The Flashing "?"

in a diskette icon on a restart (warm reboot) issue for PowerBase (and Apple 6360/6400 and UMAX C500/600--i.e., all Alchemy motherboard-based systems) computers has been carried on Macs Only! since last February when Mac OS 7.6 came out.

The issue began with the first Drive Setup version beyond 1.05, 1.1 I believe, and became especially well-known when Mac OS 7.6 with Drive Setup 1.2 came out. This issue was fixed, on my PowerBase 180 anyway, when Mac OS 7.6.1 came out. It returned with Mac OS 8 and Drive Setup v1.3. The workarounds are carried on my PowerBase Issues Page. Power and Apple (UMAX?) claim to be replacing the 1.2GB IDE hard drives that cause this problem. I got another bad one (the same firmware version as the original bad one plus it made grinding sounds and wouldn't mount when powered up) in exchange from Power, so I gave up. I am presently using a large ultra fast SCSI external hard drive as my startup device so I no longer encounter the problem anyway.

There appear to be, however, more than one issue that result in the flashing "?" and some are quite threatening to your hard drive's data. With Mac OS 8, the issue appears to extend beyond the Alchemy motherboard systems to the 5500 and 6500 sytems. Apple set up a special flashing "?" page. Ted Landau's MacFixIt has one too -- very comprehensive. If you have the flashing "?" problem, you should consult these pages.