In a recent conquest, I got a battered old Performa 600 (roughly equivalent to a IIvx.) It wouldn't boot from its internal drive (it would do a "Mac OS" logo boot, then get to showing the menu bar and freeze.) It wouldn't boot from any floppy, and the only CD I could get it to boot from (external drive,) was a "CD-ROM Setup Disc" that has a System 7.5.1 folder, and the hard drive didn't even show up started from that.
Finally I got it to boot enough to rebuild the desktop file. It took 4 hours. And it still didn't show me the desktop, freezing after showing the menu bar.
But, the next time I restarted with Extensions off, it finally booted to the desktop! (Took half an hour.) As the desktop drew, it filled the screen with folder icons. Then those refreshed. And again, and again, etc... Each folder has, as its name, just a number. Those numbers steadily increased past 4000, before it stopped showing the thousands digit, and kept counting.
Any time I do *ANYTHING* that would cause a redraw of the desktop icons, it takes about ten minutes to redraw all the icons. I tried selecting about twenty 'stacks' at once, but the system then froze up for half an hour, and wouldn't let me do anything with the selected stacks. So I am now selecting one 'stack' at a time, and dragging it to the trash. I then have to wait five to ten minutes before I can do anything. (Which is odd, since all it redraws is the now-missing 'stack', plus the Trash icon.)
After dragging the first stack, I emptied the trash. Took 10 minutes. It said there were 85 files. By doing simple multiplication, (10 columns, 8 rows of icons,) I have determined that there are 80 'stacks' on the screen, plus two 'rogue' folders that are not in the auto-grid. That means, rough estimate, there are about 6800 folders on the desktop.
Thankfully, the Trash was also not in the grid. Unfortunately, the hard drive is. Which means I can't get to the hard drive icon yet.
I did do an 'About this Mac', and this thing is at least RAM-loaded, with the max 68 MB. That also told me that it is running Mac OS 7.6.1.
Once I get the desktop cleaned off, I'll see if I can figure out why it won't let me boot from floppy, or boot from any CD other than a relatively useless one. (It won't boot from any 'real' System 7.5 or 7.6 CDs.) I'm guessing that the floppy drive is dead, but that doesn't explain why it will only boot from one specific CD.
edit: I've only cleared off 6 stacks, but the time delay before being able to do anything is going down.
Finally I got it to boot enough to rebuild the desktop file. It took 4 hours. And it still didn't show me the desktop, freezing after showing the menu bar.
But, the next time I restarted with Extensions off, it finally booted to the desktop! (Took half an hour.) As the desktop drew, it filled the screen with folder icons. Then those refreshed. And again, and again, etc... Each folder has, as its name, just a number. Those numbers steadily increased past 4000, before it stopped showing the thousands digit, and kept counting.
Any time I do *ANYTHING* that would cause a redraw of the desktop icons, it takes about ten minutes to redraw all the icons. I tried selecting about twenty 'stacks' at once, but the system then froze up for half an hour, and wouldn't let me do anything with the selected stacks. So I am now selecting one 'stack' at a time, and dragging it to the trash. I then have to wait five to ten minutes before I can do anything. (Which is odd, since all it redraws is the now-missing 'stack', plus the Trash icon.)
After dragging the first stack, I emptied the trash. Took 10 minutes. It said there were 85 files. By doing simple multiplication, (10 columns, 8 rows of icons,) I have determined that there are 80 'stacks' on the screen, plus two 'rogue' folders that are not in the auto-grid. That means, rough estimate, there are about 6800 folders on the desktop.
Thankfully, the Trash was also not in the grid. Unfortunately, the hard drive is. Which means I can't get to the hard drive icon yet.
I did do an 'About this Mac', and this thing is at least RAM-loaded, with the max 68 MB. That also told me that it is running Mac OS 7.6.1.
Once I get the desktop cleaned off, I'll see if I can figure out why it won't let me boot from floppy, or boot from any CD other than a relatively useless one. (It won't boot from any 'real' System 7.5 or 7.6 CDs.) I'm guessing that the floppy drive is dead, but that doesn't explain why it will only boot from one specific CD.
edit: I've only cleared off 6 stacks, but the time delay before being able to do anything is going down.
