SE/30 won't auto-mount floppies

[bigmessowires]

I borrowed a friend's SE/30 that had been in storage for years. It's got an internal hard drive that works, with System 7 and a copy of Norton Utils, among other programs. I'm trying to use it to copy data from 1.4MB HD floppies to 800K DD floppies, so they can be read in an older Mac.

When I insert a floppy disk in the SE/30, nothing happens. The floppy isn't mounted, and nothing appears on the desktop.

If I run Norton Disk Doctor, it can see the floppy just fine. If I tell Norton to examine the floppy, then most of the time mid-way through the examination, the Finder will suddenly notice the floppy and mount it, and it will appear on the desktop and can be used normally. This always seems to work with DD Mac floppies, but not with HD PC-formatted floppies, or blank HD floppies.

If I reboot the SE/30 with the floppy inside, I can hear it reading from the floppy briefly, before it ejects it since it's not a startup disk.

Would this be caused by a failure of the switch that detects when a floppy is inserted? It kind of seems plausible, but then I'd think Norton would also see the drive as being empty too.

Can anyone think of a clever way I could use the SE/30 in this state to copy disk images from a PC, and copy them to 800K disks? Since it doesn't appear that the Norton trick works for mounting PC-formatted HD floppies, I'm not sure how I can get data from a PC into the SE/30.

 

[phreakout]

Okay, to break it down, you're using a PC to download Mac-related software to be copied to a floppy; that's perfectly fine. Now, you format the floppy as a DOS/Windows disk and copy the downloaded file to the disk. When you take that floppy and insert it into the drive of the SE/30, it doesn't recognize the disk or try to mount it.

From that break down, I see 2 problems:

1.) The SE/30 is missing the System Folder extension called "PC Exchange". This allows Macintoshes (from Plus models and later) to read and write DOS/Windows formatted floppies. It will also allow you to associate known file extensions between Mac and PC; for example, ".txt" files will be recognized as a "Text" file and ".doc" as a Microsoft Word document.

2.) The floppy disk, regardless if it's Mac or DOS/Windows formatted, is missing the hidden files that the Mac needs to mount the disk. You can fix this issue, by simply holding down the Apple key and the Option key on the keyboard, at the same time, as you insert the disk. It will ask you if you want to rebuild the desktop; and make sure you click on Yes or OK to proceed. DOS/Windows PCs don't use these hidden files and haven't a clue as to what they are. But the Mac does and they are critical to seeing the disk mounted on the desktop. Norton Utilities appears to fix this issue and mount the disk for this very reason. It doesn't see the hidden files and tries to rebuild them for you.

The floppy drive usually has 2 micro switches located to the sides up near the front opening of the drive. The left sided one tells the Mac and the drive controller that you have a floppy inserted with or without write protection. The right sided one tells if you have a high density or a double-density disk inserted; high being 1.44MB and double being 800K. On some drives, there may be a third switch that's activated after the disk is inserted, but I'll leave the other 68kmla members to verify that fact.

If you'd like another alternative to getting Mac software from a PC to a Mac, you may also want to try using terminal emulation software and a serial cable or dial-up modems between the two. It's a cheap way to network the two machines together, but takes some experimenting. You will need to understand serial ports and/or dial-up modems: how they work, how they are wired up, what protocols to use and what emulation software works best.

If your PC doesn't have a built-in serial port, you'll need a USB to Serial port adapter. You'll also need a null modem serial cable for Mac that is 8-pin LocalTalk (RS-422) male on one end and 9-pin or 25-pin (RS-232) female on the other end. If using two dial-up modems, simply attach a modular telephone cable (the one that goes between a telephone and the plug socket on the wall) between each computer's modems and set up the terminal software to do computer-to-computer file transfers.

Start by checking out these places below:

http://www.euronet.nl/users/mvdk/system_6_heaven.html (Beware! Some links may be dead.)

http://www.ccadams.org/se/ (I know this site caters to SE users primarily, but it has plenty of useful resources that also work for the SE/30 and other retro Macs.)

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/index.html (This site's owner passed away a few years ago, so it's been kept active as a memorial to Gamba.)

Let us know how it works out for you.

73s de phreakout. :rambo:

 

[bigmessowires]

Thanks phreakout! After messing with it some more, believe it or not, I think it's a software problem. If I boot the SE/30 from a System 6 floppy, then it recognizes other floppies when they're inserted just fine. But if I boot from System 7 on the hard drive, it behaves as I originally described, and ignores inserted floppies. This is true both for floppies I make from my PC, and vintage Mac-formatted floppies.

