Byron: I have a similar problem that has me scratching my head. I've also got a Q840-AV that my wife uses as her main Mac here at home. It won't work at all with ANY floppy drive. I can unplug the floppy drive and it works just fine. Plug one in, try to boot, and you get the "chimes of death." I think it's the controller circuitry on the motherboard that's to blame.
I'm one of those people who is constantly "Mac poor." I buy every old Mac I can find, whether at auction or through want ads. Most of the time, if I can buy multiple copies of the same model, I'll bring 'em home, and try to "marry up" all the guts wherever possible to make a single good machine. Then I sell them to disadvantaged families who'd like to own a computer but can't afford to buy one. Besides, this is a darn good way to keep these people from wandering into the PeeCee camp. In fact, I've even converted a few families away from the Wintel world to our camp. Currently, my lineup includes a PowerMac 9600 which has 512 megs of RAM, a 500 MHz G4 processor from Sonnet, a Rage Orion 128 video card with 32 megs VRAM, a Firewire/USB combo card, a very, very fast 2960 SCSI card, internal Zip drive, external Jaz drive, 20-gig tape backup drive, and two internal hard drives -- one is an 18-gig IBM SCSI drive, the other is an 80-gig drive, also SCSI, and also from IBM. I wish I'd bought faster drives to take advantage of the speedy SCSI bus I installed. My "new" file server is a Quadra 950 a friend from West Virginia gave to me for the price of shipping. It has 128 megs of RAM, a 2-gig and a 180-gig internal hard drive. I also replaced the floppy drive with an internal 24x CD-ROM drive -- much more useful than a floppy, anyway. I also have an external Zip drive attached to it. The Q950 replaced twin Q700s I'd had for eons. Having all my artwork on one hard drive is so much more convenient and faster than spread across two separate machines. Besides, the 950 runs circles around the 700s. I've got a PowerMac 7200 and 7300 in the bedroom closet just sitting there. I should be kicked really hard in the butt for EVER buying that 7200 dog. Frigging processor (a PPC 601 @ 90 MHz) is soldered to the motherboard. I know Sonnet makes a G3 and G4 processor upgrade for the machine, but the muscle and horsepower would be lost on that machine. The upgrades plug into a PCI slot. Plus the system bus is a joke. The 7300 is a half-way decent machine. Has the beautiful unfolding desktop box design, and the processor is easily upgraded. Has a ton of RAM slots and can use memory interleaving for a nice speed boost. I've got may 8-10 other Macs in a spare closet. They're mostly Quadra 700s, or Mac II ci models, but I remember having a working Mac II cx as well (also a dog -- its ROMs weren't 32-bit clean). I've got my original Mac 512K (E), Plus and Classic adorning the lower shelf of a bookcase here in my office at home. I fire them up every now and then. I still love a few of the old games that won't run on a newer machine. I find it so hard to believe I ever got any work done on them. I've been using Pagemaker since it was still in beta. I still have Pagemaker 1.0a installed on the 512K (E) and still have Pagemaker 3.0 on the Plus, and Pagemaker 4.2 on the Classic. I'm a recent newcomer to this mailing list, and this is my first post to it or anyone on the list. I've had a bad case of antique-itis for almost two years now. There are a ton of perfectly useful Macs out there that are in danger of being scrapped. A Mac doesn't have to have a PPC chip to be useful or productive. I hope I haven't "talked your ear off" completely! :-) I'm just a little enthused about finding this list. After reading all the posts for the last several days, I'm convinced you guys are a really great group of people. Everyone is so eager and willing to help everyone else out they can. The only other group like that I'm aware of is the bunch I shoot bowling pins with. You can be in a very heated competition for the lead with the guy right next to you, but if you have a problem, he's the first guy there to help you out. Thanks for letting me rant. Allen Davis ----- Byron Gardner wrote: > > I have tried three known good floppies in my 840av and none will work. I > believe it is a motherboard problem. This is a spare machine but could be > useful in a pinch. I have changed out the MB from another 840 and the floppy > then works. > > Anyone know how to get a floppy to work with a MB problem? Is there anything > I can try or do to get it to work? Nothing ventured then nothing gained... > > Thanks, -- Quadlist is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Quadlist info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/quadlist.shtml> The FAQ: <http://macfaq.org/> 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/quadlist%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
