Mac SE FDHD fails to boot

I have a Mac SE I upgraded to a Mac SE FDHD with 4 MB of RAM. I installed a bunch of updates for Mac OS 7.1 and now it won't boot. First I installed System Update 3.0 and it still worked. Afterwards I installed the CFM-68K Runtime Enabler and it still worked. I then installed the thread manager and it still worked. It wasn't until I installed the Drag and Drop package that I started getting bomb errors at startup when attempting to start with extensions off. Here's the exact error message:
Sorry, a system error occurred.
"System"
bad F-Line instruction
To temporarily turn off extensions, startup and hold down the shift key. Which is what I was obviously already trying to do. There was also a restart button in the bomb error dialog box.

Craigwd_2000
The usual happenstance is that the FPU is needed, and called, and answereth not because it isn't there. System then grizzles that there is an error. What is the puzzle is whaffor is Drag and Drop calling upon the FPU? This is a startup error, and the FPU is not implicated in startup.
However, it isn't even that logical. 'No FPU' is sometimes a genuine assessment by the Mac, especially when PPC code is emulating a 68k (actually a 68LC040, ie with no FPU). It's also a frequent occurrence that the error in native 68k working is often simply that the Mac can think of no other excuse for falling over. On the principle of 'last in, first suspected', it may be worth your while to decode the Drag and Drop file again, or to download the Drag and Drop again. Drag and Drop does contain some native PPC code.
When you say that you upgraded from SE to SE FDHD, do you mean an 'official' upgrade involving logic board (and ROMs) as well as drive(s)? You did the necessary 'resizing' with the resistor or jumper when you added RAM?

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Mac SE FDHD with dead HDD - boot and run from floppy drive alone? HDD type?

Hello!
I picked up a Mac SE FDHD a few months back - a model with a Superdrive and hard drive, as well as 4 MB of RAM. It came with a keyboard and mouse, but no floppies of any kind. Upon testing, I discovered that the hard drive did not work - the "flashing question mark folder" appears at startup, and the disk setup utility on the system 6 install disks I created using a more modern mac can't detect it. I don't hear HDD seek sounds either. Everything else works fine, as far as I can tell. The reason I want to use this old Mac is simply to boot it up and run a few favorite old programs (such as MacPaint and many old games), so I don't want to put too much money into it.
I discovered my parents still owned a old, 170 MB "LaCie Tsunami" SCSI external drive, used with our long-failed Mac II, and decided to use as the SE's boot drive, as a cheap workaround to avoid buying a "new" drive. However, after a rather odd turn of events (described below for information purposes), it turns out that the 50-pin SCSI drive itself functions, but in the process, I think I killed the enclosure. Unless this drive can replace the internal drive of the SE, (or get lucky and find a compatible drive somewhere), I'll need to run the SE from its single floppy drive.
I figure that since the original Mac had 128k of memory, a single 800k floppy, and no hard drive, and yet can still run OS 7, the SE should be able to run system 6 from floppies somehow. The question is how? Is there a tutorial online somewhere on how to set this up?
Furthermore, as far as the hard drive is concerned, is the SE's internal drive a standard 50 pin SCSI HDD, and thus likely compatible with the one from the LaCie?
Thanks for any suggestions, and for helping this "Old time Mac Newbie" out!
-Dan
PS: What happened to the LaCie drive - for information purposes:
WHen I attached to the LaCie drive to the SE and booted the OS 6 install disks, t worked - OS 6 installed to it just fine. However, it turns out that a "dormant" copy of Norton utilities reactivated when I booted to the SCSI drive, and encrypted the disk's partition table. (Why it was not encrypted BEFORE installing and booting OS 6, I don't know) Having not used the drive for 17 years , and thus not knowing the password, I had to reformat it. I have a Sawtooth G4 with an Apple SCSI card - but no cable that would go from the PCI card's SCSI port to the external enclosure. THus, I removed the drive from the enclosure, mounted it in the G4 internally, and formatted it as Mac OS Standard (with OS 9 drivers) using Mac OS 10.3. Upon re-installing the drive in its SCSI enclosure, I found that it no longer works - Norton was erased, but the SE gives me a "Sad Mac" icon upon boot. Furthermore, after borrowing the correct SCSI cable, I found the enclosure now kernel panics my G4 when attached. The drive itself, when mounted internally in the G4, still functions perfectly. Thus, it seems that either the enclosure is dead, or something about OS X's reformat is renders the HDD incompatible with the enclosure...

