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Leisure Suit Larry!!!!

test wrote:

We hosted a multi-day  Leisure Suit Larry ordeal in '90. Imagine a dozen drunk engineers locked in a dorm room for 3 or 4 days, huddled around an XT clone, leaving only to hit the head or get more hooch. I think I can still smell it.

Now that I think about it I need to find me some copies of those old Bungie games.

::::::::::::installs OS9.....fires up Thoth::::::::::::

The original Myst was awesome - easily the best of the series!  If I were a billionaire, I'd recreate Myst Island.

icebook1 wrote:

What was the game where your butt was permanently affixed to an office chair, and you rolled around saving the world in the office?

Harry the Handsome Executive.

This whole thread and nobody actually answered the question?

The flashing question mark means that your computer cannot locate a bootable System Folder.  This can be caused by a number of things, but first and foremost among them is accidental user error, usually in the form of dragging something important out of the System Folder.

At this point, the next step is to boot from a floppy or CD and see if your Centris' hard drive still appears on the desktop.  If it does, then your drive is still OK, just the system's corrupt.  While booted from the floppy/CD, you should find a program called "Disk First Aid" located on said floppy/CD; run it on your hard disk.  If it detects problems, try to use the repair mode to fix them.

If no problems were detected, then you will need to reinstall the System.  If you booted from a CD you can reinstall it directly from there most likely; however, pay careful attention to the options you choose in order that you reinstall the system only, leaving other data on your drive untouched.

If you booted from a floppy, you can get your system up and running again by just copying the floppy's System Folder over to your hard drive.  If you have room, save a copy of its previous System Folder before doing so, but this is not absolutely necessary.  However you must keep in mind that while this will allow you to boot from the hard drive once again, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to launch your programs after doing so due to the fact that the System Folder that fits on a floppy disk has been highly stripped down and is missing many of the critical components required by complex applications.

Once you've got your system booted back from the hard disk again, back up all your data.  If you were able to reinstall from a CD, you're done.  If you've just got the minimal System Folder from the floppy disk, you'll have to locate and install a full set of System Software, which may require you to reinstall your applications again aftewards (thus, the backup).

If you booted from a system CD or floppy and your hard drive did not appear on the desktop, then either the hard drive is hosed or its connections have gone bad.  You may be able to fix it by simply unplugging and reseating all the cables connecting the hard drive to the computer (specifically, we're concerned with the data cable here, which is a wide, thin ribbon).  If the drive still does not appear on the desktop after a cable reseating, you can try the thump method previously mentioned, bearing in mind the potential for irreversible damage to the drive if the physical shock is beyond its tolerance.

All things considered, you must also remember that the Centris is an exceptionally old machine, and it is certainly within the realm of possibility that the hard drive has simply lived out its mechanical life and has failed.  I don't know what you were tracking in Quicken, but if the hard drive is mechanically kaput, and you need your data back, be prepared to pay a pretty penny to have professional data recovery experts disassemble the drive in a cleanroom and physically extract the data from the drive platters.

Daniel wrote:

This whole thread and nobody actually answered the question?
*snip*

Umm... first response. It's short, but it basically summed up your little essay.

Just for the record, you can actually get a 6100 to boot with a dead PRAM battery, it is just an exceedingly frustrating cycle of trial and error mixed in with a lot of blind luck.

Not really - you just power it on, then turn it off and on really fast. Used to work for me about 80% of the time.