Macintosh Classic Booting Up

[Ih8reno]

I recently traded an old powermac for a macintosh classic and want to see what software is on it. When turning it on it boots with a chime and loads a disk with a question mark. When booting with the option/command +x and o it opens the system with 0 applications. Is there anything I can do to fix this? I heard resetting pram may help but am unsure how to do it on this machine.

 

[Intell]

Opt+Cmd+O+X is a very, very basic operating system that is loaded from the ROM. It can't really do much other than show you that the machine is working. The hard drive may be blank or dead if it gets to a flashing question mark screen upon boot.

 

[ElectronGuru]

Yeah, ? = cant find the OS. So either the drive is dead or missing or corrupt or not assigned. P ram reset (command option p r) is about that last one. You could then go into control panel and assign a new start up disk. But this only helps speed the boot if it takes a while to find. If its ? for 20+ seconds, that wont help and its 1, 2 or 3.

If you put your ear against the case when power on, can you hear the hd spinning up? do you have a startup floppy you can test with? With the rom boot, does the HD even mount?

 

[Ih8reno]

How would I check if the hard drive is blank? I hear humming so I assumed the hd is working fine, and in the about Macintosh finder I see 4096k memory. System is 166k and finder is 3,930k

 

[ElectronGuru]

Sounds like multifinder is turned off, but thats another issue.

The key hard drive sound is not while the power is established. Its hard to distinguish. But it powers up and down more slowly than everything else in the case. Turn it on and you should hear it winding up after the power supply does. Turn it off and you should hear it spinning down after the power supply is quiet.

The question is, if the drive is powering up and down, does the HD icon show up on the desktop?

 

[MacTech68]

Remember there is a fan in the bottom of the case which will also produce a whirring sound.

As ElectronGuru says, listen for the secondary sound of the drive spinning up.

 

[Ih8reno]

Well I hear spinning after its off so I can only assume it has a hdd. Now the fun begins. Have to find some floppies in the area to program on my powermac for use with this Classic.