Hey folks,

I have lots of Quadras 605 (alias Performa
475) laying around. I put the System 7.5 on
their disks by installing the disks in a
PowerPC-Machine running OS 6 and running
the install-routine (minimal install for
any macintosh).

Now those Quadra 605 work fine, but they
just wont boot up alone. Instead I have to
put a bootable floppy into the drive and
then the machine will read from it for a
short time, then throws it out and boots
the system on the harddisk. Without the
floppy, the screen stays black and the
machine doesn't boot.

I want them to be bootable "standalone".
Any hints fora mac-newbie?

Well, maybe i wouldn't have done it that way..but i think installing the minimal universal system might be causing some problems..i've found that "universal (for any macintosh)" isn't always so universal ,possibly due to system enablers and such.. partucularly with system 7.5, which is not nearly equal to 7.5.3...
since you can shuffle the harddrives around anyways, i'd recommend downloading the free system 7.5.3 from Apple's website onto the LC harddrive (it's in 19 parts, and you install it right from the same harddrive your installing onto) and install it on the 475s directly.
If you've got the really small 80meg harddrive that the 475s originally came with tho, use your 7.5 instead and just make 7 floppies from the images on the cd (i think 7.5 is only 7 floppies),install once from the floppies, and use that system for the other 475s.
If youve got more than one older mac, it really pays to have an external scsi (not USB or firewire!) harddrive,you know :), especially one that's easy to replace drives in...all older macs have a scsi port on the back for external drives.
P.S. if your floppy has a file on it called 'system enabler', but it's not in your system folder on the harddrives, that's probably why it needs the floppy..can't be sure tho, as i though from 7.5 on these weren't needed anymore.
HTH

Just possibly choosing the Hard disk in the startup
disk control panel might mean a straight boot.

Well, actually the problem turns out to be
somewhat different ...

The "boot"-disk isn't needed at all, it was
just me pressing "d" during boot-time and
thinking that would make the mac boot from
floppy. But now I see that this floppy
isn't needed. Just pressing "d" is
sufficient.

Second: I am using System 7.5.3 NOT 7.5.

Now I managed to install a system specific
for the performa, but again, only boots if
i "force the internal hard drive to be the
boot-device" by pressing d.

I tried to set the hd is startup disk, but
i'm not shure if i did it correctly. how
should that be done.

A real-world collegue adviced me to update
the macs firmware. Do you think that would
be a good idea? Where can i get the
firmware?

You can get a free update to 7.5.5 from the
following site. The page takes a very long time to
load due to the numerous links. There are
firmware updates on that page as well though I
don't know what would be needed for your
machine.

http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftware
list.html

As far as the startup disk is concerned, open the
startup disk control panel and just select
(highlight) the hard drive which should appear in
the window as a choice. Then close the panel and
when you restart it should "know" where the
system is for boot.
It might also be a good idea to zap the PRAM
which is where some startup settings are located
and can become corrupted. The best way is to
shut down. Then on startup hold down, all at the
same time, the Command, Option, P and R keys.
Keep holding them until you hear the startup
chime sound at least 3 times, then let go of the
keys and let it startup. You may need to reset the
time, mouse and a couple other settings that may
get purged.

%00

Okay....

First you can not update the quadra 605s firmware, at all.

Second, Have you tested the battery out yet? Those machine always seemed to play dead if the clock battery was dead, or low.

Third, if it is not the battery, then check for other hardware problems, an instant black screen does not mean software issues! Check for termination problems. Remove the HD and see if the machine goes to the gray backround with the blinking disk Icon.

Forth, install the universal install, but dont choise minimum.

I spent over 7 years of my life working on macs until apple went to crap OS-X, so it is good to hear people still using these older machines.

Actually,a mac will never select a floppy as the startup disk in the control panel..if theres a floppy inserted it will always boot from it, but if there's no floppy in the drive it will boot from the first harddrive with a system folder available, even if theres nothing selected in the startup disk control panel..
If yours still doesn't boot after installing a universal,(not minimum) system, then check again if you've got system enabler 065 inyour system folder..i can't see how it'll help as 7.5.3 shouldn't need it, but certainly with older OS's it's neccesary.
Check to see if you've overlooked something obvious (it's happened to me :)..
I've installed 753 several times on 475s / Q605s with no problems whatsoever..
And, yeah, i love those old macs..using one right now on this forum , (a centris 610 with 7.5.3), even tho i've got a 450mh Blue&White.......