Hi all,

Dusted off my old Apple LC475 - fixed the PRAM issue thanks to help from others in this forum (getting a new battery tomorrow to make this a permanent fix). Now I have a slightly more sinister issue - installing an OS. It's been 8 years since my last boot up of the computer's initial OS (probably early System 7). Now I just get a question mark disk with some seriously chug chug chugging HDD noises.

Using the "Install First" disk that came with the computer, along with two other primary system install disks, the software only lets me install OS7 on different floppy (which means interchanging them). What on earth can I do to make it install to the 80MB HDD? Also, I have a SCSI CD-ROM, but that is not recognised in the 1.2MB OS-install-on-a-floppy disk. :)

Can someone please tell me how on Earth I go about making a fresh install of any OS - somewhere in the late sevens would be brilliant, onto HDD using whatever means possible (CD/Disk)? (Good resource website here - but very few txt files specific to LC architecture http://www.ehmac.ca/archive/index.php/t-3005.html)

Thanks kindly!

http://www.jagshouse.com/

First you have to use a "disk tools" floppy to boot, and try to mount that 80meg drive..it may need to be formatted first, or afterwards, either way you'll have to use a disk tools that has "Hard Drive SC Setup" or "Drive Setup" on it.
Yo couldn't get the cdrom seen, as there's no cdrom driver on a boot floppy unless you copy one onto it yourself...copy one onto it and you can install off a cd..
Alternatively you could just boot directly from a MacOS CD..the OS 7.6 or 8.1 disks will boot a 475 as long as you have an Apple CD Drive.(press 'C' at boot)
You can then mount and format the harddrive while booted from the cd, and then install off the same..(8.1 just smokes on it!)
Your harddrive may be shot also, as the Quantum ProDrive ELS that most Apple branded SCSI 80 megs were, tend to die at the ten year mark, or otherwise suddenly quit...
I have a *whole box* of dead 80 megs drives....
By the way, the 475 came with a minimum 160 meg harddrive, i'm very sure..yours may therefore be bigger than 80meg..just pop off the cover and have a look at the number on the harddrive..
The 475 is probably the easiest of all the 68040's to get at the inside of...
You might also want to think about putting a 128 meg strip of ram in it..regardless of what you may have heard elsewhere, the 475, besides being one of the fastest 68k macs ever built, is also the only mac i've ever seen that will work with absolutely every kind of ram that will fit in the slot - up to 128 megs..i don't think they ever made 72 pins strips larger than that.
I have extra 128's of the same kind that are in my 475, if your interested.
In fact, i use mine to test my 72 pin sticks , because i know if the ram's good (whatever the type), the mac will boot..(after 2 minutes or so..68k's do long Ram-checks!)