retrieve data from a powerbook 150 and 170

hi jan,

thanks for the reply! would you happen to know the size of the fifth screw that is located near the ports? i removed the first four screws, but couldn't remove the fifth one because i didn't have the right size bit...

and thanks for letting me know about the powerbook hard drives - i was unaware that the 170 and 150 drives had different interfaces!

regarding the IDE/ATA (150) drive, is there a simple USB adapter i can buy so that i can plug it into my modern macbook? or would OS X not even be able to read the old filesystem?

thanks, jan. so OS X would have no problem reading the older filesystem?

thanks!

hi jan,

i've made some progress regarding my older powerbooks!

(1) i pulled the IDE hard drive out of my 150 and am waiting to borrow a friend's IDE-to-USB adapter.

(2) i've made several attempts to cure my 170 of its flashing disk icon upon startup:

(a) i found an old mac disk labeled "Norton Utilities Mac v. 3.0 Emergency Disk," and when i startup from that, i first get the happy mac icon, then the "Welcome to Macintosh" screen, but shortly after i get a window with a bomb icon and a single button that has no text on it. when i click the button (which is the only thing i can do, at that point), the emergency disk is ejected and the powerbook restarted. the same thing occurs when i start up with the emergency disk while holding down the shift key (to turn off extensions) or the spacebar.

(b) i've tried booting from various iterations of "Disk Tools" for system 7, as you suggested, using a PC running the commercial application TransMac to generate the actual boot disks. both of the Disk Tools image files 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...

(c) i 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.

(d) 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. i hope you have some ideas for me!

hi jan,

sorry to switch back to the powerbook 150 - but there's a new wrinkle there. i finally took it to my friend, who had an IDE-USB adapter cable, but when we plugged it into my macbook (circa 2007) the drive would only click. we though it was dead.

however, when he plugged it into his macbook pro (2010), the drive spun up! but we got an error message saying that the drive needed to be "initialized" or "formatted." we could see the drive under disk utility, but it was also listed as "unformatted" there.

so now i'm a bit puzzled - the drive certainly worked before. and i never erased it. is it possible it just got so old that it somehow displays as being unformatted?

hi jan,

well, i've just about given up hope working with the bare drive. i could connect it to my desktop PC - using, like you said, a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter - but it's a bit of trouble, and i figure the macbook pro via the IDE/USB adapter has a better chance of reading it...

as far as the powerbook 150 itself goes, the last time i checked i was getting zero signs of activity - no matter which battery i tried (i have three) or power adapter (i have two, and one works no problem with a powerbook 170).

i guess once i'm satisfied i can't do anything with the bare drive anymore, i'll put my powerbook 150 back together and try resetting the PMU.

oh, i almost forgot to update you about the powerbook 170!

so i figured out that transmac was the problem: it was not correctly making boot disks. luckily i found winimage, which makes them just fine. i've now booted up my powerbook 170 using several different versions of disk tools, but unfortunately, the powerbook seems unable to find my internal hard drive.

when i boot into disk tools, the only thing i see on my desktop is the disk tools disk and the trash can. when i run disk aid, the only volume it can find is my floppy drive. and when i run HD SC setup, no SCSI devices are connected...

i'm thinking this means my internal drive has failed.

In case of a non-Apple unit, HD SC Setup may not detect the drive.

my powerbook 170 actually just has the stock hard drive in it...does that count as an apple unit?