"I removed the drive from the enclosure, mounted it in the G4 internally, and formatted it as Mac OS Standard (with OS 9 drivers) using Mac OS 10.3."
I just re-checked Disk Utility's format options under Panther and only see "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" or "Mac OS Extended." I don't see an option for formatting Mac OS Standard. Are you certain that you formatted the drive as a Mac OS Standard (HFS) volume? If it's a Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volume, that would explain why it won't work when connected to the SE. When using external SCSI enclosures having a hard drive or optical drive, I always opted to connect an "active" SCSI terminator to the unused SCSI port on the enclosure. It seemed to provide stability, because I never had a problem with any of them. Does the LaCie enclosure have a built-in termination switch or do you plug in a terminator to the opposite SCSI port on the back? As for installing/using the 170 MB hard drive in the SE, it must have a jumper installed on its TE pins, if it's the last device connected to the SE's SCSI ribbon cable. Additionally, the HDD must have a unique SCSI address, The factory default is usually 0, which doesn't necessarily require a jumper. If another address is desired, a jumper or two installed across specific pins will accomplish that. If the LaCie enclosure had a switchable SCSI address button on the back (you change it by pressing in with a ball point pen), there were small wires from it that were connected to the drive's address pins in a specific way. Did you disconnect/re-connect these when you re-installed the drive in the enclosure? Also, if the enclosure has a termination switch, did you re-connect its wires to the drive's TE pins?

OS9 bootable G4 mac fails to boot with NI-DAQ4.9

We're going to use the OS9 bootable G4 machine with NI-DAQ4.9 driver. However, after the installation of NI-DAQ4.9 the G4 machine failed to boot up(Pure OS9 boot. Not classical environment). The error message said that address error occurred when the NI-DAQ was loaded during the icon parade.
We installed the OS completely newly without any other softwares and installed the NI-DAQ4.9 driver. So it must be difficult to account for the problem by any conflict with other inappropriate softwares. Minimum set of system extension plus NI-DAQ also caused the same problem.
Now I doubt the problem caused by the conflict of new G4 with NI-DAQ4.9 because other hardwares work OK (Other G3 or older G4 machines).
If anybody ca
n post any idea or solution on this problem, we'll appreciate.
(*)We need to control PCI-DIO-96 board with our homemade C-program, so NI-DAQ 4.9 is required instead of NI-DAQ 6.
Machine: PowerMacintosh G4(Single1.25G4 Processor)-Latest OS9-bootable G4 machine
NI-DAQ:4.9.4

First, we will want to make sure that you have the latest NI-DAQ driver that still supports C program. That driver should be v4.9.4 and can be found from the link in the previous post (or here http://www.ni.com/support/daq/mac/macversn.htm).
After verifying this, I would try to restart the computer without your hardware installed to check if it is a hardware/NI-DAQ configuration issue or if you just had a bad install of the software. If it still does not work without the hardware than you can attempt to uninstall/reinstall NI-DAQ v4.9.4.
Finally, the problem may lie with in a conflict with the extensions on your MAC. If you are familiar with troubleshooing MACs, then you can disable all but the core extensions and see if you can get the computer up and running
that way. Below are a few KnowledgeBases that discuss some of these issues:
Computer Hangs While Trying to Install NI-DAQ or LabVIEW on Macintosh
My NI-DAQ Crashes Either at Boot (4.x) or When Loading (6.x) on the Blue and White Power Macintosh G...
Regards,
Michael
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

After update mac os x lion 10.7 to 10.7.4 the os fail to boot ??

i just installed mac os x lion 10.7 on virtual machine ( vmware workestation 8) for some reasons,, after that I start the software update to update 10.7.4
after updating the os fail to boot ( changing tha Apple logo to another logo )..
what can i do to fix this problem ??

mohammad207 wrote:
i just installed mac os x lion 10.7 on virtual machine ( vmware workestation 8) for some reasons,, after that I start the software update to update 10.7.4
after updating the os fail to boot ( changing tha Apple logo to another logo )..
what can i do to fix this problem ??
10.7 client or server?

