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What your old Centris may be suffering from is nicknamed "stiction" where the hard drive head has become stuck to the hard drive platter. If you start up your Centris with a boot CD and it cannot find your hard drive, then this may be the problem. As the Wikipedia entry suggests, the way to free the drive head is to gently but firmly rap the side of the hard drive after you take it out of your Centris. Once you get it going again, you should make whatever adjustments to your OS (such as in the Energy Saver control panel) to prevent the hard drive from spinning down, and do not shut down your Centris until you have backed up all of your files elsewhere. With a hard drive this old, this problem will grow worse until it will no longer work.

You need a new Pram battery.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20 … AA36VPRAM/

Last edited by Pariah (2007-05-21 9:23 pm)

Pariah wrote:

You need a new Pram battery.

I'd have thought it must have had several replacement PRAM batteries by now, it's a 15 year old 'puter. And I thought a failing one manifests itself differently from what is described?

I'd go with the failing hard drive (stiction) theory myself. Just how big is this HD, anyway? 80 Megs or the luxury 500 Meg version?? Time for a new one, I think!

Jonski wrote:

Pariah wrote:

You need a new Pram battery.

I'd have thought it must have had several replacement PRAM batteries by now, it's a 15 year old 'puter. And I thought a failing one manifests itself differently from what is described?

I'd go with the failing hard drive (stiction) theory myself. Just how big is this HD, anyway? 80 Megs or the luxury 500 Meg version?? Time for a new one, I think!

Pram batteries can last from 1 to 3 years. My experience, as a former Mac repair tech, is that unless it is known to be good, a new pram battery is the first step to troubleshooting any mal-functioning older Macs. Basically if you dont remember clearly installing a new pram battery in the last 2 years or so buy a new one.
Dead or dieing prams can produce random and unpredictable behavior.

dvpierce wrote:

Pariah wrote:

Jonski wrote:

I'd have thought it must have had several replacement PRAM batteries by now, it's a 15 year old 'puter. And I thought a failing one manifests itself differently from what is described?

I'd go with the failing hard drive (stiction) theory myself. Just how big is this HD, anyway? 80 Megs or the luxury 500 Meg version?? Time for a new one, I think!

Pram batteries can last from 1 to 3 years. My experience, as a former Mac repair tech, is that unless it is known to be good, a new pram battery is the first step to troubleshooting any mal-functioning older Macs. Basically if you dont remember clearly installing a new pram battery in the last 2 years or so buy a new one.
Dead or dieing prams can produce random and unpredictable behavior.

In a 650, it won't cause the thing to simply not boot. Unlike what happens when a 6100's battery dies. Ugh.

It might cause it to not find the boot volume, but if you plug it in, zap the pram a couple times, it should work fine on defaults - unless the HD is hosed.

I wouldnt promise thats the problem but until you know the pram battery is good you are just flying blind trouble-shootingwise.
Those old, slow, tiny HDDs almost never failed so Id be willing to check just about anything else before saying the drive was borked.

Pariah wrote:

Those old, slow, tiny HDDs almost never failed so Id be willing to check just about anything else before saying the drive was borked.

They just don't build 'em like they used to.  I'm not goofin' you either; those old SCSI drives were bulletproof.  I've never had one of those fail yet - some are over 15 years old.  ATA, on the other hand: 3-5 years average life expectancy, irrespective of brand or cooling  solution.

Excuse me, but can your Quad-core MP run Aldus SuperPaint?  hmm?... hmm?...  Didn't think so!

Mr. T wrote:

test wrote:

A PRAM battery is about $15 around here.

Lemme guess:  Radio shack?

The Source By Circuit City, regular stock item, 3 year extended warranty for only $5 extra, no thanks. Same lame I guess.

Graphic Autist wrote:

I'm shocked no one has said this yet, but, buy a new computer.

Holy crap, man...this is 2007, and you're STILL using a CENTRIS?!!

Pity the man who cannot feel love for old hardware

test wrote:

Indeed, the Centris 650 was a kick ass machine. It had real '040 with FPU and 3 or 4 expansion slots all in a nice desktop case. It was the poor man's Quadra. Well, except for the price. Still, I'd take one even now.

Thank God we arent hamstrung by all that pesky expandability that used to interfere with us using our Macs.

test wrote:

Indeed, the Centris 650 was a kick ass machine. It had real '040 with FPU and 3 or 4 expansion slots all in a nice desktop case. It was the poor man's Quadra. Well, except for the price. Still, I'd take one even now.

The Quadra sucks (now) too!

Graphic Autist wrote:

test wrote:

Indeed, the Centris 650 was a kick ass machine. It had real '040 with FPU and 3 or 4 expansion slots all in a nice desktop case. It was the poor man's Quadra. Well, except for the price. Still, I'd take one even now.

The Quadra sucks (now) too!

I guess it depends on what you are used to. Here are some technology milestones from my life.

1979 or 80 - Dad got fed up waiting for Wasaga Beach Hydro to show up. So he climbed the pole and switched the breaker himself. Thus began the Age of Electricity.

1981 - Water line run into house -> no longer necessary to bring water in by bucket from the pump in the barn.

1982 - Flush toilet.

1985-87 - Wood burning cook stove replaced by electric baseboard heaters and electric oven. Hot water heater installed. Running water in the bathroom meant I no longer had to heat bath water in preserving kettles on the stove and carry them upstairs to the tub.

Living like that was not fun but I did learn to make do with very little and make the most of what I could scrounge or build myself. So a Quadra still seems potentially useful to me.