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Pulled Mac II out of attic - no boot

T

toshiba1

6502
Hi everyone,

Well the subject line says it. No chime, no nothing. Quiet as a mouse. Last time I booted it was > 4 years ago and it worked fine.

My questions are the following:

1) will dead batteries really prevent Mac II from booting?

2) I have my B/W monitor power cable connected via the back of the Mac II (not directly into AC outlet on wall) as was designed. The monitor is not getting any power. Does that indicate dead power supply? In other words, will monitor get power even if main computer is off? If so is this a dead power supply?

Thanks kindly

toshiba1

 
Hi everyone,
Well the subject line says it. No chime, no nothing. Quiet as a mouse. Last time I booted it was > 4 years ago and it worked fine.

My questions are the following:

1) will dead batteries really prevent Mac II from booting?

2) I have my B/W monitor power cable connected via the back of the Mac II (not directly into AC outlet on wall) as was designed. The monitor is not getting any power. Does that indicate dead power supply? In other words, will monitor get power even if main computer is off? If so is this a dead power supply?

Thanks kindly

toshiba1
Click to expand...

1)Yes. Absolutely, without a doubt :/

2)I don't know. Someone else will answer that soon though, I'm sure.

 
From my understanding the power out from the power supply is switched so untill you power up the Mac II that socket is dead. Apple did it this way untill the Beige g3 desktop (where that plug is live at all times).

And yes, a dead set of PRAMs will keep a Mac II, IIx, IIfx from doing anything. There are 2 batteries, one keeps time and one helps the machine boot.

 
So here's what I did.

I wired 2 AA batteries to one of the batteries and this allowed the computer to boot. Amazing.

So it boots, and everything is actually fine. The OS 7.1 comes up and I explore.

Now, I had flipped the large hard drive on it's back, so it was running upside down. Worked fine...

so 10 min later I power down, and the hard drive, as it spins down after the power was disconnected, makes this awful metal circular scraping sound. Yuck.

I reboot and it loads 7.1 fine.

but after several iterations of this, I boot again just because I'm playing around and the HD makes loud clicking noises upon boot.

After this, I get the ? icon.

My theory is perhaps either

1- the hard drive was just old (1988) and just died

2- turning HD upside down somehow broke it

I was all excited and then this HD problem. :(

 
Probably #1 is anything. I have HD's running Sideways, Upside down, everything. In many new computers they come mounted upside down or even sideways.

 
I hope you're right. I would hate to live with the possibility I ruined my 80MB (circa 1988) HD by flipping it upside down and using it while in the midst of fixing the battery issue.

 
If it's the same drive that it originally shipped with then it's probably just died a death (it is/was nearly 20 years old) - the Quantum's that Apple used don't seem to have a very long life at all (when I got my hands on a Mac II the HD was just screwed and had to be binned)

Turning it over won't have killed it. OK it might have nudged it over the edge but HDs will happily run upside down

Get excited again - you now have the fun of fitting a new drive and starting from scratch ;)

 
thanks [8D] now I have to figure out where to purchase a replacement HD.
Click to expand...
It just adds to the fun ;)

Seriously though, finding 50 pin SCSI drives isn't easy so don't be averse to buying a complete machine with the sole intention of pulling the HD

 
50 pin SCSI hard drives are actually very cheap on eBay. Search something like "50 SCSI hard drive" and you may get a good list. The only issue is the drive format. You can format a hard drive to work with an apple computer with the HD set-up utility, but your Mac has to start up to use the utility. Try to find a floppy disk it can boot from, then work from there.

 
 
$9 + another $9 for shipping on a 540MB untested HD is not what I would call cheap, and that is where they start in pricing.

 
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