Macintosh se fdhd with red flashing light

Hi,

First of all, would it be correct to assume that the computer does not boot correctly (startup sound, Happy Mac, Welcome to Macintosh, Desktop) from the internal hard drive (which I suppose is the drive with the flashing red LED)? Any messages/icons on the screen (blinking floppy icon, et cetera)? Any sounds?

Any icon on the screen when the computer rejects the System 7.1 floppy? Is it the first install disk or the tools disk?

At this point it is difficult to say whether the floppy drive is faulty, or if the floppy disk is bad, or if something else is going on. Please post back with more information.

Jan

Since an SE FDHD is equipped with a floppy drive for both 800K and 1.4 MB, a System 7.1 disk (which is 1.4 MB) should be OK per se. The normal SE can only handle 800K.

Was this an original set of System 7.1 floppies (this system version is not downloadable, but 7.0.1 is)? If so, the floppies are approximately twenty years old. Much can go wrong during that time, so do not automatically expect the disks to be fine. Does the same thing happen when trying to start from both the first install disk and the tools disk?

Do you have access to another older Macintosh computer (with a floppy drive) where you could create a bootable floppy from a download? It could of course be something wrong with the floppy drive, but it might be a good idea to at least try another startup floppy.

Jan

If you have access to a Windows PC with a built-in floppy drive, it is possible to create bootable Mac disks from certain (Disk Copy 4.2 style) disk images via a special technique. One suitable download may be the Network_Access_Disk_7.5.sea.bin:

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/Utilities/

Alternatively, the British English System 7.0.1 set of floppies (except the System 7 Tune-Up) can be created in a similar manner. The Disk_Tools.image.sea.bin download could be tested first:

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -British/Macintosh/System/System_7.0.1/

The special procedure requires the use of an appropriate version of Aladdin/StuffIt Expander for Windows in order to decode the .bin (MacBinary) and decompress an intermediate file to begin with. The stuffit-expander-10-windows.uu from the site below could possibly be OK for this (see the abstracts text file for details; the uuencode must be decoded before the freeware utility can be installed on a PC):

http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mac/info-mac/_Compress_&_Translate/

Once a Disk Copy 4.2 style Macintosh disk image exists on the PC, a utility such as the shareware program WinImage could be used to write the image to a 1.44 MB floppy disk.

Jan

I am not assuming that the floppies are bad. I just think it would be a good idea to rule that possibility out by trying to use another floppy as a startup disk.

The LED you are referring to must be the activity light for the hard drive.

Jan

Yes, I think the LED is the drive activity light in the bay above the floppy drive:

http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/collection/articlepics/se/snap1.jpg

It is probably complaining because the hard drive controller can't spin up the drive due to stiction.

Hi JustSomeGuy,

Yes, stiction could be one possibility. However, I do not know, but I would have thought that the SE FDHD ought to start up from a good floppy anyway.

One can also try to hold down the four keys Command(Apple) + Option(Alt) + Shift + Delete(Backspace) while testing a floppy startup.

The floppy drive itself may be damaged or out of alignment. Another remote possibility would be that this computer really is a normal SE with an 800K floppy drive, with merely an FDHD badge (these things happen when people try to rebuild computers). System 7.1 (1.4 MB) floppies would not work in an original SE with an 800K drive. There were FDHD upgrade sets for the original SE.

Jan

There is something wrong with the floppy disks or drive, for sure, Jan. I agree, it should boot up from floppies regardless of the state of the internal hard drive. About the 'complaint,' I was referring specfiically to the red flashing LED and why it might be flashing in the first place.