gabe@sol.ctr.columbia.edu (Gabe Wiener) (01/01/91)
Hey folks. A friend of mine called me over to look at his mac which he claimed was acting a little weird. When I got there, I encountered some of the most peculiar system glitches I've ever seen. Maybe someone can help me identify them. The configuration is a Mac II with a Dataframe 60 meg external drive. When I started it up, it seemed to start up just fine, until I realized that NONE OF THE INITS had loaded. Suitcase II hadn't come up, so very few fonts or DA's where present, Moire, ATM, etc...all of them didn't load (the icons didn't come up at startup). When I checked the system folder, it was virtually empty! Only 7 or 8 files appeared, and they were only the ones that began with the letter A. The system didn't appear, the finder didn't appear. If I didn't know any better, I'd have wondered how this thing managed to boot at all! Anyway, I restarted three or four times and the same thing happened. No INIT icons came up, and the machine went straight into the finder. As I booted it again and again, I noticed that the dataframe was making a slightly abnormal sound for a moment or two when the inits were "supposed" to be loading. Instead of the usual disk-seek sound, it let out a little "chirp" at two different points. Maybe a bad sector on the disk? Anyway, the fourth time I did it, three or four inits loaded and then I got a bomb. The fifth time, all the inits loaded and all was well. Something is REALLY intermittent here. He said he's been hearing those weird chirps from the drive every so often, but there's never been any ill effect until now. He ran sector collector a few weeks back and it turned up no bad sectors. We didn't have time to run it today. That may be the next thing to try. If anyone has experienced anything remotely like this and can lend a little advice, we'd both be quite grateful. Please EMAIL ALL REPLIES as I'm going out of town for several weeks and will miss the replies if they're posted. Thanks much in advance. -- Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings gabe@ctr.columbia.edu to be seriously considered as a means of gmw1@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu communication. The device is inherently of 72355.1226@compuserve.com no value to us." -Western Union memo, 1877
Greg@AppleLink.apple.com (Greg Marriott) (01/07/91)
Just a guess, totally out of the blue, but maybe you should have your friend make sure the hard disk is properly terminated. Greg Marriott Blue Meanie Apple Computer, Inc.