Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #01900
To: beam beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Richard Piotter richfile@rconnect.com
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 23:10:11 -0600
Subject: [alt-beam] Almost got me a Mac motor
Man did I have a bad day!!!
I've spent the last 2 weeks trying to set up a Performa 550 (Mac) for
internet. All I had access to was new software, so i had to go online to
get all the old software. I finaly got it working, and very nicely too!
Better than my 117 MHz Power PC Mac (this one is only 33 MHz!). Anyway,
I took it to my Aunt's place to set it up for her. We actualy had
internet working! AHHHH!!! The thing crashe dand I restarted, and it
played the dreaded "chimes of doom"!!! These tones followed by a sad mac
icon and a hex address error indicate a hardware problem 99.9% of the
time! I thought I was screwed BAD!!! What's worse, is that the phone
attached to the modem also died, so I assumed that a surge had run
through the phone line and took out everything! I took it all apart, and
brought it home. I figured I'd at least get a motor from the floppy
drive, but then I figured out what had realy happened. It was a basic
crash, which occured during a disk write, just like many bad crashes,
but this one continued to write. I noticed my hard disk indicator LED
continuing to flash. I finaly cut power. The write was to a file that is
accessed early from startup. It continued writing that track, and killed
part of the hard disk's driver!!! When it started up, it looked to the
SCSI controller like the SCSI chain wasn't responding (hence the
hardware error!), but I still don't know why the phone was blown, since
I used it literaly 5 minutes earlier. Maybe a surge blew the phone, and
simply crashed the computer???
Anyway, I didn't get the motor from the drive, but I did find out a
place that has mac stuff while calling around for assistance, so
hopefuly, I can find a few dead Mac floppy drives. Maybe I can make a
little walker and name it Mac! (:
I plan on having new pictures up on my page soon, since my new G3's
video/TV/capture card should come friday or saturday.
Has anyone in the Minnesota/iowa/south dakota area expirienced trouble
accessing internet today? I have been unable to connect with TWO
separate ISP's from a couple hours away from each other! Weird.
Richard Piotter
richfile@rconnect.com
The Richfiles Robotics & TI web page:
http://richfiles.calc.org
For the BEAM Robotics list:
BEAM Robotics Tek FAQ
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/bushbo/beam/FAQ.html
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