Just recapped an LC II, slowly boots to missing OS despite running HDD

[Speedy]

Hey all,

I found out about this site when trying to figure out how to repair an LC II. I recently got one for free off of Craigslist - it was really dirty and didn't boot. I ended up recapping the entire system, which now made it finally start but there's two quirks.

1: The system takes a long time to start. It has to be left on for about 10 minutes, and eventually it'll give the boot up Chime and display an image.

2: When the system does display, it boots up to the flashing question mark screen even though I can hear the hard drive running.

I read this apparently means the hard drive is dead - is there any way I can verify this? And if it is dead, what are my options for replacements? I've looked into SD2SCSI but $60 is a little more than I'd like to spend. I can't find an (affordable) CF2SCSI solution either.

Thanks in advance

 

[MOS8_030]

Howdy! Welcome!

Yeah "free" computers can cost the most money!

You may be right about the hard drive. Could be power supply too, if you didn't recap that.

If you disconnnect the HD does it try to boot faster? Have you tried booting from a floppy?

 

[Speedy]

Hi Mos,

I recapped the PSU - was actually the first thing I did.

I'll disconnect the HDD tomorrow. I did try a floppy boot a moment ago - the system recognizes floppies and will try to boot from them. Unfortunately all my floppies and floppy drives are acting up so I wasn't able to write a really usable disc (it'd crash when loading, totally doesn't have anything to do with half of the disc failing to write). I might order a USB Floppy Drive and some new 1.44mb discs tomorrow to see if I can write a working boot disc.

 

[Speedy]

Well, I tried some things.

Disconnecting the HDD didn't make it boot any faster, but it did boot without it.

I tried opening it since I thought the cause of death might have been sticky rubber, but as it turns out the cause of death is even weirder: shattered glass?



It was originally jamming up the drive in a weird spot, but I managed to get it out. The drive spins and the head moves, but it stops after a few seconds and just stays in place after it gets to the broken spot. Uh... any suggestions? :undecided:

EDIT: just learned that was the optical encoder... I tried gluing it on but that didn't work, thankfully I was able to get the piece off easily if anyone has any other suggestions. If not I think I'll just save up for an SD2SCSI.