Mac Plus problems?

[Seski]

I posted this on MacRumors, but nobody said anything. I've had a Mac Plus for quite some time, and just got all the stuff to get it up and running. Only problem is, it won't run.

First concern is, most Mac Pluses I've seen have a gray background. Mine has a black background.

Second problem is when I put a System 6.0.4 disk into the Plus, I get a Happy Mac, some disk noise, and then nothing. It's hanging on the Happy Mac.

Third concern is I'm wondering if sitting in a garage for God knows how long will affect the performance of the machine.

FOURTH CONCERN!! When I boot the machine up and let the monitor bring up the picture, then quickly turn it off, I see some garbled gray stuff on the screen. Then when I quickly turn in on, I see white lines and the contents of the screen before turning it off moving up the screen, then disappearing. Is that normal?

Do I need to open this thing up and see what's going on? I'm scared to get shocked by the monitor, or breaking the monitor. HELP PLEASE! VERY APPRECIATED.

 

[equill]

Welcome to the Army.

Grey is the normal shade of the raster screen when video first starts, or when the desktop is present, although you can change the pattern of the desktop. A black screen indicates no video activity, or that the brightness control is at minimum, or that Sad Mac is hanging about (and you should see him at centre-screen).

Happy Mac is an indicator that the system has found valid boot blocks pointing to the System Folder. That this is where the startup process stalls indicates that the System Folder is not valid. It could be corrupt, or not blest (blessed), or even not there at all, despite what Happy Mac has been told. How did you come by the startup disk? You may need a new one, or a rewrite of the present one.

Sitting in a garage for GKHL may or may not have done mischief. How wet, cold, dusty or long was the storage is the touchstone. Most probably the PRAM battery may have run down, but that is not a critical disability in a floppy-driven Plus unless the dead battery spilt its intestines into the Mac. If you have doubts about the Mac's internals, opening, inspecting, cleaning and tarting-up may be the way to go. There is ample info. in this Forum about the process, and also debunking the death-and-damnation hysteria associated (largely because of Apple's lawyers) with opening a Compact AIO. If you don't need to work on the CRT, don't touch it and it will not bite you in return. Remember the thistle, and Nemo me impune lacessit.

The screen garbage may very well be a function of the Vampire Video that the monochrome 1-bit Macs use. They use system RAM as VRAM, and DRAM at that, so whatever was last in RAM and is still passing from RAM may be visible on-screen between its normal active states. Screen patterns can also be diagnostic of system faults, if they persist while the Mac is active.

de

 

[Seski]

Oh wait, let me change the first part. When I boot it up, the floppy icon has a gray background, but the rest of the screen is just black, with no cursor in the top left.

Is that a problem?

EDIT: I got the disk from my elementary school teacher. It's a copy.

 

[equill]

Try the brightness control, under the screen at the front left of the Mac.

de