[SOLVED] HyperDrive Mac512 is a Sad Mac 0F0100

[JDW]

Folks, if any of you happen to be owners of a GCC HyperDrive, I would appreciate hearing your thoughts. Mine is a 10MB drive mechanism installed in a Macintosh 512K with 64K Rev.B ROMs, and has an internal 400K floppy drive.

I made 3 videos about my setup in the past so by watching those you can see every last detail. Everything, including the Mac, and even the motherboard, is fully recapped.

Problems began after I switched it on for the first time in about a year. No bong, and I saw strange artifacts on the screen. I should have taken a photo, but I didn't. Switching it off, waiting and then switching it on again did not clear the artifacts. Still no bong either. I then removed the killy clip on the 68000 CPU and reinstalled it, and the next time I switched power on, the artifacts were gone, I got the proper bong, but very abnormal things began happening.

Basically, it won't boot (most of the time) from the HyperDrive even though I see the RED drive LED to light solid (normal) and see a happy Mac icon (which displays when you are trying to boot). I disassembled again to check voltages and ribbon cables, but all was well, yet the same trouble remained after every power-on. And yes, I checked every single wire in all the ribbon cables using my multimeter in beeper mode. I checked the kill clip the same way, while attached to the CPU, touching the solder side of the 68000 with one probe and touching the end of the ribbon cable with the other probe (at the connector which attaches to the HyperDrive's controller PCB. All wired connections tested good.

So when I power on, I must wait anywhere from 2.5 to 4 minutes with that Happy Mac showing, it then changes to a Sad Mac showing a 0F0100 code.

Interestingly, one other HyperDrive owner mentioned 0F0100 regarding his non-booting drive, but his thread was left open-ended.
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/reviving-a-512k-hyperdrive-error-code-0f0100.5094/

And here's another strange thing. On rare occasions, after waiting that 2-4 minutes, it will actually boot! But it never shows the HyperDrive splash screen, which is very odd. And that 2-4 minute wait is something new and horrible.

The waiting time is abnormal In the past, I would switch on power and then in a couple seconds the LED on the drive mechanism would light solid and only about a second later the HYPERDRIVE text logo splash screen would appear, and it would boot to the desktop shortly thereafter.

So the lack of a splash screen (despite the presence of that startup screen file on the boot Drawer) in combination with the the very strange 2-4 minute wait time, has me very concerned. I've never seen this before.

I can boot off a 400K floppy disk and use the HyperDrive software (I've always used V2R1) to access the drive just fine. After that, I can copy files to the HyperDrive, from the drive, and I can also use the HyperDrive software to mount "Drawers" and close them. I can delete drawers and create new ones. If I launch the "Manager" app and run the disk tests (from the Test / Initialize menu), all tests pass. The "cylinders" test is very intensive and takes a long time to complete. If the drive mechanism was bad, it wouldn't pass those tests.



Everything seems normal when I do that, but then when I try to quit the software (even other apps too), I get a System Error.



And then when I restart, I get that 2-4 minute wait and a Sad Mac most of the time!

Yes, I have tried swapping out the System & Finder files to see what might make it boot normally, but none of that makes it "normal" in any way. Most of the time, it won't boot and just gives me the Sad Mac. But that always comes after the painfully slow 2-4 minute wait. I would say only 1 out of 10 power-on attempts result in an actual boot. And every single time, I am forced to wait that horrific 2-4 minutes. Yes, I've tried pressing Reset via Programmer's switch rather than use the main power switch, but that makes no difference in my testing.

The only thing I've not tried is to "Initialize" the drive via the HyperDrive software because I need to make a backup first. But I don't have enough 400K floppies to do that, and I can't find my FloppyEMU anywhere; and for some reason, my Apple HD20 drive (connected via the external floppy connector) won't mount on the Desktop because it triggers a crash. (Yes, I have the HD20 init loaded to enable the HD20 serial hard drive).

Fellow GCC HyperDrive owners, I would sincerely appreciate any kind thoughts you may have to share with me.

Thank you.

 

[JDW]

After spending a whopping 8 hours in total on this mess, I finally found a solution.

I finally found a FloppyEMU I use with my Apple IIc, flashed Mac firmware to it, then added many blank MFS 400K disk images for the purpose of making a backup. Using the HyperDrive Backup app, everything went smoothly. That enabled me to try the one thing I hadn't been able to try before, which ultimately was the solution: LOW LEVEL FORMAT.



Specifically, there is an INITIALIZE button and a FORMAT button. The key is to click FORMAT. It then asks you for the system password, so I typed "System Password" and it worked.

After the format was complete, I created a new Drawer, named it Startup, then copied the System files from V2R1 boot floppy to the Startup drawer, since I know that system software works fine on my 64K ROM Mac512. I then copied the HyperDrive installer app over to the drawer and ran that to ensure all required files are added to the System file in the Startup drawer. I then copied over the Manager app and restarted. To my delight, I got the normal black spashscreen with HYPERDRIVE logo text and it booted right away. No delays! Crashing and other problems reported in my opening post are now gone.

So it would seem that whatever caused those artifacts to appear when I first powered the machine on after having been in storage for 1 year corrupted the drive content so badly that a low level format was required to fix the problems. I had tried defragmenting prior to using FORMAT, but that didn't work. So FORMAT is the key to fixing problems.

Of course, if you don't already have a backup, getting your files off the Hyperdrive and onto other media could be the sticking point, and that was the reason why I tried everything EXCEPT a low level format first. But after finding my FloppyEMU, that problem was solved, and FORMAT saved the day.

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief as this huge problem is RESOLVED! Hurray!

I hope this experience helps my fellow HyperDrive owners who may find themselves in the same situation.

Best wishes.

 

[JDW]

One last thing.

When you are finished using your HyperDrive Mac, it's highly likely you will move the machine. Before moving it, PARK THE HEADS.

Sounds odd in 2024, but remember this hard drive is from the mid-1980's when heads were left having precariously over the disk platters UNLESS you manually parked them. If the heads are left hovering over the disk when you move the drive, any bump could send one of the heads crashing against a disk platter, possibly damaging the drive.

Thankfully, GCC added a head parking feature to their HyperTools app to let you manually park the heads. I added this extra info to Macintosh Garden just now.

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Being a man of DETAILS, I should mention "one more thing."

You may have a HyperDrive on a Mac512 with 64K ROMs like me. If you want to attach a real HD20 or emulated HD20 via FloppyEMU, you must first put the HD20 INIT on your boot disk. I spent a lot of time yesterday scaling down the System Folder of a 400K boot disk so I could have a disk with the HyperDrive resources installed into the System file AND also have the HD20 INIT on the same disk. Sadly, there's not enough RAM on a 512K Mac to mount even a single Drawer with the HD20 INIT loaded. I tried disabling the two Cache settings in the Manager app and restarting. That didn't work even though it says it let you regain some RAM. It doesn't let you regain enough RAM.

All said, if you want to attach an HD20 (say, to copy a lot of files at once from that to your HyperDrive), you will need to put Mac Plus ROMs (128K ROMs) into your motherboard. You then won't need the HD20 INIT anymore (thereby saving precious RAM), since the code of that HD20 INIT is found in the 128K ROMs. That "HFS" code is required to use the HD20 drive (either real or an emulated HD20 on a FloppyEMU).

(FYI: More info about which System & Finder are compatible with the HD20 INIT is found in my old post from 2010.)