Mac OS Yosemite 10.10.1 fails to boot

I am running OS 10.10.1 on Mac Pro Early 2009. This morning all running programs including Finder froze. All i could do was Quit or force-quit the running programs and shut down. Then the computer failed to boot. I was able to boot in Safe Mode. But any attempt for normal boot failed.
Since i have Boot Camp, I tried booting to the Disk Startup Manager (pressed Option key). I got the 3 options -- (1) Mac OS; (2) Windows; and (3) Recovery. But after I selected either Windows or Mac OS and the arrow moved to my selected option, nothing happened when i clicked the "arrow" button. I could click it many times but the screen remained frozen till I powered off the computer.
Strangely, when I held down the Command key by itself the computer started normally. But subsequent all attempts to boot normally failed again.
Any suggestions?
i will greatly appreciate any help. Thank you all in advance.

Boot into the recovery partition and select Disk Utility from the 4 option menu.
Run Disk Utility>First Aid, Verify and Repair.
If the disk cannot be repaired an new HDD will have to installed.
Ciao.

Illustrator CC fails to boot on my mac.

I just downloaded Illustrator CC on my mac. It begins to launch, but fails to boot and quits. No screen prompts appear to tell me what happened. It just doesn't start.

Ensure that the following connector is connected properly
Quote
JPWR1 ATX 24 pin power connector
JPWR2,atx 12V power connector which is used to provide power to the cpu
JPWR3 12V power connector is used to provide power to stable the operation of graphic card
As well as the Front Panel Connectors: JFP1/JFP2 as in power led, power switch, reset switch, hd led etc

IBook G4 fails to boot with internal HD installed, works when removed

The short version: My iBook started failing to boot via any method (gray screen) and the boot menu (Option during startup) would freeze. Replaced HD, things were better. Six months into new HD, nearly the same symptoms appear again. Removed HD, now running off different HD via FireWire.
The long version–
Back in late 2008-12, my iBook started failing to boot up. Usually it would refuse to boot from any source. Booting the internal disk (10.4.11) would get to a gray screen without any logo and stay there. Holding down Option, the boot menu would come up, but it would usually freeze before it displayed any volumes. Booting from CD (AHT, or OS install disc) would fail in nearly the same way as booting from the internal drive. Target Disk Mode would start, but once the other machine tried to access the drive, the FireWire logo would stop moving and the drive would never show up on the other computer. Very rarely, the machine would get a bit further through one of the boot mechanisms, but it usually froze while booting or just after login.
This machine has gone through three logic boards in the past, so I suspected that was the problem again. I took it to a local Genius Bar and the Genius explained that it was probably the hard drive. He said that sometimes, depending on the way the drive fails, it can "take out" other parts of the system due to drawing too much current, etc.
I was a bit skeptical, but it was going to be much cheaper to replace the HD myself than it would be to send it in for a MLB replacement. So I ordered a new HD (80G) and a USB-to-ATA/SATA adapter. I hoped that I would be able to use the adapter to savlage a bit more data off the drive (it originally failed right before a backup!).
After extracting the HD (40G), I connected it to the USB adapter and was able to access the drive just fine. I used another machine to run another backup from the recently removed HD (40G) to one of my FireWire backup drives and proceeded to put the iBook back together with the new HD (80G).
Once it was all back together, the new HD worked fine. I was able to restore the recent backup from my FireWire drive to the internal, and it worked fine. The only oddity I noticed was that the new drive was apparently trying to sleep several times a minute. I used smartctl (installed via MacPorts) to adjust the power management setting on the drive, and that seemed to help. I also started running smartd (also via MacPorts) to better monitor the new drive.
Recently, a bit more than six months after the new HD was installed, the new HD started showing errors in the system.log. I never found any errors in the logs after the previous HD failed (even though I could look through the logs just fine with the drive attached through the ATA-USB adapter).
Jul 2 18:04:40 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 2 18:33:43 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 0 to 30\n
Jul 3 02:03:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 30 to 31\n
Jul 3 03:03:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 31 to 32\n
Jul 6 23:33:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 32 to 33\n
Jul 7 00:33:42 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 33 to 34\n
Jul 7 12:42:24 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 34 to 36\n
Jul 7 13:17:59 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
+same error message a bit faster than one every 3 seconds+
Jul 7 13:23:00 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 13:33:44 Blinky smartd\[217]: Device: disk0, ATA error count increased from 36 to 615\n
Jul 7 21:17:05 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:12 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:12 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:12 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:15 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:18 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:21 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:23 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:17:29 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:18:17 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:19:21 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
Jul 7 21:19:23 Blinky kernel\[0]: disk0s3: I/O error.
I did not notice the errors until the afternoon of the 7th when the problem became evident. The events around 13:00 happened when I was trying to run a backup. The first backup failed in an odd way (when I came back to check on it later that evening, SuperDuper! seemed to have quit running). So I restarted the backup and started looking around in the logs. That is when I noticed the kernel I/O error messages. When I asked smartctl to query the drive, it showed that many errors had been occurring and it displayed the drive's log of the last five or so errors (alas, I did not save this output). Meanwhile the re-run of SuperDuper! was having problems again. It seemed to have hung (no SDAgent or SDCopy processes were running, but the main UI was still there). Since the backup was not getting anywhere, I decided to shutdown for a while and try again later.
When I did try again later, I was back in the situation of six months ago. It would not boot at all (no internal, no FireWire, no CD/DVD, boot menu hangs, Target Disk Mode hangs). So, I opened up the system, removed the HD and put it back together without an internal HD. The machine is now able to boot and run from FireWire. Again, the (6 month old, 80G) HD "works fine" via the USB adapter. If SMART were available through the USB adapter, I could check to see if the drive is continuing to have problems. I used SuperDuper! to copy the HD to a volume on my FireWire drive which is how I an now running the system.
Has anyone had any similar problems? Any idea why my iBook seems to be killing/rejecting hard drives? (I say killing because, while the drive is connected internally, it certainly seems to be dying. I say rejecting because once the drive is out of the system, both the drive and the system seem to "recover".) I have read messages there where others report success having their iBook MLB resoldered ("reball"). Has anyone experienced substantially similar issues that were solved with a resolder repair?
Thanks!

