The Sad Mac What is the Sad Mac? Usually when one turns on their Macintosh, it smiles at them (Happy Mac). But once in a long while it kind of snarls at you. First, lets explain what happens the moment you flick the switch, or hit the power key inside your Macintosh. Once your Macintosh is brought up to full power the Mac runs what's called in the computer world a Power On Self Test (POST). Several memory and system diagnostic tests take place. If any one of these test fails, the Sad Macintosh icon appears. The Macintosh SE will have two 8-digit hexadecimal numbers displayed under the icon, remarkable similar to the icon pictured above. How do I make a Sad Mac happy again? Most hardware failures that display a Sad Macintosh error will do so before the floppy drive or hard drive start spinning. If a Sad Macintosh appears after the disk starts spinning, the first digits of the error code are usually 'OF' and often indicate corrupted software. If you get this error code, try restarting the Macintosh with the Option and Command keys held down to rebuild the desktop file. You also may be able to fix these problems by reinstalling system software. If all else fails it means their is a problem with the hardware and you should take your Mac to an Apple Qualified technician. Attempting repairs yourself will void Apple's warranty, of course, you don't have to tell them you tried to fix it yourself... If you've never seen a Sad Mac before and you have this urge, try hitting the interupt button (plastic things on the side of compact macs, little buttons on the front of newer Macs, or some weird keyboard combination on others) while the Mac is checking the RAM (this is when the screen is grey and and void of all else at start up). Of course, this is not recommended by anybody because I'm sure there is some way it might affect something adversaly. What do those numbers mean anyways? Macintosh SE and later systems: Error codes 0001 through 000E indicate hardware failures. xxxx0001 ROM test failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0002 RAM test failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0003 RAM test failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0004 RAM test failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0005 RAM test failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0006 VIA1 chip failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0007 VIA2 chip failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0008 ADB failed xxxxxxxx xxxx0009 MMU failed xxxxxxxx xxxx000A NuBus failed xxxxxxxx xxxx000B SCSI chip failed xxxxxxxx xxxx000C IWM chip failed xxxxxxxx xxxx000D SCC chip failed xxxxxxxx xxxx000E Data bus test failed xxxxxxxx Error code 000F is typically associated with software problems or hardware that has been modified xxxx000F Bus error 00000001 xxxx000F Address error 00000002 xxxx000F Illegal instruction error 00000003 xxxx000F Divide-by-zero error 00000004 xxxx000F Check instruction error 00000005 xxxx000F coTrapCC, TrapCC, or TrapV error 00000006 xxxx000F Privilege violation 00000007 xxxx000F Trace 00000008 xxxx000F Line A error 00000009 xxxx000F Line F error 0000000A xxxx000F Unassigned error 0000000B xxxx000F Coprocessor protocol violation 0000000C xxxx000F Format exception 0000000D xxxx000F Spurious interrupt 0000000E xxxx000F Trap 0 to 15 exception 0000000F xxxx000F Interrupt level 1 00000010 xxxx000F Interrupt level 2 00000011 xxxx000F Interrupt level 3 00000012 xxxx000F Interrupt level 4 00000013 xxxx000F Interrupt level 5 00000014 xxxx000F Interrupt level 6 00000015 xxxx000F Interrupt level 7 00000016 xxxx000F Coprocessor BRA or SET on unordered condition 00000017 xxxx000F Corprocessor inexact result 00000018 xxxx000F Coprocessor divide by 0 00000019 xxxx000F Coprocessor underflow 0000001A xxxx000F Coprocessor operand error 0000001B xxxx000F Coprocessor operand error 0000001C xxxx000F Coprocessor NAN 0000001D xxxx000F MMU configuration 0000001E xxxx000F MMU illegal operation 0000001F xxxx000F MMU access level violation 00000020