Mac 128k Boots Sometimes

[jryankennedy]

Hello all —

Just got a Mac 128k in good condition. I carefully cleaned the machine inside and out and it powers on wonderfully. However, I can only get the Mac to boot into the OS sometimes. I have three boot disks that I have been able to boot on to, but sometimes I would try 10 times in a row and would normally get a floppy with the "X' icon or I'll get a Happy Mac icon, then the "X" floppy.

Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfx-47aAuZo

The floppy disks I have are old. The newest one is dated 1989. So all the disks are about 30 years old, well past the "degrade"date. I ordered a PowerBook G3 (233Mhz) that has a floppy drive and CD drive. Hopefully I'll be able to make some bootable disks with Disk Copy 4.2 and find some programs to run. I'm not sure where to find 800k floppies.

The hardware itself is great. I always get the boot chime and all the peripherals work. I should say that I do have a 800k Apple external disk drive. I've never gotten it to mount any disks. It seems that any time it is connected, it never boots into the OS, even if I'm using the drive on the mac.

Any tips, tricks or suggestions for me?

 

[Paralel]

The internal drive might be in bad shape, or you might have altered the pressure of the head or the opposing felt pad when you cleaned it, which would make it difficult for the drive to read disks properly. Its hard to say without a known working disk.

 

[Macdrone]

i dont think the 128 can use the 800k drive.  Its not in the roms, im sure someone knows better than me. 

I second the internal drive may be iffy and need clean/lube at a minimum.

 

[jryankennedy]

The first time I cleaned the Mac, I left the floppy disk drive alone. It boots up sometimes, but not all the time. I did some research and a few websites recommended that I should clean and lubricate the drive. So I did, I carefully dusted the interior of the drive and used a bit of isopropyl alcohol to clean. The mechanical components still have visible lubrication. The Mac has no problem ejecting disks.

After all that, the same thing happens, I've gotten it to boot a few times and when the OS is loaded, everything runs great (I guess because everything is loaded in memory). So I guess the problem comes down to the drive or the old disks. 

Would you recommend I try to find some newer floppies and make a new boot disk? I figure I should try that first because it's the cheaper option than finding a replacement 400k drive.

 

[Paralel]

Well, finding proper disks these days is difficult. They aren't physically quite the same as "modern" 1.44 floppies, due to how the oxides are laid out. However if you can find unformatted 1.44 disks, and format them as 400k, they work well enough. You can also always format 800k disks for 400k, but those are also not easy to find.

I believe MacDrone is correct about the 800k drive, I don't think its compatible with the old 64k ROM Mac 128's. It will freeze up because it doesn't understand what to do with it. You'd likely need an external 400k drive, and good luck getting one of those at a good price.

 

[fri0701]

Hello,

First of all, the Mac 128k is not compatible with the 800k external drive. 

The fact that the Mac boots from the disk sporadically is peculiar... a couple of things could be wrong, as I see it.

The disks have gone bad/lost some of their data over the years. It's possible, but for it to happen to so many disks and produce the same result, I don't think this is the issue.

What could be the problem (I've had the same issue) is your floppy head may be dirty, which could impact the disk read quality. Especially if you've been running old disks through it constantly, it may have gotten dirty just from that. I've cleaned mine before using a q-tip, a 50-50 mixture of rubbing alcohol and water, and very (very!) soft pressure. Most of the time, it's helped get my drives working at a much lower failure rate. 

I'd give that a shot and see what happens. Feel free to message me for any other minor questions!

 

[joethezombie]

I don't get why everyone is saying the 128k Mac is not compatible with the 800k drive. It works just fine as long as you use it with 400k formatted disks. You can even boot from it.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

This is interesting. I happen to have exactly the same problem with my Plus. I blamed the engineering because I read that 400k/800k floppies were not entirely stable. It was tricky enough to use the machine without using an external floppy drive or HD: having to swap disks back and fourth.

I didn't bother until now, I had other Macs to play with. They had 1.44mb drives.

But if I could make it work. It'd be great. It's the only mac I have that "works" as of now, the rest of them is off to Uni for new caps.

Initially I thought I damaged the disks because I used them on my SE/30 which is running SSW 7.5. I thought the format was different enough to mess up the disks. But I quickly gave up this idea because the disk that came with my Plus worked when I got it, then didn't work for quite some time, then started working again right out the blue. Same happened to a system 3 disk that worked at one point then stopped altogether. Now it doesn't work at all.

