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Hi.
I work in a school and have recently uncovered an ageing Macintosh LC III in the back of a store.
Unfortunately I can't get it to work. It will power on and give me a display on the CRT. It makes the boot sound. Then it just sits with a floppy disk icon that flashes a "?" on the screen.
I'm not sure what I need to get, (if it's still available), to make this boot to the desktop.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Macintosh LC III-OTHER
Hello,
The floppy icon with the question-mark indicates that the computer is unable to locate a valid system folder. This could be because the internal hard disk has been erased (or that the hard drive has been removed).
Sometimes, a bad logic board lithium battery can cause unexpected difficulties. You may want to begin by checking the battery voltage (3.6 V). You could also try a PRAM reset (hold down the four keys Command=Apple + Option + P + R immediately after the startup sound, and wait until the sound can be heard again).
Otherwise, you will need a startup diskette. Do you have access to another older (pre-1998) Macintosh computer with a built-in floppy drive? If not, an old Windows PC with a floppy drive?
Hi Jan.
Many thanks for your reply.
I tried the PRAM reset but afterwards it brought me back to the Floppy Disk ? icon in the middle of the screen.
I don't have another old Mac but we do have a Windows PC with a floppy drive. Do I need to make a specific boot disk?
It is possible to create bootable Mac floppies from certain Disk Copy disk images using an older Windows PC. The Network Access 7.5 disk, which can be used as a boot floppy, is one example:
The special procedure requires Aladdin/StuffIt Expander for Windows in order to decode the .bin (MacBinary) and decompress an intermediate file to begin with. Unless an appropriate more modern version is available, the stuffit-expander-10-windows.uu download from the site below could possibly be tested (see the abstracts text file for details; the uuencode must be decoded before the freeware utility can be installed on a PC): http://archive.info-mac.org/_Compress_&_Translate/
A disk-image utility for PC will also be needed. For example, the shareware utility WinImage 6.10.
Install the programs on the PC.
Prepare an empty PC-formatted 1.44 MB (HD) diskette through the FORMAT A: command in DOS or via the "full" formatting command under Windows. This is important.
Download the Network Access Disk 7.5 .bin file.
The Windows operating system may truncate the file name. Drag this downloaded file (as it is) onto/into Aladdin/StuffIt Expander. Aladdin/StuffIt Expander should decode the file into an archive (document) called Network Access Disk 7.5, and automatically decompress the latter into a Network Access folder.
Inside the Network Access folder you will find a Read Me document and a file called Network Access.image.
Insert the empty PC-formatted diskette into the PC's floppy drive.
If WinImage is used, drag the Network Access.image onto the program icon. In the WinImage application window, select Write disk (from the Disk menu) or click on the Write disk icon. When the operation is completed, immediately eject the diskette.
Macintosh LC III
