> > On Dec 9, 2003, at 9:06 PM, Sid Barras wrote: >> Then, one day it woke up and decided to function only occasionally. I >> started getting the "flashing floppy with the question mark in the >> center" >> instead of the happy mac (or the white apple of OS 10)... > on 12/10/03 11:43 AM, Paul Nicholson at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is looking for a boot device and can't find one. It sound like it > can't access the hard drive or gets seriously confused when it does. > Do you still have the old hard disk? Put it back in and see if your > problem goes away.
Sid Replies: I have indeed tried starting up from a bootable CD (Norton Utilities or an OS install disk) and from a remote SCSI disk. What I've found is: it won't boot from the CD until I've tried a couple of times. Strange, but true. It will never simply boot from the CD (holding the "c" key down, of course) until I've tried it a couple of times. It won't start from the SCSI device at all, or at least not until I've accessed the startup disk control panel, which can be done by starting up with Norton, then without running the utility, selecting the startup disk control panel from the OS on the Norton disk. I was afraid that the Hard drive might be the culprit (even though it is brand new and "expensive") but I've even gone through the troubleshooting procedure of installing the hard drive in my pb 1400 (after I've gone through the long and arduous task of partitioning it and installing OS 9.1 coz the pb 1400 won't boot from OS 9.2...) well, every time I've put the hard drive into another laptop (I've got two pb 1400s and it's booted from both of those each time I've installed it) So, it would seem (though I still suspect some sort of software problem) that the communication "link" hardware between the CPU and the hard drive is the problem. So I bought a hard drive bay, which included the little board that plugs into the CPU and plugs into the hard drive on the other end, without making any difference.... Where I'm at now is running OS 9.2 on the wallstreet, but still having freeze up troubles. I am probably going to reformat the hard drive again, and do the long version (zero all data, and one other option I can't remember what its called) of the reformat. Now, here's a kicker that I must decide on: I would really like to keep and use the wallstreet, coz I have lots of legacy equipment that would no longer be useful if I bought a newer model without SCSI and cardbus slots. I have lots of RAM too, so I'm thinking that even though an upgrade CPU such as the sonnet g3 500 and the g4 500 are not real bargains, coz buying them would raise the cost of the wallstreet well into fairly new and much better "ibook" region, but, as I said, I have peripherals that sort of "even out" the cost/benefit scale. So, should I put a newer CPU into this machine, given the problems I've been having, some of which may be hardware related? Would a replacement mother board (which might be had for $50) to accompany the CPU replacement make sense to you? I'm not really stuck on OS 10; I could proceed happily for years to come running OS 9 on this machine. I still have my desktop G4 dual processor with 1.5 gb of RAM to be my "power" machine... Well, I could ramble on forever here, and this is not a thesis statement, and this forum is not a place for too much erudicity.... Happy holidays to one and all from CajunLand USA, South Louisiana Sid B -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
