Help me save a Mac SE?

[cseals3]

Hello all!

I'm hoping that one or more SE gurus here can help point out something (simple?) that I've missed. I'm new to the compact Macs, but enjoy tinkering with and using the SE, even if only with floppy now. The design/footprint of the compact Macs are perfect. If only I could get it working right...

Not sure where to start with the problems. Picked up the SE last year, it's got 4mb ram, 1.4mb floppy (superdrive) and a Miniscribe 8425SA 20mb hard drive. The miniscribe was always flaky, sometimes booting up, mostly not.

When I bought the SE, the seller also gave me a Performa 550 with an Apple 160mb drive. So naturally I got the bright idea of trying the 160 in the SE, but 7.5.3 is kinda slow. So I tried installing 6.0.8. Somewhere along the line, in initializing/formatting/whatever, I have screwed up the 160 and nothing (HD Sc, Mt. Everything, MNU727, etc.) will recognize it, or the new 4gb Quantum I picked up. (System 6.0.8 limited to 2.0gb - I know). And trying the 20 or the 4gb only gives me Sad Mac "0000000F" "00000002." None of the drives work in the 550 either. (termination, id?)

I've pulled memory and reinstalled it in the SE, and it boots fine from floppy, loading the system into a ramdisk and allowing me to insert the program floppy. But, another problem ("Lonely Mac Syndrome?"), if I go away and leave it on the desktop for several minutes, the cursor locks upon return and a box begins flashing onscreen. Time to reboot.

I'm currently using a combination of HFVExplorer, BasiliskII, Transmac and WinImage to unstuff individual programs in Basilisk and load onto a floppy. It's been an adventure...

Have I totally screwed up all three drives, or is there something on one of the boards that needs replacing? If it is a cap job, where can I find a listing of the caps required and/or a schematic? I've modified and built tube amps, but I'm just an electronic "hacker" and haven't tinkered with computer internals other than board/drive/etc. swapping.

Oh, and I've bought and read two used books recently (Pina and ?), searched this site and many others extensively (this one is the best) but still "no joy." Any detailed (idiot-proof) suggestions??? Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long post!!

Carl

 

[phreakout]

cseals3,

I looked up the error code "0000000F" "00000002" in my copy of Macworld Mac Secrets, 5th Edition by David Pogue and Joseph Schorr. Staying focused on the "00000002" code, it means that something is wrong with a SIMM in bank B, if your Mac has two banks of SIMMs. In plain English, it means that either the RAM stick of memory was either NOT seated properly or that there was/is a failure of that part to work. If it turns out the memory was/is bad, you should replace with the same type. You said you have 4MB installed? Try locating replacement 30-pin 1MB cards rated at around 70 nanosecond or 80 nanosecond speeds. (Private Message me. I've got plenty of used, 30-pin RAM cards here at home.)

The second symptom you listed, I'm unsure of. It could be related to the RAM or it could be a problem with the Logic Board (motherboard). Then again, if the logic board has major problems, like needing to replace all the capacitors, you would have seen horizontal jail bars on the screen the next time you booted up the SE.

It sounds to me that you only goofed on the hard drive setup. Please bear in mind, when you are installing System 6.0.8 that you need to make sure you are using the right drive setup utility on the hard drive. Here is a way to check. Look at the outside top of the SCSI hard drive. Do you see an Apple Computer logo anywhere on it? If so, you can use the utility included with the System version you are installing. If you don't see the logo, then you will need to use a "patched" version. This patched version can also come in handy when installing large capacity SCSI hard drives, too.

Try visiting The Mac SE Support Pages for all the resources needed on the SE. I know its helped me out in the past with mine and it will for you.

73s de Phreakout.

 

[cseals3]

73s:

Thanks much for your reply and advice. Memory seems okay, 0F/02 only showed up when I changed drives - some kind of conflict? Tried resetting PRAM, still showed up.

Tried cleaning the logic board w/alcohol, swab and toothbrush over the weekend even though I couldn't see any "gunk," but essentially no change. Caps are cheap enough I suppose if I can handle the "fiddly" soldering that it sounds like is required.

