PowerBook 160 start up problem

[mvallance]

This is a familiar question I'm sure [:I] ]'>

I have a PowerBook 160 which I know works. I downloaded OS 7.5.3 from Apple downloads (all 19 files) as I wanted to update from 7.1 to 7.5.

While the installation procedure was underway my power cable became disconnected (no battery) which interrupted the installation.

Now when i start up i get a flashing question mark in a floppy disk icon .

What should I do please?

Thank you in anticipation.

Michael

 

[Flash!]

Boot up from a floppy (I think Disk-1 of 19 is bootable so you could make that disk on another Mac) and then start the upgrade-installation again. Assuiming that you have mounted the images for Disk 2 thru 19 on your desktop first, the install should 'just work' If not then make all 19 Floppies and do it the slow way....

 

[equill]

The answer may depend on whether you were doing an installation on top of the old System or a Clean Install. The power interruption probably meant that the System was not expanded, the System Folder blest, &c., &c,. because these happen at the end of the installation. So your new System is not operable, even if it is complete.

If you have a valid Previous System Folder still, because you did a clean installation, you need to get the hard drive mounted, run Disk First Aid and Drive Setup over it and mount it. Diskette 1 should be bootable, and have these utilities on it. If you can mount your HDD, you can either 1) reinstall (and take care to finish) the installation, or 2) rename the botched new System Folder something else (such as Oops), and Previous System Folder (the old one) as System Folder. You will probably have to rebless it by dragging Finder to the desktop, closing the System Folder, and dragging Finder back onto the closed System Folder.

Then start the whole schemozzle again, without the schemozzle. Gaffer tape your AC adapter's DC cable to the floor, wall or ceiling so that it cannot be pulled out. Immobilize the family. Anæsthetize the cat. Whatever it takes. Even buy a battery. Bonne chance.

de

 

[mvallance]

Solution 1: I tried that and the floppy automatically ejected when I inserted and also restarted the computer.

==

Solution 2: I was doing a Clean Install as I wanted to delete everything off the PowerBook.

System part 1of 19 on Disk 1 is 1.1 MB. Therefore I won't have enough space on the floppy to install First Aid.

Is it possible just to boot from a floppy with only Disk First Aid? Is there a key to hold down while starting (like C key when starting from CD drive on later PowerBooks?).

I will take heed of the precautions mentioned too. Thanks.

 

[equill]

I assume that you have no trouble in booting the PB from Disk 1 of System 7.5? DFA is only 176kB, and Drive Setup 312kB, on a 500MB HDD, so you can fit DFA on Disk 1 of System 7.5 with no trouble already. Alternatively, at the outset you could make a copy of Disk 1 and replace System 7.5 Installation and Installer with Drive Setup and DFA to give yourself a Disk Tools disk, in effect.

de

 

[mvallance]

Nope - I put DFA and Drive Setup on another floppy but it was ejected immediately.

Disk 1 with part 1 of 19 gets ejected too.

Is there a way of 'forcing' a start up with a floppy disk ?

Thanks for your help. I am genuinely eager to get this PowerBook on the road with me. I ordered a new battery and is being shipped from UK (to Japan where I am at tehe moment). Any advice is most appreciated.

Michael

 

[equill]

Is the floppy ejected without comment (an error message) or accompanied by the floppy-disk-with-X icon? The first may be the result of a corrupt (or no) System on the floppy, and the second the result of the System on the floppy's being incompatible with the Mac model, or older than the PB 'thinks' its present System to be.

What the Mac takes as its present System may be garbled because of the failed installation, so you should try the old 'four-fingered salute' (command-option-p-r) immediately after you switch on, allow three extra chimes, and only then push in the floppy disk from which you are trying to start up. If that doesn't work, try again with the shift key held down until the splash screen shows with the extensions disabled (or off) message. Yes, I know that there are already very few extensions (usually only the CD-ROM enabler in System 7) present on the floppy, but the technique has worked for me.

If you still get no joy, revisit your floppy disk itself. How was it prepared? Later Systems than 7 on another Mac may not be decompressing the disk image correctly, so try to make the floppy in another System 7 Mac.

de

 

[Flash!]

