Level 1

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My trusty Mac LC no longer boots from the HD

I purchased a new Mac LC many years ago and it has served me well until recently when it would no longer boot from the hard drive. When I boot from a Disk Tools floppy, I get some limited success but do not ever hear the HD spin up. The startup chime also does not sound. When used as the boot disk and trying to use the installer option, the program can't find a SCSI drive, only the floppy drive. The 5V & 12V to the HD are right on and a new PRAM battery is installed. I can load and run programs using the floppy drive but that requires a lot of disk swapping. I tried substuting a tested Apple LC HD with the same results and now I suspect the problem is not the HD but is somewhere else. Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks!

iOS 6.0.2

Posted on Nov 29, 2013 7:09 PM

29 replies

stevena1

Level 1

24 points

Dec 19, 2013 11:20 AM in response to Rajapintaja

Macs are expensive (hate to say!)

At least a Mac mini is under $700. The LC was the mini of the 1990 standard, and that was $3,700 MSRP (w/out a monitor!)

However very Vintage Macs are perfect to use to play the classic games (like Monopoly, Spellbound, Number Munchers, oh and the Mac edition of the Oregon Trail!)

Old tech is still used in many closets, depsite what your hear in the media towards iPads and cloud services.

My DSLR photos are now stored on a Mac OS Tiger on G3 B&W tower firewalled and secure as much as possible. With my 100GB+ photo collection, its heluvla lot easier to store them on a Mac than a Windows Server - Macs are built to run and run and run for days and months without restarts! Try saying that about MSFT.

I am still using the 2nd gen MacBook (bought in '07) and its been through a lot, but I have for the most part taken good care of it, and the last couple of years, I felt I got every pennies worth out of this thing!

Back to the subject, hope you get your LC fixed. That's one of the best compact desktop models in Apple's history IMO!

len-35 Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 21, 2013 6:17 PM in response to Jan Hedlund

Hi Jan

The 'new' board came today and was installed. With a floppy boot disk, got a start-up chime, smiley Mac and could run a program with lots of disk swapping but no boot from the HD. Still couldn't find a SCSI drive. This is the same as my original board with the replaced caps. Either the 'new' board has a problem (but got the start-up chime, etc.), the HDs I tried are all bad, or ...

The one thing I'd like to try is to get my hands on a good HD with OS 6 on it. When I began this saga I did purchase a SCSI drive that had "wiped" clean but that was before I changed the caps and I never got it to spin up anyway. I'd be willing to invest about $30 in another drive from the same outfit but I'm not sure what you have to do to get it working with the LC assuming the 'new' board turns out to be good.

I'm about ready to call it quits. Got any ideas?

Len

len-35 Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 21, 2013 6:32 PM in response to stevena1

I'm using a MacMini as my primary computer and you're right when you say that "obsolete" computers are still useful for many applications. The one reason I'd like to get my LC running again is the programs on it are mostly devoid of the bells & whistles in the latest versions of software (that I don't use or need).

Regards, Len

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

24,241 points

Dec 21, 2013 7:34 PM in response to len-35

Hi Len,

Do you still have the external SCSI enclosure (with its own power supply)? Has the remaining hard drive been tested again, both installed internally and in the external box? No sound of a spinning disk?

It is strange. I guess that you have double-checked all cables etc. Yes, it may become necessary to test yet another hard drive, but before doing so you should really have a set of disk tools floppies with various utilities (such as Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5, Lido 7.5.6 and Mt. Everything). It is not too difficult to adapt Network Access disks to hold the utilities in question, but you would need a working older Mac with a hard drive to do so. Perhaps it is time to look for something like a PowerBook 520/520c/540/540c (which has built-in Ethernet) to be used for floppy modifications and as an intermediary.

Jan

len-35 Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 23, 2013 2:56 PM in response to Jan Hedlund

Hi Jan,

Thanks for the links but I don't have much hope of finding any older Mac computers or software (I've looked!). Today I hooked up the APS external drive and tried both of my HDs in it. They both powered up and spun! but the 'new' logic board couldn't find either of them. When I plugged one of the HDs directly back into the computer it would not power up & spin and no SCSI drive could be found:-(

In addition, I don't get a start up chime unless one of the HDs is plugged into the logic board. All that's left is the power supply but all the voltages are correct. This is getting old and I could scream!

I appreciate all your help but I think it's time to move on.

Len

len-35 Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2013 9:44 AM in response to Jan Hedlund

Hi Jan,

I hope that your Christmas was happy and joyful.

It was good to get away from the Mac LC problems for a day or two but I did have one thought. When power is first applied to the computer at start up, should the internal HD begin to spin even before the boot sequence has gotten very far? The reason I ask is because when either drive is installed in the external APS box, the drive starts to spin as soon as the box is turned on (without being connected to the LC). Either HD has an OS installed and worked fine in the LC for years. As I said earlier, the voltages at the PS connector and the HD connector are ± 0. 2 volts but the PS is the only thing I haven't dug into.

Len

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

24,241 points

Dec 26, 2013 11:28 AM in response to len-35

Hi Len,

>When power is first applied to the computer at start up, should the internal HD begin to spin even before the boot sequence has gotten very far?

