Macintosh II

[NickNick]

Heyyy all. Whats up?

So, I have this Macintosh II computer which I re-capped the MoBo, snipped the batteries off and the machine starts every time with the battery jump method but wont boot. As I understand the diskette drive in there is only an 800k one and the Macintosh II wont take a 1.44 mb one with out the mod or something like that. How does one go about making an 800k boot disk.

Also I believe there is an issue with the HDD in it as well. It works and I can hear it spinning and reading but I always get the disk icon with the flashing arrow. This is by far the oldest HDD I have ever seen it actually has a motor that moves the arm and no magnets. Weird. It is a Seagate ST-157N. I tried the HDD in a power Macintosh 7200/90 as well as in a Macintosh LC II. The disk set ups are unable to see the disk for some reason. I don't even see it with gauge series scsi info. Is there something special about these old drives that make them only work in the Macintosh II? Sorry for the questions this is the oldest Macintosh I have ever worked on. I have come this far but am unable to get any type of OS on the system.

Any information is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Nick.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

The simplest method is to make your own boot disk!  You mention having a Power Macintosh and a Macintosh LC. The Power Mac has Ethernet built in, so you could get disk images on it, and write them to floppy disks.  

The tricky part is finding 800k floppy disks.  Don't try to reformat a High Density floppy to 800k, it will be very unreliable.  The nice thing is, even though Apple's 800k is a custom format of the disk, the disk it self is the same as any "DSDD", "1.0MB", or "720 KB" PC disk.  (All are names/descriptions you may see on the disk.  As opposed to "DSHD", "2.0MB", and "1.44 MB", which all refer to high-density disks.)

The easy way to tell is that a disk appropriate for formatting 800K only has one hole in the top, for the write-protect tab.  HD disks have two holes, one that declares them HD, the other for the write-protect tab.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

I think your HD is fine but it needs to be reformatted. It must be one of the early Mac IIs as stepper motor HDs were only fitted to those machine in their early years.

If you can actually hear it spin okay and no click of death (head crash), it's probably still good.

As Freak explained, you can get any old 800k PC/Mac/Amiga floppy and format it as HFS on the PowerMac.

You should get some system 6/7 images ready on your PowerMac. But bear in mind that on a 800k system, installing system 7 requires up to 8 floppies!

Here is a complete System 7.0 floppy set for 800k systems. Start with the "Disk Tools" disk (it will allow you to reformat your HD), then restart using the "Install 1" disk. You could of course just use ONE disk. But every time it wants a new disk, you'll have to create another disk using your PowerMac. Believe me that's a lot of swapping and formatting! But it's doable.

 

[NickNick]

Thank you for your replies! Greatly helped me out I now have an area to start in. I dug through my floppies and I believe I have three actual 800k Mac floppies; one of which says for Macintosh II desk accessories. I will re format them in the Power Mac and try to get the images over to them. I have several 1.4MB floppies which I could format for the 800k for the time being. Is that recommended to do or should I stick with the actual 800K's? Thank you AF for your help with the floppies

Thank you Eagle for the information on the HDD and the images. I will have to register to that website to receive the images. I will try that when I get home from work today. I believe apple took their stuff off their website as I can not find it any more. As for the HDD It works and spins up fine each time. It for sure is an older HDD as its rather big as well. This is the first stepper motor HDD that I have worked on. I tried using apple HD SC that is with system 7.5.3 and the version that comes with system 8.1 on the Power Mac. Each time they can not see the disk as if its not even connected to the machine. The one for system 7.5.3 knows something is there but does not let me set it up. Is there a jumper or something that I am missing? There is something with parity on this HDD and I'm not to sure what that means. There is a jumper for that. Also that jumper allows it to be assigned a spot on the scsi chain.  Don't recall seeing those on other machine HDD's but then again I never looked up the specific HDD's . Thank you again for your help! I'm itching to get the machine up and going!

Nick.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Each time they can not see the disk as if its not even connected to the machine. The one for system 7.5.3 knows something is there but does not let me set it up. 

That's not good. Yeah perhaps the drive needs a jumper. 

I'm no Mac II expert so I don't know for sure if Seagate ST-157Ns were factory-standard drives or if that drive was replaced some time ago. Apple used to put a red Apple sticker on original HDs. That means it was tinkered by Apple and that the standard, non hacked,  HDSC Utility can detect the drive. Otherwise it won't.

