Problems Booting Up...

[Bunsen]

I know that the PRAM battery in this machine is dead ... The system booted up well three times in a row ... the next morning it was back to the old floppy with a question mark

This is a pretty good indicator that the PRAM battery is your problem, or at least one of your problems. Overnight is long enough for the PRAM circuit to discharge. You really need to replace that battery before proceeding.

 

[beachycove]

This is a pretty good indicator that the PRAM battery is your problem....

I have never heard of a dead pram battery causing actual error messages. Can it?

 

[Bunsen]

or at least one of your problems

 

[Mithrandir]

Thanks for the replies guys. I will try to get some photos in order for you guys to get to help me out some more. I am trying to understand this scsi concept, it is just going to take a little bit of time for me. And in the meantime, those here with much more experience in that area might be able to help out as well. So in order for that to happen, I need to know what parts of the computer you need photographs of. Do you guys just need like photos of the hard drive and the cords attached to it, or do you need other parts photographed as well? When you let me know, Ill try to get some really nice photos for you to look at. Let me know at your convenience.

Mithrandir

 

[techknight]

you heard a scratching sound from inside then the machine booted? when the machine sits at floppy disk blinking question mark, do you hear the scratching sound then?

Sounds like the HDD is bad bro.

 

[Mithrandir]

Ok well I have ordered a replacement Hard Drive and it will get here later this week. Hopefully this will solve the problem but I will let you guys know how it turns out. Thanks.

 

[trag]

On the topic of SCSI voodoo -- the rules for configuring SCSI chains are very fixed and understandable. And when a SCSI chain is configured according to the rules, it almost always works properly. I've never seen a properly configured SCSI chain fail to work properly.

SCSI Voodoo occurs, not because properly configured SCSI chains don't work. SCSI Voodoo occurs because improperly configured SCSI chains sometimes/often work, and then later they don't work, and folks wonder what went wrong with a chain which was never configured properly to begin with.

I wrote some long tutorials on SCSI chain configuration, especially on mixing narrow and wide drives on the same chain, over on Usenet in the comp.sys.mac.* hierarchy, back in the late nineties.