[chloroplasty]

Lemme just start off by stating that i am a COMPLETE NOOB to this computer. it was handed down to me YEARS ago by my brother when he went to school and i've never had a problem with it, untill the last week

the Computer i am using is a powermac 8500 series, it is running on mac os9.6 i believe

mhz/ram/etc etc, i have NO clue about what so ever, i am sorry, i'm just not a real techy type of guy....

anyways here is my prob



the other week i was having problems with the mac. it had some rescued files in the recycle bin that wouldn't erase, it would always tell me that it can't ifnd the files to erase or something. they were a rescued item from the hardrive, and some quicktime plug in.

now one day i simply decided to restart my computer, however RIGHT WHEN IT WENT TO THE START UP SCREEN, where it shows you MAC OS 9.6 and WELCOME, a message popped up and it had the restart button on it. So i did so, and it shot me the the question mark/folder screen.

now in this situation, i tried rebooting the computer first already without extensions and it still told me to restart. So i restarted with the restore disk, HOWEVER i noticed that there was a crack on my disk, so it sorta kinda works.

So the computer would restart but in mac os7.xxx. My files that are originally on the computer are visible, but nothing works since it all required 8.5 or later. and since my disk is cracked, restoring files on system/computer/etc is nearly impossible and actually didn't work...

now i think and know that it's time to replace the computer, if so...i have a few questions i hope you guys here can sincerely help me with

1) how can i backup my old files? i can't burn anything with toast because i am using a external burner via USB, not SCSI.

2) can i literally take out the hard drive and use it on any computer that's NOT os 9.6? i ask because i have access to a PC with windows XP and a computer that has mac OS X on there. If so what exactly do i have to do?

3) is there a solution to the questoin mark+folder problem i should do? again i am a novice/noob so anything you say that you would THINK i would suppose to already know, i probably dont, so please be kind with describing what to do

4)would bringing it to an old apple/mac technician be any good? would they be able to fix/back up my harddrive? and if they "back it up", how do they do it?

5) anything i dind't mention?


i sincerely appreciate you guys reading this problem and i look forward to seeing what kinda of solutions i can do, thanks again folks!

[Big Mac]

1. The easiest way to do it would be to connect the 8500 to another Mac using a crossover ethernet cable, put on file sharing on the 8500 and transferring your files that way. If you have a USB card installed you could get a USB drive for it. But in order to back up anything you really need to get the 8500 up and running again (see number 3 below), unless you want to install the drive in another SCSI Mac.

2. FYI, you're most likely talking about Mac OS 8.6 because there never was a 9.6. If you take the drive out of the machine, you'll need an older Mac with SCSI bus to install it in. A Windows machine, even assuming it has SCSI, will not do much for you unless you jump through hoops.

3. Your system software is damaged. You basically have two options: either reinstall the OS from disc or get a copy of Disk Warrior, which should get you back up and running by repairing the disk's directory.

4. If you do not want to do these things yourself, a Mac tech will be able to do it and should not charge that much for the service. The tech will most likely repair the drive. If you want a back up you'll get charged for the price of the drive unless you buy one before hand for that purpose.

[©öñFü$íóÑ]

if any of your apps need MacOS 8.5 or later, I'd say you're pretty much screwed unless you can find somebody on Ebay selling a 8.5 or 8.6 Install CD (not Mac model specific). Even if you manage to get your computer repaired, along with the OS 8.6 installation that's already on it..... if something ever goes wrong and you need to do a clean install of 8.6, you won't be able to without the original CD.

I did a search for you and I found this one: on ebay

As always, be quadruple careful from who you buy these things. I personally don't trust eBay and have never bought anything from there. But i know people who have had a lot of success from using that site. To each his own.

