SE Boot Problems

[Arthegall]

So, I've got me some odd symptoms.

SE with 20 mb internal and 1mb RAM.

About two weeks ago some random errors started turning up on the hard disk. Several files and the hard disk itself were renamed on click to some variation of "----------" and several files became corrupted and unusable. I thought it might be a virus, and scanned it with Disinfectant 3.7.1, but it came up clean. Then about a week ago, the HD died. I'd get happy Mac on startup, but after about five seconds, boot-up would fail and the screen would go back to flashing question mark.

So, I ran from floppies for the last week while I considered my option. When booted from floppy, the machine would report a hard disk error and ask if I wished to initialize. Disk First Aid was unable to read the drive. Finally I figured it was a disk fault and I'd just reformat. Initializing in Finder would change the name on the disk showing up in Disk First Aid, but it would never mount, and every Apple utility test I tried would fail to verify or read or write to the disk. So I thought, hmm dead HD.

Then yesterday I started getting the same boot up symptoms when booting from my System Tools (Sys 4.1) floppy. It's a clean copy I just made a week ago on a brand new (old stock) floppy. It's been locked the whole time, and it's been working fine. But now, I'll get happy Mac for a few seconds while booting from floppy, and the back to flashing question mark.

So now I'm thinking it's not the HD at all, or just the HD, but something more sinister.

Any ideas?

 

[Arthegall]

So should I take it that these symptoms are unusual?

What do you make of getting a happy Mac and then having the computer switch back to the question mark?

I was under the impression that happy Mac meant good system folder found. Why would the boot process fail or reset after that?

 

[Arthegall]

Oh, and I should clarify that there's no programmer's switch installed, and this isn't a hard restart. I don't get a second bong, etc.

The sequence is:

bong, question mark, drive noises and happy Mac, no more drive noises and back to question mark.

This is the sequence for whether booting up from the internal hard drive or the internal floppy drive.

I haven't tried booting from an external floppy drive or external SCSI drive, but I'm going to try that next.

It will try to boot from the internal hard drive first since I am getting a happy Mac from it. It'll be interesting to see if after it goes back to the question mark whether it moves down the line and tries to boot from an external. I suspect it won't since it doesn't try to boot from the hard drive after the internal floppy boot fails.

I'll report back after I try it.

 

[Byrd]

Have you tried disconnecting the internal HD, and perhaps try another floppy drive?

 

[zuiko21]

Bad capacitors?