[electroJerm]

Hey, I've just joined the powerbase community, but it hasn't been too pleasant. I got a PowerBase 180 (tower) from a friend who said it was work but that there was a few problems with the hard drive. I set it up, worked fine (running MacOS 8.5), and began to customize some settings (network setup, file sharing, remote access stuff, general controlls, activating control strip, moving arround a few extensions, thats about it) and moved some icons arround. Nothing much? Well, when I restarted, the computer would start up, show the desktop and folder/ program icons (essentially the end of startup) and unfortunately would not change the hourglass to the cursor, preventing me from doing anything. I restarted, ran Disk First Aid, and it said there was an error in the HD that couldn't be fixed. Same problem after it went through startup process. Rebuilt desktop: same prob. Extensions off, zapp PRAM, same prob. I'd use a CD to start up, but the drive seems to be broken. Any ideas of what the heck happened and how to fix it?

electrogerm,
I have a powerbase 180 desktop. I have a couple of comments:

1. The CD-ROM is probably not broken. The ones supplied with the Power Computing machines did not use the Apple CD drivers, so booting from the CD is impossible inless the CD supplies the required drivers. The Power Computing Install CD may have the required drivers, but that doesn't help you very much. I purchased (a while back) a SyJet drive that was bootable for cases when the HD crashed. Yesterday, I installed an Apple 1200i CD-ROM (refurbished). It is bootable and works great. It cost $79, and some of the used Mac places have them for $60. It may be the best option. You could then reinstall the system.

Tom