BTW, for better compatibility with newer stuff and more stability (alleged), you can try finding a Mac OS 9.1/9.2.x CD. But they're hard to find and most are -model specific-. The only tradeoff is that to get better performance out of 9.x, you'd probably need to upgrade the RAM, Hard Disk, and maybe even check out Sonnettech.com for an upgrade for your Power Mac 8500. This would be well worth it if you already have a LOT of useful software on the old Mac and don't want to pay for new versions for them all. And then there's the peripherals..... if you have any old printers or scanners and such, you'd have to buy adapters and find drivers for them if you choose to get a new Mac or whatever.

Good luck.

[steve626]

At this web site,

http://www.applerescue.com/index.html

you can purchase Mac OS 8.5 Operating System CDs (that you can boot from and install the OS from) and also OS 9 Operating System CDs (also bootable).

These CDs can be purchased for about $30 or so each.

To fix your computer, you have to have one of these Operating System CDs. You can run the disk repair program right from the CD itself, even before deciding whether to install anything. The disk repair program (in some versions it was called First Aid) may resolve your problem so you can restart your computer and be back where you were. Trying to work with your cracked CD is asking for trouble, I think.

I bought an OS 9 CD from this company some years ago for my old 7100 (with G3 processor card) and it worked fine.

[malik]

Ooh...there may be life left in my DV after all...

So my computer can read the HD when it shows the System Folder and the question mark on startup, it's just the System Software that's bad?

Cool. Do I need any specific kind of CD for a 400MHZ DV iMac, or can I use one of the universal ones? I WAS running either 9.1 or 9.2, can't remember which, think it was 9.1, maybe I should restore and upgrade quick to 9.2.2?

[steve626]

Is this your computer --

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=43099

If so, it probably came with OS 8.6 and can run OS 9.1, 9.2, or 10.2 or 10.3 or 10.4 (Tiger). But anything beyond 10.2 might be quite slow and you need at least 512M memory to run OS X reasonably fast.

Before installing OS X, you need to install 9.2.2 and also install a firmware update 4.1.9. Without the firmware update, your computer will not work if you install OS X.

You need one of the universal CDs with one of these OS's on it, but again, you need to go to 9.2.2 first and install the firmware update before trying to boot from any type of OS X system.

Before you go about installing new operating systems, you need to find out what caused your question mark on startup. That means the valid boot system software cannot be found. That might be because something small has gone awry that is easily repaired, or it could be that you need to install a complete new system. Or it could mean that your hard drive is physically damaged, or even totally and permanently broken. The symptom I have seen on computers that have had "crashed" or broken (not fixable) hard disks is that question mark on startup, but it can also be a symptom of something relatively minor.

To start, you should boot from a universal OS 9 system disk (CD) and run the Disk First Aid or Disk repair utility from the CD to try to repair the internal hard disk, before installing anything. See if you can get the disk repaired, you might be able to boot from it normally. If the disk appears on the desktop and seems ok but needs new system software, that can be installed from the OS 9 CD (universal). If the Apple disk repair utility (or disk first aid program) cannot make your hard disk usable, the next step would be to try using the Disk Warrior utility on it. You would need to use the version appropriate for an older computer like yours, Disk Warrior comes on a bootable CD.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by steve626

If so, it probably came with OS 8.6 and can run OS 9.1, 9.2, or 10.2 or 10.3 or 10.4 (Tiger). But anything beyond 10.2 might be quite slow and you need at least 512M memory to run OS X reasonably fast.

With enough RAM, 10.4 runs faster on any Mac than 10.2. On a 400MHz iMacDV it runs very well.

[chloroplasty]

this thread has been proven VERY HELPFUL, i thank ALL OF YOU who posted and contributed

i just want to ask a couple questions still, just to "insure" i'm doing the right stuff

now some of you guys mention that i can just pop in the mac os 8.6 cd/9.xx in the power mac, and run the disk repair program? any specific details in which one i should run (if there are dif. aps.) or anything else of that nature? also what should i do if i still get the question mark screen of doom? please assist if you guys can, thanks!