You'll probably find a suitable boot disk here

 

[mvallance]

Oh dear - no joy I'm afraid.

The floppy gets ejected with no comment. On my screen now is a floppy disk icon with a flashing question mark.

When I insert a floppy with Disk tools or another with startup disk - tried 7.1 and 6.0.8 - I get a floppy disk icon with an X

I tried the 4 finger salute and chimes sounded 3 times then inserted floppy but still ejected.

Tred holding shift key down and started but get a permanent white screen- no comments. Inserted floppy and was ejected.

I have tried 4 different floppy disks, erased and reformatted. I can only do this on my 540c with OS8.6 so floppy is Extended (?) format. Maybe it is the floppy itself. Hmmm.. how can I format for non-extended version-- if that makes sense? Will it make a difference?

Any further advice will be really appreciated. THANK YOU.

Michael

=

 

[equill]

OS 8.6 on a PB 540, even one with a PPC (603) upgrade (100MHz or 117MHz) is unlikely without special 'hacking'. Do you mean OS 8.1 and a 68LC040? That should not be too remote from the 68030 of the 160 to handle file decompression sympathetically.

Given that the 540 can write floppies satisfactorily, and read floppies written by other machines (eg commercial software disks) satisfactorily, suspicion now has to fall on the FDD in your 160. It may be misaligned (as they can become with age), or it may have had a misadventure when the power was interrupted by mischance, especially if it was reading at that moment.

If the FDD is off-colour, even sickly, your two avenues of advance at the moment are to remove the HDD from the 160 and erase/install a System in another PB—which seems to be only your 540 here—or to get hold of the 160's HDD in SCSI disk mode from a Mac desktop, which I take it that you do not have? Even then you would need the special DB-25 or CN-50 to HDI-30 system cable required (depending as the connection is direct or daisy-chained via, say, an external CD-ROM drive).

Replacement of the 160's FDD with a known good one would confirm/solve your problem, but they are not easily come by currently. You could trawl eBay, these forums and swap lists, but it is not going to be a quick solution. PB 160s are not hard to open and to work on if you have done it before or have adequate directions. Another possible avenue (which will not necessarily solve the separate FDD problem), is to send your 160's HDD to someone who can install 7.5.5 for you. With the PB operable you can confirm its FDD's status. Given that 14MB of RAM (4MB soldered-in and a 10MB expansion card) is the limit for a 160, what do you have now? This is a material consideration in installation of a System.

de

 

[mvallance]

Gulp.. thanks for the info.

I should have said that my 540c has been upgraded with a PowerPC processor and does run 8.6. I was given it about a year ago.

The 160 FD drive misalignment may be a possibility. However, I tried disk tools on another FD i found and this time i got the happy Mac face but then FD icon did not appear nor did it spin.

==

re: get hold of the 160's HDD in SCSI disk mode from a Mac desktop

This sounds feasible as I have a friend with a 8500 sitting around. We have a number of SCSI cables around. I need to read about this and how to do it.

==

re: send your 160's HDD to someone who can install 7.5.5 for you.

again possible though I need to read up on how to opne and disconnect HDD but I have done many later Macs (desktops and PowerBooks (G3/ G4).

I can't check RAM but I recall there being 4 MB so probably no expansion.

==

I have ordered a new battery too as I am eager to get this baby up and running.

THANK YOU so much for your time helping me so far. Again, when you have time any other advice is most welcome.

Michael

 

[equill]

Happy Mac icon is an indication that Startup Manager (in ROM) has found valid boot blocks on the startup volume, be that an HDD or a floppy disk. If the boot blocks, however, point to something distasteful, such as a corrupt or no System Folder, an unsupported System or something containing more than 2% fat (or less than 98% fat-free), that will be where startup ends. There will be no splash screen, no march of the icons and so on, and no appearance of the Desktop. It is good news that you could create a floppy with recognizable boot blocks, but SM dislikes something else about your floppies.

It is also good news about your potential access to a desktop Mac from which to try a SCSI Disk Mode approach. If, with that, you do no more than erase and format (with hard disk driver installation) the HDD of the 160 it will be an advance. You should then begin the installation of a System on the 160 in the normal way (ie from floppy disk) if that is possible. Installation of a System while the PB is being seen not as a PB but as just another HDD attached to a desktop Mac is fraught, in that the specific software for a PB will not be installed.

