However, I am leaving the question open in the hope that someone knows if a key combination is available for the Quadra to boot from CD when the HDD is installed.Older Apple computers can often be something of a collector’s item, with the oldest fetching an enormously high price in auctions.

This time, in the absence of the HDD the computer automatically fell back to the CD-ROM drive and booted 7.6.1 from CD without any hotkeys required. The Quadra has a really funky mounting mechanism for the motherboard, but after some jiggery-pokery I reattached the floppy/cd/speaker cables and tried again. But after a few google searches and some random experimenting I haven't had any success.ĭoes anyone know if it is possible to boot a quadra from CD, and if so, what the procedure is?Ībout 5 minutes after posting this question, I went back and took a closer look at the machine and discovered that whoever had the machine before me had disconnected everything from the motherboard, not just the power. What I do have is a single original System 7.6.1 CD-ROM, which I thought might boot. I do not have any vintage Mac floppies, and no hardware currently capable of downloading and/or creating a bootable vintage floppy. but I wonder, is a vintage Quadra able to perform a similar trick? Newer models can boot the OS from CD-ROM by holding the Option key, or Ctrl-C, or something like that. Obviously the mac has no HD, so it's looking for something to boot from. This time, I was able to get video and have an (expected) icon of a floppy disk with a little question mark. I re-attached motherboard power, and tried my experiment again. So, I popped the hood and discovered that someone had been there before me, as the HDD was missing and the power to the motherboard was unplugged. My first attempt was met with absolute failure as it was very clear the machine wasn't doing anything. After a quick look in my VGA adapter bucket, I found I had the needed 15pin to VGA adapter, so I decided to fire the machine up and see if it still works. I'm not even sure where I got it anymore.

I dug out an old Macintosh Quadra 800 that I've had on my shelf for a long while.

Quadra 650 mac vga adapter