a floppy?

Yep, I'm using Stuffit to extract the files to a Wondoze folder and then rawrite2 to put it on a floppy. Is that ok?

No, you have to write an image to a disk, not a bunch of mac files. Windows trashes the resource fork on the mac files rendering them useless to a Mac. I bet I can give you an image of the network access disk that you can write from a PC. I will make a zip file with instructions and upload it to mediafire.

 

[benjgvps]

Ok, here it is, If the program can't write it, use a different program.

http://www.mediafire.com/?tmdhykdngmr

 

[dogbiscuit]

Hi Benjgvps, I've tried everything, but still no joy.

I've unpacked the zip archive and used Transmac to format and copy the image to 8 different diskettes. Sometimes the format fails tho not often, always copying the image to the diskette fails, usually right at the end with 'Error writing to Mac disk'. I tried many diskettes, none worked. I then tried rawrite2.exe which will write a raw image to a diskette, but it always comes up with 'controller has failed' message (also right at the end).

I'm going to try and locate a box of top quality diskettes and try it again. At this point it seems that it either has to be the image, unzipped it's 1,474,644 bytes, is that the right size? or the diskettes I'm using.

I'm using PC diskettes (formatted with Transmac) rather than Mac diskettes, are there any differences between the two? I seem to recall shops selling boxes of PC diskettes or Mac diskettes...

Thanks for your help...

 

[Bunsen]

There's no hardware difference between the two. It's all in the formatting.

Suggestion: Get an ATX supply or steal the one from your PC and get your beige running. Then download the necessaries to the beige, format and copy the disk there. This will eliminate any possible PC related corruption.

If this fails, move the 475 floppy over to the beige and see if it works or doesn't there. This will determine if the 475 floppy drive is bad.

Q: When you swapped in the beige drive, did you also swap the floppy cable? Because given everything you've written above, IMHO it sounds like a failed floppy controller on the motherboard, or (fingers crossed) a bad cable.

 

[dogbiscuit]

Hi Bunsen,

No, I didn't swap the cable, just the fd drive, I'll try the cable now.

I will get an atx power supply from somewhere. I've been doing this on my laptop and I don't have a PC or an atx power supply in the house.

The beige is going to need some work too, but I'll give it a try.

Thanks for the help...

 

[dogbiscuit]

Tried the cable, no difference.

 

[JRL]

Try connecting the drive to a 3.5 IDE-USB dongle that will let you see the contents of the drive. If the drive doesn't appear as a USB drive, your drive probably has some damaged partition.

 

[dogbiscuit]

Hi JRL,

The drive mentioned is the floppy disk drive, not an IDE hard disk. But, that's a good idea for testing a hard drive though.

Re my LC475 problem: I'm going to get some new, guaranteed error-free diskettes and try the procedure again. In a parallel operation, I'll get an ATX power supply and give the beige a try.

One way or another...

 

[JRL]

Whoops.