affleck@homxc.UUCP (M.GRAY) (09/16/88)
Yesterday, I downloaded and ran a game called HumpBack on my SE w/20 MB. The game was nicely designed, and involved trying to put a camel through the eye of a needle. After 15 minutes of trying without success, I decided to quit the game. The system froze. I turned it off and tried to reboot from the hard disk. Only got a blinking question mark. I booted from the System disk in the floppy drive and it came up, but without the hard disk icon! I think that this program spent it's time erasing my hard disk and then somehow trashing parameter RAM, because when I try the Apple HD SC Setup program, it claims there is no SCSI device attached. Most of the disk is backed up, but my problem is the machine thinks that there is no hard drive. Other symptoms: 1. Applications run OK on the floppy, but about all I can do is run VersaTerm, and plead for help. 2. The hard disk is spinning, and the light is blinking SOSOSO... in Morse code. 3. Boot behavior is erratic. If I try to boot from the hard disk, sometimes I get the blinking-question-mark-mac, and other times I get a happy mac that stays on the screen forever with nothing happening. I tried calling Apple in Secaucus, where the company bought the machine. Was told I would be called back. Tried calling Apple in Cupertino, and after a half hour (!) of dippy newage music on hold, I was given a name back in Secaucus. This person is out and/or not returning my calls. I would be most grateful for any advice about how to re-initialize my hard disk and restore the files (I have them on backup disks.) I know very little about Mac internals, but I suspect that it might help to erase and redo my parameter RAM. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks for any help, Mike Gray AT&T Bell Labs (201) 580-4749 (Call collect if you can help!)