I was able to test my “failing” ATA drives in a G4 Mac mini (I had to take the mini apart because its drive had finally failed). I was able to successfully boot the Mac mini with either of my iBook drives installed. Once booted, +Disk Utility+ said that each one's SMART Status was Verified. I used smartctl to pull the full SMART info while I had them installed in the Mac mini.
Since the drives were still “good”, I think this emphasizes that the problem is with the ATA interface on my iBook's logic board. Maybe it is broken, or maybe it just needs to be resoldered. For now I am happy just booting off an external Firewire drive.
BTW, I ended up installing the 6 month old 80G drive in the mini. It has been working OK for 10 days now. As long as it continues to operate normally in the mini, it will serve as evidence that my iBook's HD ATA controller is borked. I just hope the ATA controller is more capable of accepting its fallibility than was HAL.
There is a minor problem with the 80G in the mini in that I am unable to use hdapm to change the aggressive head unloading that the drive suffers. I was able to adjust it with hdapm while it was in my iBook. I am able to adjust it with hdparm under Linux on the mini. Luckily the change I made while booted in Linux "sticks" after rebooting back into Mac OS X (I hear it will be lost if the drive is completely powered off though).

[SOLVED] Arch Linux Duke (2007) Fails to Boot

Folks, I have a unique and challenging problem that has exhausted my Arch Linux skills, and so I am now turning to you.
I have a vintage Pentium Pro 200 system (that’s 200 MHz folks! – 200 MHz 686 architecture – the original 686!), two CPUs, running a dual boot between Windows NT 4.0 and Arch Linux Duke (2007). It has 512 MB of RAM and a 120 GB hard drive, partitioned up between Windows NT and Linux. I built this system new in 2007, hence the dated version of Arch. It has run like a charm all these years, granted not getting that much use. After about a year of no use at all, I fired the system up last week to help with a little research for a blog post I was writing on networking Windows NT 4.0 and Mac OS 8.6. Windows NT 4.0 fired right up with no issue, and after I was done testing what needed to be tested I tried to boot over to Arch.
After a year of disuse, Arch unexpectedly and stubbornly refused to boot. The boot process started up just fine, but towards the end, it declared that it could not mount the root file system on the root device and took a kernel panic and stopped. My Arch skills have gotten a bit rusty in the last few years, but I dusted them off and went to work. My guess was a file system or superblock error. Arch wouldn’t boot, but I dragged out my trusty RIPLinux 2.9 Rescue Live CD and fired it up. It came right up and ran, and I was able to mount the Arch partition and view all the files… everything seemed to be there; it just wouldn’t boot. Windows NT 4.0 AND RIPLinux both boot and run on the machine, so the hardware is fine as well.
A little information on the disk layout. Windows NT 4.0 is in the first partition on the hard drive. The extended partition has a second Windows NT 4.0 partition (sort of a /home partition for Windows NT 4.0), followed by the main Arch partition (the one I am trying to boot), followed by a swap partition and then the largest partition, which I use to share data between Arch and Windows NT 4.0 (I have loaded an ext2/3 driver into Windows NT 4.0 and it happily accesses the Linux partitions on the box).
RIPLinux’s e2fsck did find some issues with the Arch partition and I had it repair them all. I checked again afterwards that all the files were still there, and they were. With the partition now known to be clean, and the superblock repaired from one of the backups, all should have been well. However, Arch still wouldn’t (and still won’t) boot.