I tested this with my LC III (which has a Conner 30080E hard drive). Nothing was connected to the (external) SCSI port. To be able to hear the hard drive better, the fan was temporarily disconnected. Immediately after the computer was turned on, the hard drive started spinning. Shortly thereafter, the startup sound could be heard. Then the arrow appeared. After that a Happy Mac followed by the Welcome to Macintosh message, and the normal Desktop.

Another test with the SCSI (hard drive) cable disconnected at the board had the same result (the hard drive spinning up and then the startup sound). Then the arrow. Finally, a floppy icon with a flashing question-mark was shown on the screen. No Happy Mac etc. Upon insertion of a Network Access floppy, the Happy Mac appeared, followed by Welcome to Macintosh, and eventually the normal Desktop.

Jan

len-35 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 4, 2014 6:57 PM in response to Jan Hedlund

Hi Jan,

Happy New Year. Good news for 2014!

As a last resort I opened the power supply of my LC and found at least two badly leaking caps which I replaced with used caps from my junk box. However, the result was not good; only one of the 5V supplies was putting out the correct voltage. Ordered an assortment of new caps from China and another TDK LC PS from eBay. I now have a working LC computer, the original TDK PS to repair, and the original logic board that has new caps and works fine with the new PS but has no sound. Both HDs are working fine and all apps and files are intact.

The key was your observations that the HD spun up as soon as the computer was turned on. I didn’t recall what the sequence was but the clue for me was the fact that both HDs ran when put in the APS external drive box and didn’t run at all in the LC.

It has been a fruitful and at times frustrating experience. One might question the logic of spending time and money on a 22 year old computer, but I considered it a challenge and worth the effort.

A final question; do you know of a source for a schematic or a functional layout of the LC? Or do you know which specific device(s) are used for sound? I’d like to get my original logic board back to fully operating condition.

Lastly, I’d like to thank you for your help, expertise and quick responses during the past few weeks. Thank you.

Len Kastner

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

24,241 points

Jan 6, 2014 5:05 AM in response to len-35

Hi Len,

Thank you. I wish you a Happy New Year, too!

As far as I know, Apple never published schematic diagrams for any product. However, they did publish block diagrams for various computer models in their Developer Note series. Earlier, you could download these hardware documents from Apple's developer site, but this does not appear to be true any more (a web search could possibly provide some results, though).

As far as the sound is concerned, did you check whether a switch in the speaker/headphone jack properly closes the circuit to the internal speaker when nothing is connected externally? If necessary, a small amount of a good contact cleaner may help.

Glad to hear that you solved all the other problems.

Kind regards,

Jan

stevena1

Level 1

24 points

Jan 9, 2014 7:53 AM in response to Jan Hedlund

Not sure if this is directly related - but the Inside Macintosh had some very techical details to the hardware and software. There was some basic schematics when I read through them. The books were sold to developers back in the day, and you can get them at a yard sale price on Amazon (which I got the first 4 volumes in the last year or so.)

len-35 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 11, 2014 9:19 AM in response to len-35

A big thank you to the members of this forum that responded to my original post concerning the problems I was having with my Mac LC. The helpful advice and suggestions were appreciated and contributed significantly to getting my “trusty Mac LC” back to its former healthy condition. Regards, Len

Oldmac25

Level 1

0 points

Feb 9, 2016 7:15 AM in response to Jan Hedlund

Hi Jen,

I'm also experiencing the same issue as Ien-35: Internal HD not detected to boot. And Utilities 2 floppy says cannot detect an SCSI connected disc. Booting from the floppy is ok. Also the external HD is working but my applications (now they say "apps" ;-) are on the internal HD so cannot even read simple docs.

In this case I'm "keeping" my "old tek" museum alive and one of the oldies is this LCIII with an 80MB HD, 20MB RAM and external SCSI (not sure if it was 1GB or less)

I read your thread and my symptons are similar: the HD spins a bit when power on then system thinks a bit, spin again (more or less at the same time the fan does) and stops and the requuest for the floppy with the question mark appear on display.

I will revise the caps as Ien-35 did but what do you think if I replace the external hd with my internal HD, I mean a physical change: will the system try to boot from the external scsi if they ffind a bootable disk there? ... Probably I will try this anyway but would like your opinion.

tks!

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

24,241 points

Feb 11, 2016 1:16 AM in response to Oldmac25

Hello Oldmac25,

>if I replace the external hd with my internal HD, I mean a physical change: will the system try to boot from the external scsi if they ffind a bootable disk there?

If an external enclosure contains a working hard disk drive with a valid system folder, the computer will (normally) be able to boot from there (providing, of course, that one connects devices according to the general rules for SCSI). If necessary, one can bypass an internal hard drive by holding down the four keys Command(Apple) + Option(Alt) + Shift + Delete(Backspace) during startup. A SCSI utility such as Mt. Everything (see above) could perhaps be useful, too.

BTW, does the existing external hard drive have an operating system, or is the disk merely used to hold documents?

Jan

Oldmac25

Level 1

0 points

Feb 11, 2016 1:23 AM in response to Jan Hedlund

Thanks Jan, too fast answer for this slow speed Macs blog ;-)

As my external scsi runs well when booting from floppy I will make the change just to see if the internal hd is still ok. If it is ok then the problem may be related with the board or power as you advised to Ien and will work there. I'll tell you know what I learn.

The actual external does not contain a system, just docs. So I will physically replace the HD of the external enclosure with my internal HD just to check if the internal HD is working since it is not detected at startup.

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My trusty Mac LC no longer boots from the HD