Mac Classic - will it ever run again!!

[rubber_jonnie]

You can download the CD image here: http://www.lingula.org.uk/~steve/share/ ... 96_SSW.zip

The ".toast" file is effectively the same as a .iso file. Apparently you can just rename it and it'll work. Well, that's what the Internet says anyway. Even modern macOS understands what it is (CD image created from the Toast program) so does the right thing automatically.

Just in case you're interested, this is the install media box set I have for System 7:

PXL_20230707_110234779.jpg

I have a similar, but CD-ROM version of System 8.

If System 7 runs fine without SIMMs this afternoon, then I know what I'm looking at at least.

[Tomswork]

@rubber_jonnie

The memory expansion card and simms made in Australia i have had trouble with the simms and sockets from 30 35 years of heat cycling becoming deformed. I actually found the problem when I used two of the exxos 2 part 1meg simms and the symptoms changed

Tom

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie

The memory expansion card and simms made in Australia i have had trouble with the simms and sockets from 30 35 years of heat cycling becoming deformed. I actually found the problem when I used two of the exxos 2 part 1meg simms and the symptoms changed

Tom

It's definitely a RAM issue I think, I have been running for ages now with just the SIMM free expansion card and it's all fine. I've just dropped in some RAM I haven't tried before to see how it behaves.

If it doesn't work with these SIMMs (They are 1MB each for a total of 4MB) I will try some others that came from an STE that are known good, but smaller.

Not sure where my expansion boards come from, but they are genuine Apple expansion boards, quite thick and not flexible. I could still be heat related like that though, it is quite warm where I am at the moment.

[stephen_usher]

It could will be the SIMMs, or the sockets. More likely one of the SIMMs though.

[rubber_jonnie]

It could will be the SIMMs, or the sockets. More likely one of the SIMMs though.

Well, here's the thing. I have already tried 2 separate sets of SIMMs up to this point, one set that came with the card originally, and the set that came with my other card, and both failed.

All I can reliably say at the moment is that it's worked all morning with no SIMMs installed, and so far so good with a set I've never tried before.

IF they work, then I will put the case on to see if the extra heat from less airflow causes it to fail again.

[stephen_usher]

What, other than the SIMM sockets, is on the board?

[olivier.jan]

Hi, Sorry if this seems obvious, but did you inspect the SIMM Sockets ? I had a similar issue with an SE/30 recently:
I fully recapped Analog and MB, added new SIMMs to push it to a whopping 32MB, replaced the CRT which had some burn in, added a FD which was missing and replaced the dead HD with a BlueSCSI.
After all the repair, I spent a few days installing OS and Software with the machine still open on my desk, and when I finally finished, I installed the back cover and screwed it properly only to be greeted by black and white strips when turning on the Mac :headbang:
I opened it again, inspected every solder joint, some traces I had to repair due to capacitor leakage and continuity tested all the capacitor I had replaced. I turned it on and it started without issue... You can imagine, what happened after I put back the back cover again.
It finally ended up being a very small bit of plastic missing from one of the SIMM socket, it was not obvious at first inspection but the SIMM was not maintained properly and able to move just a little bit, but enough to cause issues.

It' now fixed and the SE/30 is now sitting next to my synths as the perfect old school daw. Ok I know, an Atari would have been better, but the footprint of the SE/30 is so much better for a cranked space than a MSTE...So sad Atari never produced an All in One with a footprint similar to Classic Macs.

[rubber_jonnie]

Hi, Sorry if this seems obvious, but did you inspect the SIMM Sockets ? I had a similar issue with an SE/30 recently:
I fully recapped Analog and MB, added new SIMMs to push it to a whopping 32MB, replaced the CRT which had some burn in, added a FD which was missing and replaced the dead HD with a BlueSCSI.
After all the repair, I spent a few days installing OS and Software with the machine still open on my desk, and when I finally finished, I installed the back cover and screwed it properly only to be greeted by black and white strips when turning on the Mac :headbang:
I opened it again, inspected every solder joint, some traces I had to repair due to capacitor leakage and continuity tested all the capacitor I had replaced. I turned it on and it started without issue... You can imagine, what happened after I put back the back cover again.
It finally ended up being a very small bit of plastic missing from one of the SIMM socket, it was not obvious at first inspection but the SIMM was not maintained properly and able to move just a little bit, but enough to cause issues.

It' now fixed and the SE/30 is now sitting next to my synths as the perfect old school daw. Ok I know, an Atari would have been better, but the footprint of the SE/30 is so much better for a cranked space than a MSTE...So sad Atari never produced an All in One with a footprint similar to Classic Macs.

Yes, the SIMM sockets were checked (Thankfully they haven't got broken retaining clips) and they were cleaned with IPA and also had a spot of contact cleaner on them. I also looked at the solder joints under my microscope, and they all seem fine.

It's now been running for a long time with the new (New to this machine) SIMMs in and seems to be just fine. I'll do some more testing to see if it continues to behave, and then try it with the cover on.

Luckily the SIMM sockets aren't on the mainboard, rather they are on the expansion card. It's all a bit odd.

I guess an AIO like a Mac could have been possible for Atari, would have been cool too, but I'd put money on the cost being too much.

With regards to the BlueSCSI, might I ask how yours is configured? I have 2 that were picked up by my Archimedes A5000, but only one is visible on the Mac (I have a single drive image set as ID 0 on Lun 0.