Regarding the drives, two of three are "logoed" as Apples, the 20mb and 160mb. I'm sure that I'm doing something wrong with jumpers (termination and/or scsi id), but getting tired of trying. Documentation located on the net helps with scsi id, but not as helpful with location of termination jumpers.

Again, thanks for the help, and I'll keep the memory suggestion in mind. But right now I'm a little hesitant to invest much more time or money in this little guy. It's too bad, because these are really neat little machines.

And especially thanks for being the only one to answer a noob/newb. Enjoy the board and the hardware!

Carl

 

[Mac128]

And trying the 20 or the 4gb only gives me Sad Mac "0000000F" "00000002."

According to Pina, "0000000F" "00000003." the problem is: "The internal hard drive (miniscribe 8425S) has a bad driver map, bad partition signature or bad directory block. He does not list a single error code ending in F besides the drive problem.

The solution is to attach the drives via an external SCSI case. Startup the SE then after the desktop appears, startup the external drive.

Pina indicates there is 50/50 chance of repair by using DiskManager Mac version 2.24 ... there a number of other proceedures depending on what the results of Test Drive yield.

Also, try restarting the SE and when the menu bar reappears, hold down the mouse button which mounts a failed drive. If it fails to mount, but gives you the option to initialize it, click OK.

This is not likely a cap or memory RAM problem. It is a drive or SCSI problem.

 

[cseals3]

Okay, so I haven't given up yet...

Got to thinking that the one constant throughout all of my problems was the System 6.0.8 image that I had been using. Different disks, some with Ramdisk, but all the same image.

So, tried a system 7.0.1 disk tool disk, and my previously mentioned "Lonely Mac" syndrome has not appeared after sitting for ten or so minutes (and more) like it did before. It does, however, reappear when I tried to use HDSC to initialize the 160 mb Apple drive from an old Centris I found at a thrift store.

Minor progress that I wanted to share in case anyone has had similar problems. Does it make sense that a corrupted image file could cause such problems? As best as I can recall, the image was from the Apple site, since it had to be a 1.4 image to copy to disk on a PC using WinImage.

Now if I can get one of the freebie, third-party formatting/initializing programs to work on the HD...

 

[cseals3]

Mac128:

Thanks for your reply, I will pursue further.

I have eyeballed the caps as carefully as I can and don't see any obvious leaks so I agree with you. I have carefully cleaned and inspected the boards, but suppose that I could have missed something. One time last night I got something like jail bars (vertical) but not quite that simple (alternating thin and thick lines).

No more 0F/03 errors since trying the Apple 160 pulled from a Centris, but haven't been able to initialize either. As noted in my last post, will try Lido, SF&I and a couple others.

I haven't seen any reference to DiskManager Mac - is this freely available software or retail? This is my first experience with a Mac, I am a daily (work) Windoze user and a Linux hobbyist. Thanks again,

Carl (cseals3)

 

[Mac128]

I haven't seen any reference to DiskManager Mac - is this freely available software or retail?

Honestly, I have no idea. I'm not really into HD Macs. The most likely problem I encountered in those days was trying to use a non-Apple drive on a Mac which did not have the hardware capability to recognize it. The SE was the very first hard drive in a Mac and was created with a bias of only using Apple drives. It does not surprise me that the internal drives might be more problematic than the external SCSI port which had to accommodate numerous 3rd party drives prior to Apple developing their own.

I have never heard of, or used DiskManager ... Pina does not say this is the only program that may be used, but he specifically says HD SC setup will not work. DiskManager would most certainly be in the realm of vaporware today (at least a version which would work on the SE) so it is a matter of finding a copy.

 

[cseals3]

Thanks for the tips on hard drives in the SE, Mac128. I guess that it hadn't occurred to me that they were the first with internal hard drives. Makes sense that it probably requires an Apple drive or at least most likely to work that way.

Thanks also for your earlier comment re: using an external drive. I have considered that, but doing so would partly take away the "all-in-one," compact nature of the machine - one of its attractions to me...