If you're not using the hacked version and if that drive was replaced, HDSC Util won't see the drive for sure.

Lido is better than Apple's HDSC util in most cases. You should give it a go. It is reported that Lido rescued a couple of "dead" HDs as well.

Also, on the question of floppy disks, it's better to use 800k disks if possible. Since you have a couple of them, you should use them. Is the "Macintosh II desk accessory" an Apple disk? I don't recall seeing anything like that before.

 

[bibilit]

If the you have the Apple HD SC 7.5.3 utility, and is unable to see the drive, heads are stuck or HD is toast.

you can have a try with Lido or FWB but honestly is probably a lost cause.

The only jumper probably available is the SCSI Id jumper, but you don't need to touch it.

The Seagate was available, seen several times, mainly in enclosures (they are bulky) 

 

[NickNick]

If I recall correctly the drive had the jumper on the parity option. I looked it up and I don't think it is what I need. Yes it has the apple sticker on it and it says 40. The heads are not stuck as that's what I thought but I can hear it reading the disk and the heads moving back and fourth. It might be a logic board issue with the HDD then. Yes its really big, came in a cage with a led attached to it. I downloaded system 7, (thanks BadGoldEagle) for the link....Immense help since I was unable to locate any also, downloaded lido too. Now I have to remember how to get them onto my powerMac 5500/225. I have a network drive that I move things to and did it before as that's how I was able to get system 7.5.3 and 7.6.1 onto the PowerMac from the PC as well as all the other mac software....Its something to do with the browser and I have to manually type in the address....I think I saved the line somewhere. Then I can give it a try.

I actually have 6, 800k disks but will only use five as the one floppy is for the supermac video card. The Macintosh II desk accessories disk is made by e-machines.

Thank you all so so much for your great help! I will get this machine running even if I have to buy another HDD.

 

[tjjq44]

You're lucky to own this real MacII (and not IIx)!! This is great as it is the only colour mac able to run systems prior to 6

For the hard disk, you could also try to use HD SC setup from a 800k "system 6 install" disk, it might be more appropriate for such an old HD...

 

[slomacuser]

You're lucky to own this real MacII (and not IIx)!! This is great as it is the only colour mac able to run systems prior to 6

For the hard disk, you could also try to use HD SC setup from a 800k "system 6 install" disk, it might be more appropriate for such an old HD...

Before System 6 there was a lot of bugs and crashes on Mac II and many programs didn't run in colour.  I would not prefer to run a Mac in color before 6.

 

[tjjq44]

Maybe not for daily use but just for fun

 

[NickNick]

Ok so I downloaded Lido and system seven and transferred them to the Powermac 5500 then, to the other Powermac 7200. Hooked up the HDD to the 7200 and Lido sees the drive but always comes back with an error. The power mac 7200 is running OS 8.1. The error is "Inquiry and request auxiliary sense commands fail". Then another error, OSErr = 5 bad scsi command: phase error. Any idea what those errors mean? I tried all the jumpers and the last three sets are for id identification, the first is parity and the second is not used. None of the jumper positions make a change other than the scsi id line. I'm thinking the HDD's logic board is busted....hope not.

Have not tried making the disks yet....About to head to the Family's for breakfast so will do more testing when I get back. I also have three other HDD's that have issues that I will try hooking up and seeing if Lido can do anything for them.

Thank you all for the help. Anxious to see this machine in action. This will be the oldest Macintosh I have ever used!

 

[NickNick]

Heyyy,

So yeah that worked....I now have system 7.0 up and running on the Macintosh II. That's so awesome and thank you all for your help. It was greatly appreciated and it worked like a charm... That Lido program is amazing. It fixed two of the three "dead" drives that apple HDSC would not work on. Apple should have used that hands down instead of HDSC. I had to restart the machine the first time with a paperclip as the reset button is hidden behind the plastic grating. That's kind of a dumb area to put it.

As for the Seagate HDD I do believe it has a failure somewhere on the control board itself as the third HDD that I could not get to work came back with an error but not the same first error. The first error was that it could not sense the drive size, followed  by the OSErr = 5 bad scsi command error that the segate gave.

But the machine is up and running just fine. Thank you all so much for your knowledge and help with the computer.

Nick.