Even when it picks up the drive, I can't initialise it, and when I try to test, it says it can't be written too. Did you have to do anything specific to make it behave? Incidentally, the BlueSCSI log file does show the drive as being detected and that BlueSCSI is going into it's main loop, and they can be formatted to and used on the Archimedes.

[olivier.jan]

With regards to the BlueSCSI, might I ask how yours is configured? I have 2 that were picked up by my Archimedes A5000, but only one is visible on the Mac (I have a single drive image set as ID 0 on Lun 0.

Even when it picks up the drive, I can't initialise it, and when I try to test, it says it can't be written too. Did you have to do anything specific to make it behave? Incidentally, the BlueSCSI log file does show the drive as being detected and that BlueSCSI is going into it's main loop, and they can be formatted to and used on the Archimedes.

Just for reference: my BlueSCSI is an external DB25 version 1.1.
Here is its content :

Screenshot 2023-07-07 at 18.46.53.png

And here is the last log:

Code: Select all

BlueSCSI <-> SD - https://github.com/erichelgeson/BlueSCSI
VER: 1.1-20221203-USB
DEBUG:0 SDFAT_FILE_TYPE:3
SdFat version: 2.2.0
Sd Format: exFAT
SPI speed: 50Mhz
SdFat Max FileName Length: 64
Initialized SD Card - let's go!
Sd MID:3 OID:SD
Sd Name:SC16G
Sd Date:4/2021
Sd Serial:3777069398
 - HD00_512 System 755.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
 - HD10_512 system 7.0.1.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
Not an image: ._LOG.txt
 - HD40_512 Music.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
Not an image: ._HD50_512 Apps.hda.img
 - HD50_512 Apps.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
Not an image: ._HD10_512 system 7.0.1.hda.img
ID:LUN0:
 0: 512:
 1: 512:
 2:----:
 3:----:
 4: 512:
 5: 512:
 6:----:
Finished initialization of SCSI Devices - Entering main loop.

I have 2 system disk, one with 7.0.1 and one with 7.5.5 and two other disks containing software to install.
I did most of the system setup using Basilisk II on my Macbook as it's so much faster than doing it on the real machine and by saving regulars copies of your disk image, if you screw up the system you can come back to a known good state.

Which software do you use to initialize the drive on the Mac ? I remember I had to use some patched version of HD Setup as the original one is picky on the drive names, if you present a drive which is not a standard model shipped by Apple back in the day it will simply refuse to initialize it.

Also, do you have an image of the ALSR CD from Apple ? It contains all System Software versions and most of the software and patches released by Apple from System 1 to 9.

[rubber_jonnie]

With regards to the BlueSCSI, might I ask how yours is configured? I have 2 that were picked up by my Archimedes A5000, but only one is visible on the Mac (I have a single drive image set as ID 0 on Lun 0.

Even when it picks up the drive, I can't initialise it, and when I try to test, it says it can't be written too. Did you have to do anything specific to make it behave? Incidentally, the BlueSCSI log file does show the drive as being detected and that BlueSCSI is going into it's main loop, and they can be formatted to and used on the Archimedes.

Just for reference: my BlueSCSI is an external DB25 version 1.1.
Here is its content :
Screenshot 2023-07-07 at 18.46.53.png


And here is the last log:

Code: Select all

BlueSCSI <-> SD - https://github.com/erichelgeson/BlueSCSI
VER: 1.1-20221203-USB
DEBUG:0 SDFAT_FILE_TYPE:3
SdFat version: 2.2.0
Sd Format: exFAT
SPI speed: 50Mhz
SdFat Max FileName Length: 64
Initialized SD Card - let's go!
Sd MID:3 OID:SD
Sd Name:SC16G
Sd Date:4/2021
Sd Serial:3777069398
 - HD00_512 System 755.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
 - HD10_512 system 7.0.1.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
Not an image: ._LOG.txt
 - HD40_512 Music.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
Not an image: ._HD50_512 Apps.hda.img
 - HD50_512 Apps.hda.img HDD / 2097217536bytes / 2048064KiB / 2000MiB
Not an image: ._HD10_512 system 7.0.1.hda.img
ID:LUN0:
 0: 512:
 1: 512:
 2:----:
 3:----:
 4: 512:
 5: 512:
 6:----:
Finished initialization of SCSI Devices - Entering main loop.

I have 2 system disk, one with 7.0.1 and one with 7.5.5 and two other disks containing software to install.
I did most of the system setup using Basilisk II on my Macbook as it's so much faster than doing it on the real machine and by saving regulars copies of your disk image, if you screw up the system you can come back to a known good state.

Which software do you use to initialize the drive on the Mac ? I remember I had to use some patched version of HD Setup as the original one is picky on the drive names, if you present a drive which is not a standard model shipped by Apple back in the day it will simply refuse to initialize it.

Also, do you have an image of the ALSR CD from Apple ? It contains all System Software versions and most of the software and patches released by Apple from System 1 to 9.

Thank you sir, that's very useful. I just tried to use the normal disk preparation tools on the System install floppies, I hadn't realised a patched version was required. Interesting.

I may give Basilisk a go, see if I can do something that way, but my log looks correct, very similar to yours, just with a single image on it. My BlueSCSI is a 1.1a with 50pin SCSI headers, so I'd need an adapter to connect to the back of the machine if I wanted to go that way.

I do have a CD ROM thanks, I downloaded it the other day.

That's all really very helpful, thank you very much sir.