I'm thinking maybe this is a problem with Disinfectant, which is installed. I assume it patches the floppy insert handler to check for viruses, and maybe it's screwed up somehow.

I would test this theory further by disabling Disinfectant, but now the SE/30's hard drive appears to have disappeared! When I load some SCSI utility software from a floppy, it doesn't even show any drives on the SCSI bus, just the computer itself at ID #7. Not good!

 

[phreakout]

Try using SCSIProbe (shareware) to detect the hard drive. Another thing to consider is that maybe the hard drive's disk driver is corrupted or missing. You can use Apple HD SC Setup v7.3.5 (Patched) or Lido v7.5.6 to detect and install/update the hard drive's driver, so it can be recognized again.

I've never heard of Disinfectant causing the hard drive to be unrecognized. It could be possible, but I doubt it. Besides, Macs don't need anti virus apps.

I can only recommend one critical anti virus app you will want to have, called Ajax. The reason is because I've noticed that software downloaded from the internet for Macs (before OS X) did have an infection. After downloading and expending a compressed file (.sit, .hqx, .sea, .img, .dsk, etc.), the infection doesn't appear to do nothing, other than place a file named []666 in every file folder. If left unattended for long periods, that file will cause some major corruption of data and possibly loss. Not to scare you, but it happened to me 2 times before I tried Ajax; it fixed the problem good.

The worse case scenario is that the SCSI controller chip (UI12) on the SE/30 logic board went south. Not uncommon, but pretty frustrating, when you want to use a SCSI drive. The chip is a 53C80 (Zilog or NCR brand) PLCC-44 pin and a real pain to replace. I've tried it once before and will never do it again, since I don't have the proper tools for the job. Digikey and Mouser both carry the part, but you'll end up buying in bulk amounts at about $6 USD apiece. You'd be better off salvaging one from a dead board with a good replacement 53C80; much cheaper and no buying in bulk.

I hope this can be of use to you. Keep me posted on what you try and find. Document as best as you can with what works for you!

73s de phreakout. :rambo:

PS: Welcome to the 68kmla forums! Glad to have you here!

 

[bigmessowires]

I tried TattleTech and Mt. Everything, and both of them don't even show any drives present on the SCSI bus. Is SCSI probe enough different that it's worth trying too? It's kind of a pain for me to generate more 1.4MB Mac floppies at the moment, but I can do it if SCSI Probe is different enough to be worthwhile.

I also opened the case, and took at look at the motherboard and the SCSI controller chip. They all look fine-- no obvious corrosion. I also reseated the internal SCSI cable and the drive's internal power connector.

If the drive media had failed, or even if the driver were corrupted, I would expect it would still appear on the SCSI bus wouldn't it? You just wouldn't be able to mount it or read from it. But since it doesn't even appear on the SCSI bus, I think the problem must either be failed drive electronics, or failed SCSI controller chip.

One other detail: this problem actually began while I was using the Mac. I'd been using the SE/30 for several hours, no problems with the hard drive. I was running from a System 6 floppy, using the HD as temp storage for copying data between floppies. Running single-Finder, a SEA that I was running failed, dumping me back to the Finder, which suddenly told me "The Desktop on HD80 must be rebuilt." Then a moment later "The Desktop on HD80 can not be rebuilt." Then suddenly HD80 was just gone.

One other outside possibility is that the problem is due to a dead PRAM battery. I know that can cause some Macs to fail to boot, but I thought fail to boot meant "won't turn on" and not "won't recognize hard disk". Still, I've ordered a replacement PRAM battery to replace the 1989 vintage battery that was in there, so we'll see if it helps.

The worst thing about all this is that the SE/30 isn't even mine! It's part of a friend's collection, and it was working fine at his house two days ago, so I feel guilty about "breaking it" somehow.

 

[bigmessowires]

Update: I tried SCSI Probe, with the same results as the other tools. I'll wait to try the PRAM battery before declaring it officially dead.

 

[techknight]

or your experiencing typical SCSI voodoo. Termination....

As far as visibility with a drive being failed, Depends on the drive. Usually itll see it on the bus, and return a sense code Media Not Ready. But sometimes the chip wont respond to anything until it passes the self test 100%.

it all depends.