Mac SE won't boot

I just won a Mac SE off of eBay and one of the first things I noticed after booting up the Mac is that the mouse cursor won't move at all. I assume this a ADB issue. How do I fix the problem? I've tried cleaning the mouse but that doesn't seem to help. More importantly when I try to turn on the computer I get the disk with a flashing question mark indicating a OS can't be found. I just tested the floppy drive and it appears to be 800k. I have about ten 720k PC disks to format as Mac 800k disks and my Mac Performa 200 already declared one of my floppies defective when attempting to format it. I was thinking I should upgrade the floppy drive to a 1.4 MB drive. Where could I find the upgrade kit (I'm already aware of eBay so list every used Mac parts dealer you can think of on the web/net)? What size hard drive should I install to replace the tiny factory drive?

Posted on Oct 12, 2005 7:20 PM

20 replies

Craigwd_2000 Author

Level 4

1,315 points

Oct 28, 2005 4:12 PM in response to Denis Eddy

Could my battery have caused errors to occur when starting up from good floppies? Is it possible those other disks aren't bad?

Oct 28, 2005 8:22 PM in response to Craigwd_2000

The battery generally has nothing to do with reading from floppies - as long as you keep it plugged in to the wall outlet. The battery keeps the parameters in memory (date and time, startup drive selections, etc.)

If the floppies can't be formatted on the Performa then they are probably coasters. Floppies are basically rust stuck to scotch tape. they didn't last forever in their day!

Do you still need an old operation System? I have Systems going back to System 1.0. They're in "Shrinkwrap" format which is like the ".dmg" format that OS X uses. Shrinkwrap will let you write these disk images back to floppies.

If you're really interested in the SE then you should use System 6. It is amazing how it runs on very little RAM. You used to be able to run the SE off an 800k floppy and run the apps off of a second floppy (in the same drive) by using a technique called floppy swapping.

BTW to get a 1.4 MB floppy to run on an SE required a PMMU chip upgrade... so I'd give up on that!

Let me know how far down the rabbit hole you want to go...

Craigwd_2000 Author

Level 4

1,315 points

Oct 29, 2005 6:02 PM in response to Tim Mitra

Then I think I'll just swap my logic board for the SE FDHD logic board I just ordered. The computers are almost identical and I won't have as hard a time replacing its battery as with a SE logic board.

EWeber

Level 1

0 points

Dec 15, 2005 8:11 PM in response to Tim Mitra

Hello Tim I have friend that has a MacSe Fd/Hd
He might need the software to get his Mac running
again. He gets a message: Not enough memory
to open Finder. This computer was given to him
without floppies so I fugured he will need the
floppies to reboot and reinstall the OS
could you help on that or a way form him to
reboot with that message. It sounds like you
know your way around an older Mac I used to
Thank you.

Dec 18, 2005 2:04 AM in response to EWeber

EWeber
Welcome to discussions.
To get more info you can post your question at:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=641
You can download a full System 7 at:
http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html#system
You will need an older MAC with disk drive,up to OS 9,to make the floppies.
Good luck

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Mac SE won't boot