Hi everyone!

I have a Macintosh that will not boot. It just displays a computer
with a blinking question mark.

I downloaded a 6.0.8 boot disk image from apple and system boots great
from that. The hard drive also works after booting from the floppy
and *appears* to have all systems files intact.

1) How can I determine the Mac version installed on the HDD?

2) How can I make this disk bootable so I wouldn't need the FD?

System Information:

Computer: Macintosh IIsi
HDD: External, uses SCSI interface
FDD: Internal

In article <p4e6m092r1om32dule19va6t7l5t0cbgq8@4ax.com>,
icantaffordanemailaccount@poorpeople.org wrote:

> Hi everyone!
>
> I have a Macintosh that will not boot. It just displays a computer
> with a blinking question mark.
>
> I downloaded a 6.0.8 boot disk image from apple and system boots great
> from that. The hard drive also works after booting from the floppy
> and *appears* to have all systems files intact.
>
> 1) How can I determine the Mac version installed on the HDD?
>
> 2) How can I make this disk bootable so I wouldn't need the FD?
>
> System Information:
> Computer: Macintosh IIsi
> HDD: External, uses SCSI interface
> FDD: Internal

The computer with the blinking question mark indicates that the machine
can not find a valid System file.

Your ability to boot from the floppy would mean to me that the computer
is good, the fault is in the hard drive. Since the hard drive is
readable once you've booted from the floppy, I would guess that you have
a problem with the files on the hard drive.

It has been some time since I have worked with the pre-X, the older, Mac
operating systems, so I'm recalling this as I go.

1) Single-click on the file System in the folder System Folder found at
the root level of the hard drive. Then press the keys Apple-i (or select
from the File Menu, Get Info). A window should come up that tells you
the version of the System on the hard drive.

2) My guess is that the boot sectors of the hard drive are bollixed up.
Once you know the version number of the System on the hard drive, I
suggest that you get a copy of that system from Apple. Up to System 7
are available from the Apple web site, as I recall. Someplace in the
files you can download will be a file named something like Hard Drive
Setup, or Drive Setup, or HDD Setup. At any rate, it's the program
that's used to initialize the hard drive. Launch that program. One of
the functions available from the program is the ability to Update
Drivers, or some such. Try that (Do not Initialize! Yet.), then try
booting from the hard drive. Note that the computer will boot from a
floppy if there is one with a valid System file in the floppy drive;
you'll have to have the floppy ejected when trying to boot from the hard
drive.

jim

On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 20:26:22 -0700, Jim Jaeger <null@bitbucket.com>
wrote:

>1) Single-click on the file System in the folder System Folder found at
>the root level of the hard drive. Then press the keys Apple-i (or select
>from the File Menu, Get Info). A window should come up that tells you
>the version of the System on the hard drive.

File: System

Kind: System Document
Size: 999,604 bytes used, 977K on disk

Where: SCSI ID 1

Created: Thu, Aug 27, 1992, 12:00 PM
Modified: Fri, Dec 1, 2000, 9:31 PM
> Version: Not Available

Folder: System

Kind: folder
Size: 5,249,398 bytes used, 5173K on disk, for 86 files

Where: SCSI ID 1

Created: Fri, Sep 11, 1992, 10:29 AM
Modified: Fri, Dec 1, 2000, 9:39 PM

Is there any other way to determine the Mac software version?