RIPLinux has a kind of a chain loader function, so I had it attempt to start up Arch for me. However, this was flummoxed by the fact that Arch addresses all my hard drive partitions as /dev/sdax and RIPLinux addresses them as /dev/hdax. Hence, without a common language, it was hard to get the one to start the other. Still, using this function, I have been able to get a crippled version of Arch running on the machine again. No modules had been loaded, and so it couldn’t do almost anything, but there it was (and is), Arch Linux Duke, at the CLI level. From there, I can see all the files, I can move freely in and out of my user account and the root account, but I can’t make the thing actually boot properly.
If you have read this far, you are a trooper. Summarizing what I know, the hardware is good, the file system is clean, the superblock is good, I can mount it cleanly from a live CD and I can chain load a crippled version of Arch. Here is the boot process blow-by-blow. When I try to do a normal boot, the Windows NT 4.0 loader passes control to the Lilo boot sector I have placed on hda1 (sda1 in Duke’s parlance). Lilo takes over, present a menu and when I select Duke, takes off. Arch Linux Duke starts to boot. It gets a good long way along, all the way along to:
:: Loading udev events [Pass]
:: Mount root Read-only
:: Checking file systems
This is where it stops.
The next thing I see is:
/dev/sda6
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else) then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
E2fsck –b 8193 <device>
I then get a sort of character based splash screen that says
**********FILE SYSTEM CHECK FAILED ****************************
* Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root file system
* is currently mounted read-only. To remount it read-write, type:
* mount –n –o remount,rw /. When you exit the maintenance
* shell, the system will reboot automatically
Give root password for maintenance
At this point, I give the root password and enter the maintenance shell as root. I typed in “mount” and the first entry I got back is
/dev/sda6 on / type ext3 (rw)
This is exactly the root partition that the start up complains about. It is clearly there. I can see it, I can walk around it… it is clearly there. Why won’t it boot? Despite the message, the superblock is fine – it passes every test e2fsck can throw at it.
At this point, I did a “e2fsck /dev/hda6 (which is how RIPLinux would have passed it into Arch” and it says it is “clean”. I suspect that the Superblock message is because Arch sees root as sda6, while RIP passed it in as hda6...
Deciding to see what Arch would be seeing as it tried to set things up in the boot sequence, I tried the following next:
# mknod “/dev/root2” b 3 6
(“3” because RIPLinux refers to my hard drive as IDE, while Arch refers to it by major number “8”, which is SCSI. By the way, it IS an IDE drive – not sure why Arch insists on using the sdx nomenclature instead of hdx)
Then I entered “mount /dev/root2 /mnt/hda6” and “ls /mnt/hda6”
All was well. I can make the node, I can mount it, and I can see the contents. All is clearly well, but something is clearly wrong enough that Arch can’t boot.
I am totally out of ideas. I have tried every trick I know and am out of tricks. I would welcome any insights as to what I could try to get this venerable Arch installation back on its legs.
By the way, the key section of the /etc/lilo.conf file (lest anyone want to know) is:
image = /boot/vmlinuz26
root = /dev/sda6
label = ArchLinux-Duke
initrd = /boot/kernel26.img
read-only
I am stumped. Thanks in advance for any and all pointers you may be able to offer.
Last edited by mac57 (2014-06-02 17:42:21)

