I recently purchased a SuperMac J-700 on ebay ($10 + $35 shipping!). When I boot the computer, I get either the floppy disk icon and a question mark or if I try to boot the computer with a OS install disk while holding down the "C" button, I get a blank screen & frozen mouse.
If there is no other bootable volume connected to the computer, the machine should find the CDROM drive whether you hold down any keys or not. Is the machine starting to boot and then freezing? That is, does the flashing question mark give way to a happy mac icon for a moment before hte freeze? One thing you might try, if you're not sure of hte answer to the above question is to boot up with the CDROM empty, wait for the flashing ? floppy icon, then insert your install CDROM and close the drive. See what happens. The machine should find the disk and boot from it.
Possibilities that I can think of:
1) You're trying to boot OS9.1 or 8.6 or some similar memory hog and the machine has only the 16 MB of RAM soldered to the motherboard, so it's running out of memory during the boot process.
2) There's a problem in the SCSI chain configuration, such as no termination or termination in the wrong place and the errors are piling up.
3) The install CDROM you're using is machine specific (iMac, e.g.) and doesn't work on an S900.
4) The hard drive is damaged in the electronics and interfering with the SCSI chain. This is very unlikely as hard drives rarely fail in this manner. It is also easy to test. Remove the SCSI cable from the hard drive. Be sure that the CDROM drive is at the end of the SCSI cable (the other end from the motherboard) and has termination enabled, if you do this.
If you don't understand SCSI termination, ask. Someone will explain it. There are probably folks with archived explanations that can be reposted. Also, see <http:/./www.scsifaq.org> and there are some good help pages on Adaptec's web site, but they can be hard to find.
Jeff Walther
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