--- Markus Blumrich wrote: My portable powers up without the battery inside it as well. I'm assuming by your email address "dartmouth.edu" that you are in Nova Scotia? (If not - pardon my ignorance). If so these machines have probably been subjected to some cold weather. I have lost 2 Mac Portable hard drives to cold weather - I'd put them in the trunk of my car, travel to location X and then fire up the Mac only to learn that the drive didn't work anymore. This was most likely due to condensation inside the drives. ---- Actually, it's Dartmouth College (NH) but I'm telnetting in from Miami, FL because I'm home for the summer. As far as I know, these drives haven't seen cold weather, but it's certainly possible. ---- If I read your post correctly the drives aren't spinning up at all, but they emit noises which make it sound as if they are trying to - in this case they are most likely stuck. I have convinced old hard drives to become 'unstuck' by whacking them on the side. I know it sounds cruel but if the drive isn't working there is nothing to loose. ---- Yeah, I tried that -- it's worked many times before, but not now. (The technician I worked for six years ago used to fix Mac SE's with sticky hard drives by picking up the whole computer and giving it a quick half-spin with a sudden stop -- the torque loosens the lubricant.) ---- Also, when the death chimes sound, is there a picture of a sad mac on the screen with an error number? The error number (if I remember correctly) may be a key indication as to what is happening. If your mac is repeatedly sounding the death chimes it is in some kind of endless loop and you are most likely not getting to the error #. ---- When I let it go long enough, I get a sad mac with error codes which I haven't looked up in the TIL yet. They all translate to some hardware (occasionally software) problem diagnosis. ---- I have also opened the drives and lubricated the 'spindle' or whatever it's called - however doing so allowed dust particles inside the drive. The end result though was a reliable, non sticking drive that works to this day. Perhaps I was lucky... --- end of quote --- Huh, I always thought that opening up a drive would wreck it -- maybe I'll try that with one of them. Thanks. But wait, there's more! New problem. I have an external hard drive attached to the least messed-up Portable, which boots nicely, but anytime I insert a floppy disk, the machine restarts over and over. What triggers it is pushing the tiny white button just inside the floppy (it gets pressed by the disk usually, but I was trying to see what exactly was setting the restart loop in motion, and when I pushed down on that button alone that did it). It WAS working fine with floppies before. Guess the logic board is having problems handling both at once. Aaargh! Three bad drives and now *two* fouled-up motherboards. -- MB