fenderguy4life

Q: bootlooping

My Macintosh 512 is bootlooping. Anything I can do? It's on an external drive.

Posted on May 13, 2014 8:44 PM

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Q: bootlooping

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  • by Jan Hedlund,

    Jan Hedlund Jan Hedlund May 13, 2014 10:30 PM in response to fenderguy4life
    Level 6 (9,889 points)
    May 13, 2014 10:30 PM in response to fenderguy4life

    At least according to the Classic Mac Repair Notes by Thomas H. Lee, this could be a problem caused by an insufficient 5 V supply.

     

    Jan

  • by fenderguy4life,

    fenderguy4life fenderguy4life May 14, 2014 7:50 AM in response to Jan Hedlund
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 14, 2014 7:50 AM in response to Jan Hedlund

    Hi Jan,

     

    To elaborate on the issue, I picked this up second hand a while back. It works good until I get a system crash and then am forced to reboot. That works fine for a few times then it refuses to boot. It goes into this churning chunky chunk chunk mode where the external hardrive just cycles over and over while the Mac seems happy enough it just needs a disc. It flashes between the happy Mac and question mark/disc symbol.

     

    A few more questions. What is the proper sequence for starting up with the external drive? External drive first then Mac? Also, is there any kind of keyboard combination I can use during startup to help diagnose / bypass normal startup?

     

    Thank you for taking an interest.

  • by fenderguy4life,

    fenderguy4life fenderguy4life May 14, 2014 8:55 AM in response to Jan Hedlund
    Level 1 (5 points)
    May 14, 2014 8:55 AM in response to Jan Hedlund

    Also, this is an original 128k, not a 512k. Is there anything I can do with the interupt switch or the reset switch? I think one of the problems (this has happened before I think) is in control panel I change the amount of ram that can be accessed from a lower number to 256k. I think this is what is causing the heartache. Can't remember what I did last time to get it to boot.

  • by Jan Hedlund,

    Jan Hedlund Jan Hedlund May 16, 2014 3:13 PM in response to fenderguy4life
    Level 6 (9,889 points)
    May 16, 2014 3:13 PM in response to fenderguy4life

    Hi,

     

    Sorry, but I am not really familiar with the models before the Macintosh Plus.

     

    Macintosh 128K technical specifications:

    http://support.apple.com/kb/sp186

     

    Just to rule out any misunderstanding, are you using an external floppy drive (connected to the floppy drive port) or some kind of hard drive (connected to a serial port, or possibly to the floppy drive port)? Could you post the exact external drive model?

     

    Also, is the internal floppy drive working?

     

    I suppose that you have access to an early startup floppy. Which system version is on it? Old floppy disks are often not reliable, and that could possibly be one reason for alternating between the Happy Mac and a disk icon with a question-mark (the computer cannot locate a valid system).

     

    Is the battery OK?

     

    Jan

  • by stevena1,

    stevena1 stevena1 May 23, 2014 2:52 PM in response to fenderguy4life
    Level 1 (20 points)
    May 23, 2014 2:52 PM in response to fenderguy4life

    Is the external an HD20 or 3rd party?

     

    Could it be corrupted?

     

    Is any of the floppy connector (since that was the only way to connect something like that pre-Plus) broken or out of place?