Folks, thanks for all your helpful comments, and I wanted to report back to you that I finally overcame the issue, and ArchLinux-Duke (2007) is once again executing flawlessly on my old Pentium Pro 200 system. I won't bother reporting here all the blind allies I went down as I tried to figure out what was wrong, but in the end, literally moments before I was about to give up and overwrite my Arch installation with a new Linux variant (antiX seemed well suited for such old and low power hardware), my attention was drawn to a note I had made in my files back in 2007 about a problem with similar symptoms. In that case, I had just deleted ZenWalk Linux from the hard drive (both Arch and Zen had been on the drive), and merged several partitions to make use of the newly free space. This had changed Arch's view of the drive lettering, and what had been its /dev/sddx root device was now /dev/sdcx. Arch failed to boot, throwing off the same errors I was seeing now. I wish I had recalled that note a month or so ago! It would have saved me a lot of work and a lot of frustration.
At any rate, as a last step, and testing the idea that maybe the drive lettering had changed for some reason, I repeatedly manually booted Arch, specifying root=/dev/sda6, then /dev/sdb6, then /dev/sdd6, and finally, /dev/sdc6. Eureka! Arch now considered itself to be on /dev/sdc6 whereas previously it had been on /dev/sda6. This got me part way there, but the boot failed at the filesystem check stage and threw me into root. I disabled the file system check in /etc/rc.sysinit and got farther. Then I cleaned up /etc/fstab to agree with the new sdc naming, and I was back on the air fully.
So, what had happened was that Arch had changed its view of the drive it was on from sda6 to sdc6. While I could not understand why this "sudden" change had occurred, at least I had a solution, and had Arch back up and running.
Trolling through the rest of my notes, I found the answer. In 2012, the Tekram SCSI card in the machine failed, and I ultimately replaced it with an Adaptec card. The Tekram card did not have a BIOS segment on it. The Adaptec card did. My guess is that this caused the two internal SCSI devices I have built into the system (Iomega ZIP and Jaz respectively) to be enumerated first, claiming the "sda" and "sdb". device names. That left "sdc" for the root device, and that is where Arch went next. This is my guess anyway.
I should have caught this issue back in 2012, at the time, but from my notes, I can see that I tested the new card thoroughly using the Windows NT 4.0 side of the machine, but never thought to bring up Arch as well. Hence, this problem lay dormant for two years, before I attempted to fire up Arch last month and blundered right into it.
It has not all been bad. I have learned more about the ext2 and ext3 file systems and superblocks in the intervening time than I will ever need to use. I have learned how to manually boot Linux on a machine whose BIOS is so old that it cannot address the disk cylinder that the kernel is on and I have completely refreshed the many general Linux skills that used to just flow from my finger tips. It has been a frustrating experience, but ultimately a successful and useful one.
Just wanted to let everyone know that this is now [SOLVED]. I would mark the post as such, but I don't see any obvious way to do that. Thanks again everyone.

I just restarted my mac then suddenly when it boots,disk utility came and says different option like repair disk, get help, reinstall OSX and I tried to click disk repair but it says that I am um able to repair the disk

i just restarted my mac then suddenly when it boots,disk utility came and says different option like repair disk, get help, reinstall OSX and I tried to click disk repair but it says that I am um able to repair the disk

It sounds like your hard drive either has a software problem that Disk Utility cannot fix or that the HD has failed (mechanically).
Your Mac may have booted either to your recovery partition or to internet recovery in an attempt to repair the drive- I can't tell from your post.
I'll assume that it was the recovery partition.
Try to boot into internet recovery (hold down option command R at restart), and see if you can repair your HD with Disk Utility. You should also repair permissions while you're there.
If that doesn't work, try to boot into single user mode (restart, hold down ⌘S until you see a black screen with white text) and repair your hard drive. Here's a reference with directions: Repair Your Hard Disk in Single User Mode | Everything Macintosh
If that doesn't work you have a few options:
If your mac originally came with installation disks, you can try to boot from the installation disk and then see if you can repair the HD.
There is a small chance that Techtool Pro 7 will be able to repair your HD if Disk Utility can't.
If none of that works then your HD has probably failed and will need to be replaced, which is not too difficult to do yourself if you can use a screwdriver.

