macintosh performa not starting up

Z

zemason

Registered
I have an old Performa 6400/180, which has been working fine up until a few days ago. Then one day I booted the machine up and was greeted by the following "bomb" message:

"Sorry, a system error occurred.

bus error
To temporarily turn off extensions, restart and hold down the shift key."

I have followed these instructions, but it only gets to the "Starting Up. . ." screen and hangs while searching for extensions.

I can't find the documentation that has the OS version, but the machine was bought with whatever was current in early 1996 and has not been updated since.

So is this something that I may be able to remedy, or is my poor, trusty old Performa finally dead?
 
If you can get to the insides (which I hear is a chore in and of itself with the 6400/6500), try and reseat the RAM and any other cards that might be inside. Also, you might need to replace the PRAM battery inside. Considering how old this particular Mac is, it's probably best to assume that the PRAM battery is in need of a change. Depending on the type of battery needed, you can get it at a decent price at some place like Radio Shack or online from vendors like We Love Macs and others.
 
I located a new PRAM battery and have reseated the RAM cards. I'm still getting the same 'bus error' message on startup, though. Any other ideas?
 
Hold down Shift right after you hear the Macintosh startup chime. This will start it up with Extensions Disabled. If you don't get the bus error message after that, then it's possible that a control panel or extension is causing conflicts. At this point, you'll have to go through the tedious process of enabling those extensions/control panels one by one until the bus error comes up again. That, or you can reinstall OS 9 from the discs that came with the Performa. Just make sure that you back up your files first.

EDIT:

Actually, if you go into Extensions Manager, you can select to only enable the basic extensions for Mac OS 9 to launch at boot. That way you only have to go through any third party extensions instead and it will save you some time.
 
Then it sounds like I'm at an impasse. I've already booted it up holding down the shift key to disable extensions. It doesn't throw up the bus error message, but goes to the regular "starting up" screen and the progress bar just starts to move -- and then it hangs. I've tried letting it sit for a little while like that, but it never gets any further. I don't know how to try enabling extensions at this point, since it doesn't give me anything to interact with.

I also had the idea to reinstall the OS from the CD, but the disc drive won't open.
 
You can open your CD tray by starting up while holding the mouse button down. The tray will open shortly after your screen turns on. Just keep holding the mouse button until that happens.
Then, you can continue with a reinstall, if that's what you want to do.
You can PROBABLY interact with the various extensions, if you hold the space bar during boot. That should open the extensions manager. It's still tedious to it, unless you get really lucky, and discover which extension is causing the problem (and it happens to be only one extension...)
Good luck....
 
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