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Six months ago my Mac SE was running fine. Recently, when I start it up, I hear a bong sound and the screen lights up. Then there is a floppy disk with a ? on it. There's a lot of very good programs on this SE. What do I need to get it running? If I need startup disks, where can I get them?
Is this a good question?
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I am not a Mac expert but it sure sounds likely you have a hard disc problem. Do you have a boot floppy you use to start up? Mac SE, that is impressive it works so many years.
I do suggest you ask for advice here:
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I think so. Bought a boot floppy but the SE stip it out. I may have two issues: a HD and floppy drive problem.
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Your system either came with a dual floppy or a single floppy with an internal SCSI HD. I'm suspecting your drive has died.
You'll need to find a 3.5" 50 pin ribbon cable connected SCSI drive to replace yours. The data on the drive is likely lost and you still need to gain access to the disk set or CD with the needed optical drive.
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I hope the data isn't lost. There's a lot of very good programs on it. Is there a way to save the HD data by using it as an external drive, bypassing the start and copy it to a good one?
@ndavis31209 - The system supports SCSI drives externally as well via a 25pin connector. If you can find a case to hold your drive you might be able to recover the files using a recovery program. I’ll warn you if the drive has failed it’s often to far gone to recover much.
I think you're right.
After watching this Video of a techie trying to fix an SE with my same problems, I think it's not worth the effort.
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@ndavis31209 I use this site to get the boot disk images for my vintage computers. Under the MacIntosh link, you'll find the disk images and the instructions on how to use those.
As for your drive. Time do disassemble your Mac and time to take a look at what is going on. Double check your ribbon cable and triple check your power supply. It's about time that some of the caps etc may just fail. Let us know the exact model for your HDD. Let's see what we can dig up. Here is the MacSE manual you can use to work on getting there.
Now, with this computer you really need to use common sense. Due to its CRT, the power supply etc. Packs a punch. Make sure you discharge the CRT! Try to avoid touching anything with your bare hands until it is discharged.
Once you start working on your Mac, take lots of pictures. Once you are done with it, take those pictures and create a guide for iFixit. That will help the next person that has a device with the same issues as you do. It's easy and fun to create these guides. https://ifixit.com/Guide/new The iFixit community will appreciate this.
Repair is War on Entropy!
@ndavis31209 most common failure on these drives is either the controller board or the head is gummed up and does not move to read the disk. Fixable? Yes and no, you won't need a clean room. Just common sense. Let's see what drive you have so we can figure this out for you. Take a look on here to see the rubber stops that prevent the head to move. All we would need is to see your drive and controller to continue to assist you with this repair Adding images to an existing question
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