If the 160 has but 4MB of RAM, I fear that you are being overly ambitious in aiming to install 7.5.5. You will need lashings of VM, and even then the 160 will limp rather than run. I run a 160 with 7.6.1 and a 33MHz daughter card, so it could better be described as a 180, but it also has the max. 14MB of RAM, with which it is sprightly indeed. With 4MB of RAM you could well aim rather to reinstall 7.1 with the updates for 7.1.3, and retro-fit the software from 7.5 that gives much of the look, feel and performance of 7.5. System 7.5 is not wildly different from 7.1, but it is bugsorted and given a more modern appearance as well as some improved features (eg several pieces of licensed shareware, and more rational management of Disk Cache). However, 7.5 needs much more RAM and hard drive space than does 7.1.

Lastly, the special cable (with HDI-30 connector) was not a throwaway note, and it must be the dark grey (not light grey) cable with all 30 pins to ensure that the PB is told to start up from ROM but not to try to load a System, ie to shut up and stay dumb while its betters (the 'host' Mac) do the work.

de

 

[mvallance]

Thanks - I will get to work on this.

First I will contact my friend with the 8500. I know he doesn't have a monitor but I'll search for one in my university (I need to look at his 8500 to see what the monitor connection is).

I will also look through my cardboard box of assorted SCSI cables as i had all sorts of peripherals a few years back (zip, scanner, printer, Syquest(?), CD-R x2 speed, ..

Hopefully I will have all I need and try to reformat the 160 HDD.

I will heed your advice and drop the idea of OS7.5. I will download OS7.1 from Apple downloads and install if all goes well.

Failing all this I will simply have to disconnect the HDD and locate someone who will install OS7.1 on it for me. Til then I will persevere ....

====

As an aside, in case anyone is interested, a few reasons i want to use the 160 is that it will run Filemaker 2 (I have heaps of files I want to look at - old research data and stuff) and also us it as a demo model on my ICT course . I sometimes train teachers in ICT integration and 1 unit (3 hours) is development of ICT and trends in teaching. Basically, I ask them to convince me of the advances of technology in the past 15 years and I use my PowerBook 540c and a Newton and an Apple Quicktake 200 and a Stylewriter all connected , and working, just to show that what they usually say could have been said by trainee teachers 10 to 15 years ago! A greyscale PowerBook would be even more impressive I think. . It gets the students/ trainees to be more critical of tech advances, not be wowed by any technology, and re-focus their attention on teaching and learning theories.

Michael

 

[equill]

System 7.1 is what Apple calls a Reference Release, and was the first ever System that had to be bought. It was never available for download. (Search this Forum for an explanation of why Apple was not able, because of the presence of licensed software from others in its releases, to make it 'free'. Sssh. It is possible to get a downloadable 7.1, but it is localized for German-speakers.) How did you get 7.1 onto the PB 160 if you don't have your own copy?

Persuading the 160 to emulate Lazarus may take you a while. In the meantime, and although it may invite you to convert your files to its notion of respectability, for which you can make copies of the existing, FileMaker Pro 3 will probably run on your upgraded 540.

de

 

[mvallance]

I was looking at this website assuming 7.1 was available - i downloaded 7.5 from here earlier in the week.

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Macintosh/System/Older_System/

Delving deeper i now see 7.1 is not available.

As for the System on the PowerBook it was 7.1 (maybe 7.0) but Japanese which is why I wanted to install a complete new 7.5 / English, until my power disconnection catastrophe.

I will check for Filemaker 3 for my 540 meanwhile too. Thanks.

One more question... in your opinion, do you think it would be more effective , efficient (less time consuming) to take out the 160 HDD and find someone here (this BBS) willing to install 7.1 for me? Of course i would need to pay for the OS and service and postage , etc but am eager to get this 160 on the road. In your opinion... what do you think i should do?

Thanks for your time and advice- I am learning so much. I hope I can repay this Forum with my limited (ie. pre OSX) knowledge in future.

Michael