If the hard drive fails, you can replace it with any 50-pin SCSI hard drive. On these models, you can try installing the operating system on the hard drive (by using the operating system floppy disks that we will teach you how to generate in this tutorial). If not, the hard drive was either erased or it is defective. On models with an internal hard disk drive (models starting with the Macintosh SE), the computer should load the operating system. You will need to fix the computer however, it is not the goal of this tutorial to teach you how to do that. If when turning on the computer you don’t see the screen shown in Figure 1, and you already tried increasing the brightness adjustment of the screen to its maximum (the brightness knob is located on the lower right corner of the computer), this means the computer is defective. In this tutorial, we will explain how to generate those disks. Old computers without a hard disk drive need to load the operating system from floppy disks. We frequently see on eBay people selling models without a hard disk drive, saying that the computer is broken and/or sold “as is” because the “operating system won’t load.” This, of course, is coming from someone without the most basic knowledge about old computers.

The screen will show an icon of a floppy disk with a question mark. On models without a hard disk drive (see list on the next page), the computer won’t load any operating system when turned on. Did you buy an old Macintosh computer such as the Macintosh 128K, the Macintosh 512K, the Macintosh Plus or the Macintosh SE on eBay, Craig’s List, or a garage sale, but it didn’t come with the floppy disks for the operating system and programs? Let’s see how you can generate them and bring your old Macintosh back to life.īefore we go further, there is some basic knowledge you need to have.

Format floppy disk for mac os 6