Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

mac 6500/300 help needed in Ecuador for computer problems

Sep 4, 2007 10:08AM PDT

Have an antiquity of a computer that has clarisworks 5 on it, it has been the computer that a lot of work has been written on over the years. The issue of course is that it is old and outdated and so there was no possibility of transferring the material into a useable format that the information can be opened on --well more modern computers-- Thought we had the problem solved because dragon naturally speaking would allow us to read the information so that it didn't need to be retyped completely onto the new laptop that we have. Second problem came about is that the computer sounds like a jet engine taking off so is likely a power supply problem. But the third problem is that the computer recently started to readjust the files and has actually lost some of them completely like clarisworks. The computer won't allow us to install the backup files to the software, in fact it won't allow installation of pretty much anything. Is there anyone out there that knows apples inside out, because we live in Ecuador and no one literally knows macintosh here. Any suggestions with guidance we can do some repairs here if need be. Really once we get the information off the computer then it is pretty much garbage so if there is any great ideas or someone likes a problem then please respond.

Operating system (199Cool don't know

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
You are not giving us anything to work with here
Sep 4, 2007 11:17AM PDT

Computers don't usually go around loosing files. Clarisworks is still on that drive somewhere, you just have to find it.

If you are thinking of replacing the computer, what are you thinking of replacing it with? Mac or Windows.

I suggest that you start copying every file that you have created with Clarisworks onto a floppy disk and keep them safe.
If you buy a new Mac it will NOT come with Clarisworks (new name was Appleworks) because this program, under either name, has been discontinued.
If you can access these files on this machine, I suggest that you save the files as RTF (Rich Text Format) which can be read by any word processor worth its name.

You could try running the DIsk First AId Disk that came with the machine and that is on all of the system disks. 1998 is not an Operating system, it's a Year. You could be running any thing from System 7.5 to 9.2

More information is required but Disk First Aid is the first step you should take

P

- Collapse -
thanks for your response
Sep 6, 2007 2:32AM PDT

yeah I know the details are vague, but apparently the original manual is 6 hours north of here. We may be able to get someone to dig it up to determine the exact details of the machine. As of this message, the machine now will not open up at all. We were able to find Clarisworks on the computer but the machine would not recognize it anylonger. The only hope that we possibly have is that we have tracked down another mac user with as ancient as ours. We can probably open up the floppy discs that are saved under Clarisworks on that machine and by saving as a RTF we should be able to open up the files on a PC with a current operating system or are we in need of finding someone running equally as antiquated a system as the apple we were using?

I think the system is pretty much toast at this point that we have the only salvaging factor is the information that you have sent which is the primary reason we were trying to access the Mac. We have a PC laptop now. It is easier to find techs for a PC in Ecuador than for a Mac unfortunately. If we are able to open the information up and save it onto our current system that would be mind blowing. Thanks for your information...

Chao

- Collapse -
Mac OS: mac 6500/300 help needed in Ecuador
Oct 20, 2007 6:18AM PDT

The jet engine noise is worrying. Could it be an imminent hard drive meltdown? Could that be why it won't turn on now? How "dead" is it?

I'm no expert but I used to do some trouble shooting on our older office macs and still have a softspot for those great old machines. When I had similar symptoms (also loss of speed) they would usually be cured by rebooting to Norton Utilities and/or Tech tools to run the diagnostics and reformat the hard drive. Mostly, over time, the hard drive becomes so fragmented it can't work efficiently and/or retrieve all the bits and pieces of individual files. Using graphics applications, this problem happened routinely. I was told If no maintenance is done periodically, the hard drive can burn itself out trying to keep up. I'm not saying that is you problem.

This might sound crazy but you could find a similar vintage working mac on ebay--if you can afford the postage--and swap the hard drives and see what happens. If your hard drive can't power a machine you know is working then at least you know it's the harddrive. If it works, then you can retrieve you files. I used to swap the hard drives between the early 233, 266 G3s--plug an play. In the G3s there was room for a second drive so all you would have to do is plug it in. You could run the computer with the good hard drive. Maybe, without having to power the operating system, your files might be more readily copied onto the hard drive that came with the computer. Of course, these are all huge maybes. Last year my harddrive died with hiundreds of precious photographs and I would have tried anything to get them back. Only you can know what you will lose by walking away from the mac.

Good luck

- Collapse -
Bloody Genius...you are!!
Oct 31, 2007 9:07AM PDT

Hey thanks for the advice. I am thinking that the hard drive is toast due to the fact that nothing seems to work anymore at all. I like the idea of getting an another old machine and trying to utilize the hard drive to access the old information. Bloody genius!! We were going to toss the old machine, but something told me to hang onto it for now....so if there may be a possibility of potentially getting the old information off it is worth hanging onto until we can determine that there are no options whatsoever....good information, thanks for responding and sorry to hear about your photographs...that sucks when you lose stuff like that, even more significantly difficult to replace than something you can potentially rewrite.