I have a cleaning diskette for my SE/30. I use it when I test "new" disks from my latest finds: sometimes the disks are really dead and the dark surface of the disk comes off and ends up on the heads. Would a standard off the shelf cleaning disk work on a 400k/800k drive? I guess so. I'll give it a try next week-end if your problem isn't solved by then.

PS: I totally agree with joethezombie, 800k drives can be used with a 128k as long as you don't use 800k-formatted 800k disks. I think 400k-formatted 800k disks work as well.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

BTW check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0oyUsvKS9s&list=PLt7qWuFcHESzPIn_MQWeXxXtCHOOxu7EC&index=6

It's a video from techknight, and he's a wizard at mending stuff. You should definitely try this. I don't know how much you have to screw to get it working as it should. I guess if you tighten it too much you'd risk scratching the surface and therefore damaging the heads and disk.

 

[jryankennedy]

Here's an update

I got the Mac to boot up one of the disks that had an operating system (Finder version 4.1) and in the stack of floppies that came with this mac, I formatted two of them and copied the OS to them. Now the Mac boots almost all the time. I would say about half the disks are unreadable, probably because of their age, but I was able to find some programs like MacWrite, MacPaint, ThrowPaint and a BMX game. I don't have a full version of a System OS, unfortunately the original Mac boot disk is unreadable. 

Anyway, just thought I'd share. It's booting great now, I think it was just some bad floppies. I'll keep you guys posted.

As far as the 800k external floppy drive — I think because this is a mac with an original ROM, it has no idea what to do with an 800k drive. I have never been able to boot on it or even mount a disk. I think I remember reading that there is a program or some sort of driver you can run to make the Mac recognize the drive — HD20 init or something.

 

[tanaquil]

Looking very pretty! Gratz on getting it semi-working.

 

[Elfen]

Looking good!

 

[Gorgonops]

As far as the 800k external floppy drive — I think because this is a mac with an original ROM, it has no idea what to do with an 800k drive. I have never been able to boot on it or even mount a disk. I think I remember reading that there is a program or some sort of driver you can run to make the Mac recognize the drive — HD20 init or something.

Here's the deal with the external 800k drives and the original ROM. If your drive looks like this:

IE, it's styled like an Apple IIgs or SE and has an eject button, then it will work without a driver, including being bootable. But if it looks like this:

Then it *probably* won't work, and may in fact give you a Sad Mac if you try to boot from it. I say "probably" though because some late runs of this drive (or ones that were at some point repaired) might have the same mechanism as the other drive, which is "fixed" so it works around a bug in the floppy driver in the 64K ROMs that was fixed in the 512ke/Plus ROMs.

If the picture embeds above don't work see this page; the "Apple 3.5" External (A9M0106)" is the "universal" drive that works with everything while the "Macintosh 800k" (M0131)" is the one that needs the HD-20 driver to work on a 64K ROM machine. I know it says the A9M0106 "needs" it too, but it's only needed to be used to its full capacity; it acts like a 400k drive without it.

The 128k doesn't have enough RAM to load the HD-20 init (I *believe* it will in fact refuse to load on a 128k if you try it) so, yeah, if you have an M0130 it's basically useless unless it has the later mechanism installed.

 

[olePigeon]

Whoa.  The preview picture for the video you posted looks like it was CG rendered in the 1990s.

 

[joethezombie]

Ah, thanks Gorgonops!  That is some really good information to know and cleared up some confusion on why some drives (IIgs styled drive A9M0106) work.  I was so curious about this that I had actually purchased an M0131 drive off of eBay because the whole scenario seemed weird.  It hasn't arrived yet, but now i know.  It would be interesting to find the time frame (serial number-wise) the drives were "fixed".  I'm also curious if the mechanisms are interchangeable between the housings.

 

[Gorgonops]

It would be interesting to find the time frame (serial number-wise) the drives were "fixed".  I'm also curious if the mechanisms are interchangeable between the housings.

Too  busy to Google it right now but if you dig around you'll find pages that tell you how to tell mechanisms that work from ones that don't. (There's an extra digit in the part number, I believe. Unfortunately said number is on the mechanism itself, not on the enclosure, in the case of external drives.)