After using my external Seagate ST1917 8gb SCSI drive trouble-free for several years now, an old problem has reappeared. My IDE system hangs on boot with the external SCSI drive turned on and will only boot with the external SCSI drive turned off. Sometimes, the boot sequence will advance as far as loading one or two extensions, and then the spinning ball will appear for a few minutes and then morph into a tiny black bomb. Other times, the system will hang before the happy Mac face appears, with the cursor frozen in the upper right corner of the screen).
Back in the good old days when I had a 7200/120 and an 8100/80 on hand, I'd fix the problem by moving the external SCSI drive to the other Mac (which would mount the drive just fine), delete the desktop files with File Buddy, and then reattach the external SCSI drive to the original Mac and let the system rebuild the desktop files on boot. That always managed to cure the problem (though I never did figure out what was going on). I do recall that this problem sometimes got so bad that I would have to physically disconnect the external SCSI cable from my 7200 before it would boot (turning off the power to the external SCSI drive would not be enough). Unfortunately, these days I only have my beige G3 (OS9.2.2, OWC G4/466, 768mb, Radeon 7000, Wings AV) and all my utilities are backed up on my external SCSI drive, so it's a real catch-22. I went ahead and booted the system with the external SCSI drive turned off, and then turned on the external SCSI drive and scanned the bus with Drive Setup (OS9.2.2) and Anubis disk utility. The external SCSI drive shows up on a bus rescan (which suggests that the SCSI hardware is probably OK), but will not mount with any of these disk utilities. So far, I've tried desktop rebuilds, PRAM zaps, CUDA resets, an active (electrical) termination device, prayer, cursing, and praise. Before I go out a buy an old used Mac (I gave away my 7200/120 a couple of years ago!) to try the old cure, I thought maybe one of you might have encountered this problem. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that this problem arose after using Norton Disk Doctor and Speed Disk (Systemworks 2.0) a lot, but I don't want this to get sidetracked into a Norton-bashing session. Any help appreciated. -Wayne in Seattle -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
