Help with emacs

Hi - I'm looking for some help to understand *** is going on with my emacs. New to macs, so early apologies for all the questions.

Doing hard drive upgrades (sadly have both early and later emacs, so memory can't be swapped). Have worked on tons of PC's - but finally getting away from the darkside - yeah, I finally saw the light. Carefully followed service manuals, etc. The system that had the software image I badly need to save has been backed up. Could not go beyond initial upgrade of 10.4 because not enough disk space available (40GB drive)

First one - after installing the hard drive, and putting it all back together. Do not get any video. I am not sure, but I was suspecting that blind connector, so have done take apart and put back together several times. Same results.

Second one - put the hard from the first one in, booted up just fine. Have a fireware drive (500GB) that I cloned that drive onto. Then tried to boot from fireware drive - would not work. Can see drive just fine, just won't boot from it. So, got the bright idea to drop the new drive into this one. Now I'm stuck - power up and get the ? file icons flashing alternately. So did the power/option boot and the hard drive is not being seen at all. Have reseated things a few times. Have tried the 40GB drive and an 80GB drive - same results. The only other odd behavior is that the fan does not spin up (yeah, it's plugged in).

What is going on? I'd like to get both systems working again. Rather than take up space here, email help is fine. I'm puzzled and have combed the manuals and web for hints and can't find anything. I suspect it's something easy - but I'm new to macs, so I'm on a steep learning curve. Just wondering why I didn't see the light years ago!

Thanks in advance for the help!

Bill

A bit of confusion here deciding which eMac is which. First one = old one, 40 Gb; second one = later one, 80 Gb ..... right? It really would help if you identified them clearly, with their specs particularly.

So, the 40 Gb hard drive from eMac No 1 worked in eMac No 2. Question: what was right about the 40 Gb that hasn't been translated to the 80 Gb drive?

How did you go about choosing the external hard drive in order to boot from it? You said "power/option boot", by which I take it you rebooted with the Option key held. I'd suggest you use the SysPrefs > Startup Disk instead, but of course you need to get the eMac functional to do that.

The flashing ? folder - cannot find an OS from which to boot (but I think you know that already).

No fan? Suggest logic board issue. How do those capacitors look?

Lastly, which manual(s) are you using?

hughvane said:

A bit of confusion here deciding which eMac is which. First one = old one, 40 Gb; second one = later one, 80 Gb ..... right? It really would help if you identified them clearly, with their specs particularly.

So, the 40 Gb hard drive from eMac No 1 worked in eMac No 2. Question: what was right about the 40 Gb that hasn't been translated to the 80 Gb drive?

How did you go about choosing the external hard drive in order to boot from it? You said "power/option boot", by which I take it you rebooted with the Option key held. I'd suggest you use the SysPrefs > Startup Disk instead, but of course you need to get the eMac functional to do that.

The flashing ? folder - cannot find an OS from which to boot (but I think you know that already).

No fan? Suggest logic board issue. How do those capacitors look?

Lastly, which manual(s) are you using?

Click to expand...

Sorry - should have given a bit more info - easy to forget when familiar with them.

Here is where I'm at:

System 1 - 1GHz with 764 memory and 40GB drive. Worked fine - now no video and eventually get 5 flashes (no beeps), and based on what I read, that is a "4 beep" code. Have reseated the memory. Same results with different drives. The good news is that the fan works! btw - upgraded to Leopard and it ran like a champ for a few days, but could not do further updates due to needing more disk space.... that is what started all this.

System 2 - 1.25GHz with 764 memory and 80GB drive. swapped drives with the Leopard drive from system 1 - booted up and ran just fine - it was after I tried putting a bigger drive in system 1 - made sure I had another clone of the Leopard drive, then shut it down and started hard drive roulette. I have tried the 80GB drive that was in it, along with a new 500GB drive that also has a clone of the system 1 system on it (via firewire cage). Where I'm at now is the screen with the flashing icons AND fan is not running (swapped fans with system one so I know it was a good fan).

Now I do have a third system - 1.25GHz with 512 memory and 40GB drive. I pulled the 512 module from system 2 and put it in system 3 - boots fine and shows 764 memory. Until I figure out what I'm doing wrong, I'm not thrilled opening this one up to swap hard drives just yet.

BTW - all the drives work fine in the firmware cage, so they are still good.

Capacitors? where do I find out more on that. saw one mention of it but nothing further. Did see a cap next to the battery that had some brown stuff on the end of it, but wasn't sure what that was.

Manuals - the official service manuals that I have found on-line. Have found 4 versions so far, depending on the "vintage" of the emac.

Thanks for the help!

The eMac capacitor issue, particularly but not only, the 1.25, is notorious. What you've noticed is a leaking cap, a sure sign it needs replacing. A photo is attached showing the location of all capacitors. A steady hand with good soldering skills can fix a logic board for as little as US$20.

I've sent you via PM some alternative eMac manual links.