My hard drive on my Mac Book Pro failed last week. I replaced the hard drive today and had to use my snow leopard disc that came with the computer to get teh thing going. I was running Mt Lion which I had purchased last year on the old dr

The hard drive on my Mac Book Pro failed last week. I just put a new Samsung SSD in this thing and had to load the Snow Leopard OS that came with the computer. I had Mt. Lion on the old drive that I had purchased last year but no boot disc made. I have made several attempts to get the Mt lion soft ware on the computer but the Apple store does not have it only mavericks but my Snow Leopard version is too old for it so I cant get it either. How do I get something to run the software that I had on the old drive?

Unfortunately I lost my life and am trying to rebuild. Isn't the technical era great.
Backup, backup, backup
As a minimum, use 3-2-1 (or even more)
3 copies of your data (original copy counts as 1)
2 different backup utilities/storage formats (protects from bugs in the software)
1 copy off-site (protects against theft, fire, and natural disaster)
More backup copies are even better.
Backup disks are cheap compared to the lost of personal data that does not exist anywhere else.

Imac fails to boot - at all

Hi,
I restored my imac using original disks and then updated the osx to current over the web. all fine so far. then restored the system (full disk image) from time machine to recover my data. restore said it worked ok but when the machine restarted it failed to boot and i just get a list of script top left of screen saying launch faild, debugger called etc. Then gray screen and grey box in middle of screen saying you need to restart the computer. This i have done numerous times but it just does the same thing again and again. More worrying is that the machine will not boot from original disks either. Any ideas before I take it to the apple store?
Thanks, Pedro

If the disk image or time machine backup was from a older version of OS X then what was currently installed restoring that image/TM backup may have corrupted the newer version of OS X.
I suggest you start over by wiping the drive completely, then Restore your Mac from that TM/Image backup and Then Upgrade to Mavericks.
You have the steps slightly backwards. The latest thing you should do is upgrade the OS to the newest version.

OS X completely fails to boot

Hi there.
I've really screwed up my MacBook Pro. Post installing Quicktime 7.1.1 as part of a software update, I found that I wished, albeit temporarily, to revert to 7.02. Obviously, I wasn't going to be allowed to install that, so I figured I'd just use Pacifist to force an install, as I've done in the past for other software that refused to install for whatever reason (never Apple software though...could be the problem).
So, did that. Attempt to open Quicktime. Bounce, bounce, icon disappears. Hmm. Attempt to open System Preferences. Bounce, bounce, nothing. Oh dear.
I then downloaded the .dmg for QT 7.1.1, but it just refused to mount, so I then shut down the computer and restarted. OS X now completely refuses to boot, it gets as far as very slowly filling the blue bar at the OS loading screen, but then does nothing.
I've so far attempted to boot into safe mode by holding Shift as I boot up, but that just results in the MacBook reminaing on the spinning icon and the grey Apple logo till I release the key (after a good few minutes), and then it just tries and fails to boot OS X again normally.
I've also put my OS X install/recovery disc in the drive and booted from that, repairing the disk (it found no problems...awesome) and disk permissions (I'll admit I never thought that that would do anything anyway). Both failed to help, obviously.
Any ideas what I could do? I'll be gutted if I have to wipe my HDD and reinstall OSX; I'm guttered there's no rollback/restore feature on Macs, something I always found useful in these situations back when I used Windows.
Any replies are greatly appreciated.
Joe

You can re-install without losing most of your settings and without losing documents / files (unless something goes severely wrong).
Archive and Install will allow you to re-install while saving all your documents and files.
You can read about this technique here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120
Once you have re-installed, you can then upgrade your OS to 10.4.6 and QuickTime to 7.1.1
You really are not going to want to run a version of QuickTime prior to 7.1.1 on your system. Read the following documents for more information:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303176
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303787
The Archive and install is probably your best option at this point.
Hope this helps.

