>> I can boot into reinstall but the hard disk cannot be found so can go no >> further. Hardware Test disk shows no problems. Everything unplugged but no >> change. With flashing question mark the keyboard is without power. Without >> power to the keyboard holding X to force boot into OSX doesn't work.
Bob, there is a workaround but will require some of your colleagues (and neighbour) lend you a CD with the recent version of Disk Warrior ( if you dont have one). Latest version is OSX compliant as well. THis is by far the only a utility that can read "unreadable" disks and act on it, this is, update the directories and return them back to life. In The first stage the disk is not seen, as you are now. Depending on the damage,then disk warrior makes it visible , but greyed out and third stage is to reinstall the system and things go back to normal. I have found that what the system needs is to be reblessed, so in many ocasions just copying healthy files from CD, this is Finder and System Folder is more than enough to boot again from OS9, back up your data and reinstall in full. DW disks are bootable in many OS, since 8.1 up to X, so you can use the Finder and System Folder files from that CD. If anything fails, and you don't find the DW disk, or even if this one does not help, the only resource is to reinstall everything, but this time, make it with definite partitions to keep OS9 and OSX separate, and never again join them together, since the promised land of mixed systems by Apple has been pure crap, and people learn this by bad experience. One of the main problems in the mixing is that OS9 and OSX will have your kind of problems to boot if one of them is not well, and also the Trash can is shared by both systems, something that sooner or later creates problems. Don't even think of installing Classic. I think you already know that. A third partition for documents is the key to an effective back up. I suggest that you start thinking also in another, second internal HD for your machine, since this is the only safe way to be able to always boot it and be able to make repairs when damage arises. If you check in versiontracker, there is a new software by FWB that claims to succesfully partition disks without the need to initialize them. I have no experience on this , but it seems like an interesting app to keep in mind as part of the emergency arsenal. Good luck with this one Bob. What a bad moment to have a machine failure. Jorge Parra =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
