Old Macintosh computer from 1996 need help ?

Question

i have an old mac from 1996 and its not working rite i had it working like 2 hours ago. now when i turn it on it shows a floppy disk and a question mark and there is nothing in the drives and what can i do to fix it and get it working and i have tried restarting it that did nothing

Answer 1

that means  the hard drive cant find a working operating system locate a  mac os  7 8 or 9  cd rom  

plunk it in the cd rom drive then start up holding the c button to boot from the cd  

Answer 2

Hi there

Thats a good question.

The flashing floppy disk icon (wow, I haven't seen that in soooo long) means that the ROM - instructions on chips in your computer - cannot find a working hard drive with start up information to finish booting up your Macintosh.

I will assume that you have already checked to confirm that the ATA or SCSI cable is securely connecting the drive to the computer. Wires, even those big ribbon cables, can work loose over time.

The problem may be that the hard drive has given up the ghost. But before you throw in the towel, try running the appropriate version of Norton (Symantec) Utilities Disk Doctor or Alsoft's Disk Warrior.

If it starts and can detect detect the internal hard drive it may be able to repair it. If the drive is not mounting with either of those two apps then its gone, passed on! This disk is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! Its a stiff! Bereft of life, 'Its kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-HARD DRIVE!! (source = Monty Python).

For a replacement hard drive, remember that the maximum size of drive is 128 gigabytes. You can use a bigger drive that has been partitioned to not exceed this limit because the Mac cannot read bigger than 128.

Hope this helps.

Gary

Answer 3

That means that the hard drive is either disconnected or has been erased somehow. Without another Mac to make the system boot disks, it's very difficult to fix. Such a Mac is probably not worth investing any money in anyway.

Answer 4

That symbol means it can not find  an operating system to boot from. If you have a bootable CD, put that in the CD drive and try again. You still have a problem though. Unless you have a specific reason for fixing or using this thing, it is nothing more than a curiosity and will be almost useless in any way imaginable. I love macs, I have about 7, but that thing is not good enough to be a boat anchor.