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system 7 boot disk?

L

limsilas

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 21, 2007
28
0
hi all,

i've got an old powerbook 170 that doesn't startup properly - i get the disk icon with the flashing question mark.

so i've been trying to start up using a bootdisk. i found an old norton utilities 3.0 emergency disk that helps a little bit - i get the happy mac icon and then the "welcome to macintosh" screen, but then i get a window with a bomb icon in it. that window only has one button that i can click - which mysteriously has no text on it - and when i click it, the emergency disk is ejected and the powerbook restarted.

i've tried making my own bootdisks using transmac on a PC and downloading various bootdisk images, but so far none of them have worked. i tried the two "disk tools" images from this website: http://main.system7today.com/articles/tutorials/disktools.html. initially give me the happy mac icon, but soon the disk is ejected and the all-too-familiar disk icon returns. however, instead of a flashing question mark, i now have a flashing X over the disk icon...

i then tried every single boot disk i could download from this website (http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/bootdisks.html), but none of them even give me the happy mac icon - the disks are simply ejected. i even downloaded a Network Access disk image for system 7.5, but this too was simply ejected with no happy mac icon...

so now i'm at a point where i'm wondering:

(1) am i simply using the wrong boot disk?

(2) is TransMac improperly creating boot disks? (i'm thinking no, because i used it to generate two Disk Tools disks that at least gave me the happy mac initially...)

the norton emergency disk gives me hope that this startup issue can be resolved.

sorry for such a long post. anyone have ideas?
 
i looked through the software on that page but didn't find anything that i think would apply to my situation...
 
The two disk tool images on the system7today website don't appear as though they will boot a PowerBook170

I would suggest getting the System 7.0.1 from Apple's older software.

On that disk image are disk images of all the install disks for system 7.0.1 (the minimum for a PowerBook 170.

If you get a sad mac icon with any numbers, post those numbers here.

Make sure the mouse button isn't stuck down. This will eject disks on startup.

The Norton disk may be a PPC only boot disk.

You also might try running a head cleaning disk on the floppy drive (if you can find one).
 
Last edited:
thank you for the link to the system 7 disks, but unfortunately the disk images do not work to boot up my powerbook 170.

i'm beginning to wonder if this is a problem with TransMac, which is the PC application i'm using to create these boot disks (since that is the only computer i have with a disk drive).

when i use TransMac to create a Disk Tools disk from the system 7 website i linked to earlier, i can use TransMac to view the contents of the disk - in effect, to verify that TransMac actually wrote something to the disk.

however, when i use TransMac to create boot disks from the linked file you gave me (such as the Disk Tools disk), after creation, when i attempt to read the disk, TransMac tells me that "No valid Mac HFS volumes are found."

is there a trick to using the image files to make a boot disk? TransMac has an option called "Format disk with disk image." i use that option, and then i select, e.g., "Disk Tools.image" to create the disk - but my powerbook 170 ejects it almost immediately...

maybe there's another PC application that reads/formats mac disks?
 
well, i'm now able to successfully create mac boot disks on my PC using winimage; so i guess transmac was the problem.

and while system 7.0.1 "disk tools" did not boot up my powerbook properly (i got an error message), several other versions of "disk tools" disks did the trick - i was able to successfully boot into my powerbook!

but now i'm not sure if my powerbook is reading my internal hard drive at all. each time i boot up using "disk tools," the only thing on the desktop is "disk tools." when i run "disk aid," the only visible volume is my floppy disk drive. when i run "HD SC setup," i'm told that no SCSI devices are connected to my computer.

does this mean that the powerbook is simply not reading my internal SCSI hard drive?

i also booted up with a "network access" disk, but did not understand how to proceed from there.

i'm also able to boot up using "install disk 1" of system 7.0.1, but i still can't tell if my internal hard drive is being read at all...

any advice is much appreciated!
 
limsilas said:
well, i'm now able to successfully create mac boot disks on my PC using winimage; so i guess transmac was the problem.

and while system 7.0.1 "disk tools" did not boot up my powerbook properly (i got an error message), several other versions of "disk tools" disks did the trick - i was able to successfully boot into my powerbook!

but now i'm not sure if my powerbook is reading my internal hard drive at all. each time i boot up using "disk tools," the only thing on the desktop is "disk tools." when i run "disk aid," the only visible volume is my floppy disk drive. when i run "HD SC setup," i'm told that no SCSI devices are connected to my computer.

does this mean that the powerbook is simply not reading my internal SCSI hard drive?

i also booted up with a "network access" disk, but did not understand how to proceed from there.

i'm also able to boot up using "install disk 1" of system 7.0.1, but i still can't tell if my internal hard drive is being read at all...

any advice is much appreciated!
Click to expand...

You should be able to see the HD from the Disk Tools disc. Sounds to me like its a bust HD - possibly find a second HD to see if its a HD issue, or something deeper...
 
chrismacguy said:
You should be able to see the HD from the Disk Tools disc. Sounds to me like its a bust HD - possibly find a second HD to see if its a HD issue, or something deeper...
Click to expand...

I concur. Sounds like a bad HD. Finding a working 2.5" SCSI HD isn't going to be easy. Many of the IBM 2.5" SCSI drives suffered from the main IC soldering cracking. You could try placing a shim under the hard drive to apply upward pressure to the chip (if it is an IBM drive), but it may be some kind of other failure.

Do you hear the sound of the drive spinning?
 
so ordinarily, when you boot up using disk tools, you should be able to see the hard drive on the desktop?

i can't tell if the drive spins when i boot up, because of the powerbook's other noises...

would it matter if i used a different boot disk? i also booted up with install disk 1 of system 7.0.1, which then prompted me to insert the next install disk...but if it can't find my internal hard drive, then i'm not really sure what it was doing.
 
limsilas said:
so ordinarily, when you boot up using disk tools, you should be able to see the hard drive on the desktop?

i can't tell if the drive spins when i boot up, because of the powerbook's other noises...

would it matter if i used a different boot disk? i also booted up with install disk 1 of system 7.0.1, which then prompted me to insert the next install disk...but if it can't find my internal hard drive, then i'm not really sure what it was doing.
Click to expand...

If you power on the machine with no floppy disk, put your ear near the left hand palm rest. Any sound you hear will be the hard drive - there are no other moving parts, ie, no fan. If possible, record the sound the drive makes and post it here.

If the drive has a driver on it (ie the drive is partitioned & formatted) then it should mount on the destop with a disk tools floppy. If HDSC Setup doesn't see the drive, then it has most likely failed. There are other possibilities, such as a bad HD cable, but this certainly isn't very likely.

The 7.0.1 Install would probably abort with an error once it loads up disk 2. :eek:
 
MacTech68 said:
If you power on the machine with no floppy disk, put your ear near the left hand palm rest. Any sound you hear will be the hard drive - there are no other moving parts, ie, no fan. If possible, record the sound the drive makes and post it here.

If the drive has a driver on it (ie the drive is partitioned & formatted) then it should mount on the destop with a disk tools floppy. If HDSC Setup doesn't see the drive, then it has most likely failed. There are other possibilities, such as a bad HD cable, but this certainly isn't very likely.

The 7.0.1 Install would probably abort with an error once it loads up disk 2. :eek:
Click to expand...

Actually its more likely it wont install at all - AFAIK Mac OS installers refuse to install to the floppy - Definitely post the sound OP, as well either hear standard broken noises, or well hear that the drive is seized (which is also a possibility with the very old HDDs)
 
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