But you did pique my curiosity - if you don't use/like HD's in Macs, how do you use your Mac? While I have been able to do some word processing (Word 4.x) and minor gaming (Euchre!) using a 1.4 floppies and Ramdisk, isn't it pretty limiting? (I don't think I've used floppies exclusively since the old PCJr, although I do appreciate the quiet of the ramdisk/floppy operation.)

cseals3

 

[LCGuy]

There's several removable storage drives available for SCSI Macs on the used market, such as Zip, Jaz, MO, SyQuest, Bernoulli, etc drives. If you're really loaded there's also the option of using a SCSI - IDE and IDE - CompactFlash adaptor.

 

[Mac128]

using an external drive. I have considered that, but doing so would partly take away the "all-in-one," compact nature of the machine - one of its attractions to me...But you did pique my curiosity - if you don't use/like HD's in Macs, how do you use your Mac?

I'm not suggesting you use only an external disk, but rather use an external disk to test your SE. There is a small possibility the SCSI chip is bad on the logic board, but you won't know that until you do some more testing. The SCSI chip is easily blown if someone attaches a printer to the SCSI port.

Also, I don't work much past System 6 and mainly deal with Plus & earlier. I have no problem using MacWrite or Word 1.0 on a 128K Mac. And I have no problem networking with my 128K and my OS X Mac. While I do have SEs and Classics, I have had the good fortune to have good HDs already formatted. The 20MB MiniScribe was the earliest of Apple's SCSI drives and was notoriously flawed. If it is bad, it is likely unrecoverable. It was so bad in fact that when it failed, Apple replaced it with the much more expensive 40MB drive at no charge to the customer.

 

[cseals3]

SUCCESS!!

Thanks all (Phreakout, Mac128, LCGuy) for your advice, here's how I finally got things to work. Using a 7.0.1 Disk Tools disk, modified with Ramdisk 3.2.3, I booted the machine with a copy of System on the Ramdisk. I then loaded (from floppy) MicroNet Utility 7.2.7 (which I thought I had tried before) in "Auto" mode to set up the hard drive I "borrowed" from the recently-purchased $3.23 Centris. Now have a working hard drive but...

Oops! It just "burped" at me - a short, low (not bong) beep, and the cursor locked up, so still a problem with "Lonely Mac" syndrome. Maybe memory as Phreakout suggested earlier?

Oh, and I did bid on a zip ($1.00) drive on E-bay, good suggestion that (LCGuy). Not sure if I'll continue to bid now, but it might be handy. Now if I can work out a null modem and terminal emulation (zterm?) to enable large file transfers between the PC and the SE...

 

[Mac128]

Oops! It just "burped" at me - a short, low (not bong) beep, and the cursor locked up, so still a problem with "Lonely Mac" syndrome. Maybe memory as Phreakout suggested earlier?

Where did this term "Lonely Mac syndrome" come from? I doubt it is the memory. Typically if the memory were bad, it wouldn't pass the start-up check. This would typically be a software problem, or a grounding problem, something is shorting, which could be caused by a leaky capacitor. Not sure why it would function for a while though, and then short, then startup fine, as nothing changes.

 

[cseals3]

"Lonely Mac Syndrome" was a phrase I coined, tongue-in-cheek, to describe this machine's odd behavior (also in initial post).

Essentially, as long as I was working in a program, everything was fine, but literally if I left it for several minutes, I would come back to find the cursor locked up. Any attempt to click, etc. would cause a rectangle to appear onscreen, with each subsequent click or clicks producing addition rectangles inscribed within the previous one. Nothing to do then but reboot.

Now, last night I had hoped that using 6.0.8 (like you, I prefer system 6) on the hard drive, as opposed to floppy, might work, but no luck. So, I went back and installed 7.0.1 on hard drive and voila, everything is working!

So you are exactly right, it is/was a software problem, the OS! Perhaps the image from Apple is compromised somehow, because I have had this happen with multiple disks all using the same 6.0.8 image. If I could find a 1.4M image of 6.0.5 or 6.0.3 I would try that, but I can't image 800k floppies on my peecee. If it is a bad image file, I wonder if others are having the same problem and just giving up like I almost did?

cseals3