Mac SE SuperDrive password

From: Phil Beesley <PB14_at_leicester.ac.uk>
Date: Thu Jul 30 11:24:39 1998

On 30 Jul 98 at 10:43, Russ Blakeman wrote:

> A buddy of mine just got a Mac SE Superdrive computer that he says has
> a hardware pasword. Any ideas on how to disable it - jumpers, key
> combos, pull the battery, software, what?

The password on an SE can only be implemented at software level on
the boot volume (internal hard disk), so you can forget about
batteries and jumpers.

Guess 1: the password is implemented using a fairly insecure shareware
tool.

Try holding down the Shift key on boot up. If the Mac is running
System 7 or greater this (usually) prevents extensions from loading.
You can then try to identify the extension (INIT in older Mac
speak) that is locking down the computer. Note: there are one or two
utilities that can disable Shift-booting in System 7.

Try booting from System 6 or 7 Disk Tools (downloadable from
ftp.info.apple.com) which both work fine on an SE. You will need a
Mac to generate the boot disk. Try booting from this disk and try
looking for a suspicious extension or INIT in the System Folder.

If necessary, move all of the extensions (or INITs) out of the system
folder altogether (eg folder at root area of hard disk); the Mac SE
will still boot without them.

Guess 2:
If you've moved all of the extensions and you're still getting a
password dialog box, it may well be a more sophisticated security
tool (eg FileGuard, Empower). Boot from your Disk Tools disk yet
again and run "Apple HD SC Setup". With any luck, you should see the
name of the hard disk and it will be identified (most likely) as SCSI
Device 0. Press on the "Update" button to replace the SCSI driver on
the hard disk (surprisingly this will defeat some of the older
security tools). Don't be surprised if a dialog box pops up asking
for a password.

Even then you're not necessarily 100% stuck. If the security software
has encrypted the hard drive, the only solutions are to enter the
correct password or to format the hard drive. The security software
will even try to prevent you from formatting the hard drive but there
are ways around this.

If the security software has not encrypted the drive, you can boot
from a floppy and supress scanning of the SCSI bus on startup by
holding down Command-Option-Shift-Backspace. You can then use a disk
editor such as Norton to hack away at the boot blocks to remove the
offending software. The hard disk will no longer boot but you can
access the contents; running the "Update" function on "Apple HD SC
Setup" will repair the disk sufficiently so that you can reinstall
the System software.

Phil
**************************************************************
Phil Beesley -- Computer Officer -- Distributed Systems Suppport
University of Leicester

Tel (0)116 252-2231
E-Mail pb14_at_le.ac.uk
Received on Thu Jul 30 1998 - 11:24:39 BST