Re: GS/OS wont boot

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Charles & Jennifer Claypoole <cajenn@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> I have a Apple //gs Rom 1, (had) a ramfast scsi, now Apple HS Scsi, 250M
> scsi drive , internal 170 focus..  Was booting gsos without problems..  My
> ramfast died today, so I put apple scsi in..  Now booting up into gsos
> ALMOST finishes and crashes into monitor..  Version is 6.01..
> Anyone know what I should do?

Try starting up with extensions disabled (hold down the shift key).
This will bypass most INITs and CDEVs (control panels).

It might be something as simple as a damaged icon file, in which case
Finder could crash when launched, and shift-booting won't help.

One other obscure possibility occurs to me: the RamFast driver might not
behave properly if the card isn't present.  (I'm guessing - I have no
direct knowledge of any such problem.)  Did you disable or remove it?

Also make sure you have the Apple SCSI drivers installed (if you didn't,
you should have got an error message during startup to say that you need
to do so).

Is it an original or High-speed Apple SCSI card?  If it is an original
card, does it have firmware revision C (341-0437-A label on the ROM)?

Is the SCSI bus terminated correctly?  Some crashes may be due to data
corruption.

If you have a high-speed Apple SCSI card, the last SCSI peripheral on
the chain should be terminated.

If you have an original Apple SCSI card with a single SCSI peripheral,
the peripheral must be terminated.

If you have an original Apple SCSI card with two or more SCSI
peripherals, then the first and last peripherals must be terminated.

At least one device must be supplying termination power.  The RamFast
does this, but most Apple cards do not (unless modified).  Later
instances of the high-speed card were modified by Apple to provide
termination power, and a similar mod can be done on the original card
and on unmodified high-speed cards.

I prefer to use a hard drive which supplies termination power, as it
won't impose as much of a load on the computer's power supply.

> Reinstall?  Or does rom1 work w/ 6.01 reliably?

It certainly should.  I've mainly used 6.0.1 on a ROM 3, but have
occasionally used it on a ROM 1, and I've never encountered this sort of
problem.  I've also never heard of other reports of any such
unreliability.

It is probably a damaged file.  If it is a damaged system file, then a
reinstall would fix it.  If it is a data file of some kind, then a
system reinstall won't help.

It could also be file system corruption - have you run a disk repair
utility recently?  (Prosel is probably the best option.)

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz