Rehab for a Classic

[gubbish]

Hi,

It's been a while since I've been on the forum, and it's nice to be back.

I recently got a Mac Classic that was being given away. It appears to be in good shape, case-wise. However, there are some issues booting up.

The logic board seems to be ok, as it makes a startup chime and comes up to a floppy-with-question-mark icon. I attempted to boot it with system 6.0.8 and 7.5.3 startup disks, but in both cases it just ejected the disks with an 'x' over the floppy disk.

I cleaned the floppy heads with alcohol and a q-tip, but no change. I'm thinking something may be wrong with the floppy drive.

Any thoughts? I have several other compact Macs that I can borrow floppy drives from, if needed.

Thanks..

 

[nvdeynde]

If cleaning the heads don't work you can also try to demagnetize them. I always do both when I service a floppy drive.

However sometimes the heads can get damaged, due to a bad floppy disc.

I assume the hard drive is not working too or perhaps it's wiped since it doesn't boot from the HDD. Do you hear it spinning up ?

What are the voltages on the external FDD connector for +5v and +12v ?

What you can do with another of your Compact Macs is to install OS 6.0.8 or 7 on the Classic's HDD and choose upon installation for Custom and then "Minimal system For every Mac". This gives you an universal hard drive to will boot almost every Compact Mac.

This gives you the possibility to immediately test both the HDD and FDD.

 

[mcdermd]

If it is a classic, you can boot to the built-in ROM disk by holding down Command+Option+X+O if the floppy or hard drive aren't booting.

 

[krye]

Yes, I too was about to suggest giving it a hug and a kiss (Command+Option+X+O). If your head is misaligned, you won't be able to read known good disks. But least booting from the ROM, you can try and format a disk. If your Mac reads disks that it formatted, then you know the drive is misaligned.