Macbook Pro Fails to Boot on Operating System

After Restarting My Macbook Pro 13" 2012 it repeatedly fails to boot up to Mac OSX but instead to OSX utilities. I tried to reinstall Mountain lion but it shows me that Macintosh HD is locked and when erasing it , it tells me couldn't umamount Disc. Any solution!!! Thank you

Found a solution. As expected, I needed to restore the firmware. However by just downloading the firmware update, OSX didn't want to write the firmware as it was already up-to-date. OSX has no way to know up-to-date but defective.
Found this thread:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-release-notes/+bug/774089
which lead to
http://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-update-manually-on-a-m acbook-51/
that explains how to FORCE a firmware to be written.
I had to download this free software
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/16357/unpkg
to unpack the EFI udpate downloaded at
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1237
I would say that a good command line knowledge is needed to process the above steps.
Hopefully I was able to find a solution before admitting that the logic board was defective and pay the 600$ for its replacement, as instructed by the genius at the Apple store. They are not allowed to process firmware restoration, but they should at least suggest it before proposing an expensive logic board replacement.
Good luck.

Mac Os X doesn't booting on my macbook pro

Folks,
I've installed Windows 8.1 on my macbook pro through boot camp assistance. After installing windows 8.1, i couldn't boot my Mac OS X. I can see Mac OS X booting option in Boot Camp Control Panel on Windows.
When i select "Mac OS X" as a default boot and restated the machine. But it doesn't boot the Mac OS X and the Windows OS booting always. I tried by pressing option key while restarting/starting the machine. Only Windows OS option is there.
On Windows, i could see all the files that are in Mac OS X. Entire drive was there. Could you please help me how can i bring back Mac OS X as a booting option.

You need to reinstall OS X:
Reinstall Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks without erasing drive
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks
OS X Mavericks- Reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Reinstall OS X
OS X Lion- Reinstall Mac OS X
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Mac SE FDHD System 7.5 Install Issues

Hi there,
Got an old Mac SE FDHD. I repaired the internal drive with the Disk Tools system 7 disk, then have been trying to install System 7.5. I have the complete original Sys 7.5 diskette set, but not the 7.0 set (just that disk tools).
So, when I try to install System 7.5, I get to disk 2, and it tells me to install disk 1 again, then tells me there was an error in installation, my idsk is untouched, etc. Failure! But whyyyyy? I should note that my "Before You Install" 7.5 disc will not read, either in the SE on via my USB floppy drive.
I tried to make some System 6.0.8 install discs via Apple's download images, but they will not boot, either by creating floppies manually or in Disk Utility... I can't find a copy of ol' Disk Copy for OS X for download anywhere, as I know that makes "blessed" discs.
Here's two big side notes:
I don't have OS9 (or earlier) installed on any other macs. I also do not have a PC or Virtual PC.
Any help would be appreciated, I'm hoping to make a "Vintage MIDI" setup with this machine.
Thanks!

Unless your System 7.5 is a generic retail set (that is, not for a specific other Mac), you may have to expect problems. Anyhow, 7.5 would require 4 MB of RAM to be installed, and (even with that) it is not the most suitable operating system for an SE. System 6.0.8 or possibly 7.0.1 would be preferred.
The 6.0.8 and 7.0.1 disk images are intended for Disk Copy 4.2 (the Load Image file and the Make A Copy buttons). Alternatively, Disk Copy 6.3.3 can be used (the Make a Floppy command from the Utilities menu). It may be difficult to create properly sector-copied floppy disks under an operating system later than 9.x.
You could try to boot from one of your existing floppies (the Disk Tools disk?) and then try to drag-copy the whole system folder of that diskette onto the empty hard disk. If you are lucky, the SE will boot from such a temporary system. If so, the floppy drive would be free. You could then use 1.44 MB Mac-formatted diskettes to transfer downloaded 6.0.8/7.0.1, Disk Copy 4.2 and other files to the SE. If possible, keep the MacBinary (.bin) unaltered; do not decode until the files are on the SE. An old (ready-to-use) version of StuffIt Expander will be required, too (in this very case, you could try decoding the 4.0 at ftp://ftp.allume.com/pub/archive/mac/StuffIt_Expander/ on your more modern Mac first). Finally, make an attempt to create the system floppies on the SE.
Jan

Mac SE FDHD fails to boot

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