Mac LC startup beeps

I am trying to start up my old Mac LC (1991) to see if there's data on the hard drive to be retrieved. However, it isn't able to start up at the moment and I'm getting some strange beeps. Here's the startup process:

Startup chime OK
Monitor comes on, shows gray screen and cursor
Cursor responds to mouse OK
Motherboard starts beeping once every 10 seconds

According to my research, if the startup chime worked OK then the Mac passed its POST test. I can't find any other documentation that refers to beeps for this Mac model and system software (System 7). Any advice would be appreciated!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Feb 11, 2008 8:41 AM

20 replies

Limnos

Level 10

428,159 points

Feb 13, 2008 8:21 AM in response to jeremyschultz

I got the G3 opened up fine and hooked up the drive okay, but upon startup I got the same gray screen on the G3 with the beeps.

Do you not have a regular drive in the G3 to which it will boot even with the defective drive in there?

The next step seems to be Limnos' suggestion of physically moving the platters, but my wife suggested I ask the local Apple Store first so I'll try that.

The techs. there will faint, having been trained that you never, never, never, ever open a hard drive. My reasoning was it was gone anyway so I couldn't do any worse to it. There's also an article with methods for dealing with stiction [here|http://www.iswamp.com/data-recovery/hard-drive-stiction-and-data-recovery -10.php].

I suggest you do a web search for "hard drive beeps". There's lots of information out there like [this|http://www.macintouch.com/maxtor.html]. As if you didn't know, your drive is failing. The beeping isn't electronic but probably made from something like metal-against-metal. I don't know if my spinning trick will work if it isn't simply dirt causing stiction but something out of alignment or broken. I spent a while browsing my search results and see lots of theories and symptoms, but no solid diagnoses or treatments. Gotta get ready for a trip so I'll leave the research up to you. 😉

Feb 13, 2008 9:22 AM in response to Limnos

In my opinion, the sounds you are hearing are caused by the DC drive motor trying to spin the platters and failing. There are no beepers in hard drives, and the Mac OS has never produced beeps for drive failures.

Once you break open the seal on a drive, you introduce contamination. Opening it yourself should be considered a desperation move that will cause it to be unusable very soon.

If your Mac is not booting and not producing the flashing question mark, you may also have a SCSI termination problem. If you do get the drive spinning, you will have to make sure the SCSI bus is terminated before you can mount the drive on the desktop to examine it.

Feb 15, 2008 8:47 AM in response to Limnos

The G3 did have the regular drive in it, but didn't boot from it. I don't know why adding the old hard drive would cause it to fail to boot.

I haven't opened the drive yet, but I just called the Apple Store and they don't even have access to a computer with a SCSI port.

RE: the beeps, I would be very surprised if the sound was coming from something physical, like metal on metal. It sounds like a computer-generated beep. I would test it again right now, but I just tried and now there's ANOTHER problem with the LC. I plugged it in, put in the drive and hit the power but nothing happened. I opened the case and tried it again, and it looks like the fan is trying to move but it's jerky and nothing else comes on. During my testing the drive's power cable has started falling apart (the metal pins are coming out of the plastic plug) so maybe it's causing a power failure or something.

Feb 18, 2008 8:03 AM in response to jeremyschultz

Just had a breakthrough of sorts.... The new startup failure seemed related to the power and I knew the hard drive's power cable was falling apart, so I removed the pins from the plastic plug. One pin would not come out though and I ended up pulling the wire from the pin by accident. It was the red wire.

I plugged the three other pins into the LC's power cable and started up, and it resolved the power issue: the computer booted up. It also stopped the beeping, but the computer can't find the system software on the drive. Tonight I'll open the drive and try moving the platters a bit, then see what happens. If it doesn't work I have to assume the drive is kaput.

Feb 24, 2008 10:26 AM in response to jeremyschultz

I opened the drive and moved the platters a bit, but nothing was fixed so the drive is either erased or it can't communicate with the computer. I ran the computer while the drive was open in order to watch the platters, and I can see they are not moving.

Thanks to everyone for their great advice!

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Mac LC startup beeps