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Mac SE FDHD with a 40MB drive transplanted from SE/30 boots only after turning off and on again

domleg

New member
Hello Everyone,

I have a Macintosh SE FDHD with a 40MB hard drive transplanted from a dead SE/30. The original 20MB hard drive worked well until it died on me this afternoon.

After the swap the drive only boots if I turn the computer off and a few seconds later on again, without letting the hard drive spin down completely. If I just turn the computer on cold I get the familiar disk question mark icon. If I then boot 6.0.8 from the floppy the hard drive is not visible to the Finder but I can still format it using the system hard drive tool, which then refuses to initialise it!

I tried reformatting and reloading the 6.0.8 (after doing the off and immediately on thing), it didn't do any difference, the hard drive is still not visible after a cold boot.

Have anyone got any suggestions? I tried googling the symptoms but could't get anything similar.

Many thanks

domleg
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
I had a very similar thing that turned out to be the power supply being weak. Might be worth checking the voltages at first boot to see if they're slightly marginal.
 

domleg

New member
Thank you for the suggestion. I checked the voltages and they seem to be quite normal. I also tried the power supply from the mentioned faulty SE/30 and I got the same symptoms. Is there anything else I could try? Again, thanks a lot.
 

mg.man

Well-known member
the drive only boots if I turn the computer off and ... on ... without letting the hard drive spin down completely.
It sounds like the issue is the HD not spinning up (or the heads being stuck) when "cold". This is a common issue with these old drives. Do know the make? Quantum or Conner perhaps?
 

mg.man

Well-known member
If it's what I suspect, the "bumper" where the head armature 'parks' has turned gooey preventing the armature from 'unparking'. There are several ways to rectify this, but it means opening the drive up, so you'll need a very clean work area, and even so, risk contaminants that may ultimately lead to the final demise of the drive. I don't have a link to a specific video, but a search on YT should lead to some examples. Search for things like "stuck heads on vintage hard drive", etc.

If you want to replace the drive, there are several solid state options - BlueSCSI or ZuluSCSI (an evolution of the SCSI2SD), etc. If you want an old skool drive, drop me a PM - I have a bunch of them.
 

domleg

New member
Thank you very much for the suggestion, I'll give it a try. I'm aware that it might be a medium term solution before the hard drive dies because of the contamination.
 

3lectr1cPPC

Well-known member
Don't worry much about contamination. You're looking at a 40MB 3.5" hard drive here, the data density is so low that a few specks of dust won't harm it. Just don't open it in a wood shop or touch the platters and you should be fine.
 
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