having trouble installing system 7.5 on mac se/30

[oblivion]

well i have a mac se/30 here and official floppies for installing OS 7.5 but thus far have been unable to make it work. right now the HDD has no OS so i want to get something on it. i'm completely unfamilier with macs so i'm not sure if its just something i'm missing. anyways the installer on disk 1 loads up fine and then i get to a screen where i choose (easy, custom, remove) as my OS install options. at this same time i get a message saying the disk is locked and to eject and reinsert it to start coping to the system file. i do this and i hear the floppy drive do its thing for a few moments then nothing happens. i let it do this for about 30 minutes and it just seemed froze. i get the same result every time i try. the mac isnt acually frozen because i can change screen size and look at the info but all the buttons below are greyed out except for cancel which works and cancels when i click it. am i missing something here?

on a slightly of topic, does anyone have any tricks for disconnecting the power cord from the MB on these things. i opened it up to poke around and inspect the MB but for the life of me i could not get the power cable to disconnect from that board.

thanks
-Justin

 

[ryan42]

Firstly, how much RAM is in your Mac SE? I believe 7.5 requires 4 MB of RAM. It shouldn't fail in the scenario you describe though if it's a RAM limitation. That sounds like your install floppy might be corrupted or damaged. I just want to give you a heads up before you spend a lot of time troubleshooting that issue.

The (4 pin? 8 pin maybe? I can't remember) motherboard power connector is very snug indeed. Last time I pulled one off in an SE I was afraid I'd broken whatever my hand whacked into when it finally came undone. Make sure if there's a clip (I don't recall...) you're releasing it, but I remember having quite a time with that one. As an aside and as you may already know, CRT deadly high voltages, yadda yadda. There should be a bleeder resistor but you can't trust it!

Also, should you be inclined to finagle the board out, watch out for the brightness control knob and if you try to pull the board and PSU out as a unit make sure the power supply clears the CRT and you don't scratch the aquadag coating.

Good luck!

 

[oblivion]

i think theres about 16mb of ram so i should be good for ram. your probibly right then about the corrupt disks. now the mac se/30 has a standard 1.44mb drive correct? so i can snag the os online or am i going to have to use a newer mac (which i do not own) to do this?

 

[RWallmow]

i think theres about 16mb of ram so i should be good for ram. your probibly right then about the corrupt disks. now the mac se/30 has a standard 1.44mb drive correct? so i can snag the os online or am i going to have to use a newer mac (which i do not own) to do this?

I think all SE/30's had AT LEAST 4mb, so thats not likely the problem. Do you know if the hard drive is good? It could be failing to install because of a bad HD. The SE/30 is indeed a 1.44mb floppy, there are ways to make 1.44 disks for a mac from a PC, but it is somewhat convoluted if you don't have image files that the PC can write from (the images downloaded from apple WON'T work on their own, you would need to do some work to convert them if you plan to write them from a PC).

 

[WMH]

...i get a message saying the disk is locked and to eject and reinsert it to start coping to the system file.

I know nothing about older Macs so this may seem like a dumb question, but for the record, you've checked that the floppy disk itself is not locked?

 

[RWallmow]

I know nothing about older Macs so this may seem like a dumb question, but for the record, you've checked that the floppy disk itself is not locked?

Wow, I didn't even think to suggest that, but yes, if he is installing to floppy and its locked, that could be a problem. Sometimes I totally forget to ask the obvious, lol.

 

[WMH]

Wow, I didn't even think to suggest that, but yes, if he is installing to floppy and its locked, that could be a problem. Sometimes I totally forget to ask the obvious, lol.

As you've probably seen from a few of my posts, I make quite a few obvious mistakes.

Therefore, that's the first thing that I consider when I'm troubleshooting. :D

Well, that and the fact that the system said that the disk was locked made me think that.

 

[oblivion]

I know nothing about older Macs so this may seem like a dumb question, but for the record, you've checked that the floppy disk itself is not locked?

yhea. that was acually my first thought. i'm starting to think its a corrupt disk which makes sence since the disks have basicly been sitting in a box for 10+ years.