IIgs repair help

[Jim Owens <jow@helix.nih.gov>]

I am a Macintosh user who has gotten involved with a "computer club" at
my daughters' school.  Unfortunately for the sake of my being useful to
them, they have mostly (15) IIgs cpus with three Macs (2 Plus, 1 LCII)
and 2 PCs scattered in.

The club was started by the computer teacher, Mrs. Martha Corrado.  She
wants the kids to become comfortable with software by learning more about
uses of the computers than she can give them in their 45 minutes per week
classes.

My suggestion, inspired by a teacher in Stafford County, VA, (Bill
Warrick) was to see if any of the kids (7th graders only until Mrs.
Corrado gets a feel for how the club will work) would be interested in
trying to repair some computers to be turned over to the school.  It's a
nice idea, but I haven't a clue about where to start.

Right now there is a IIgs with a problem.  It is due to go into a
Kindergarten classroom in January.  This poor machine will not recognize
any floppy drive.  Instead, when it is turned on it immediately clicks
while the light on the box flashes on and off rapidly and the light on
the floppy drive flashes at maybe half the rate of that on the cpu box. 
Mrs. Corrado has used the drives (3&1/2" and 5&1/4" daisy chained)
successfully with other IIgs, and drives that work on other IIgs do not
work with the injured one.

A coworker's nephew had a similar thing happen to him and he claims to
have fixed it by accessing using the Control Panel to reset something in
the PRAM.  I was instructed to start the IIgs with the Option key down to
get the Control Panel.  It didn't work, so now I am taking the manuals
home to see if I can decipher what the nephew meant.  It occurred to me
that if it is a parameter RAM problem, perhaps the battery is dead, but I
don't know what happens if that is the case.  Any suggestions will be
gratefully accepted.

Thanks in advance,

Jim Owens
________________________________________________
Who feels like a CB radio operator who must now get a professional
license.