So quick question - the 6100 with an Apple 300+ CD-Rom Drive can boot from CD, right? The drive seems like it is working fine when I boot from the HDD but I cannot get this thing to boot from the CD-ROM. I've tried a copy of 7.5 for testing and the retail copy of Mac OS 8.5 I am trying to install.
I've held 'C', tried Cmd-Opt-Shift-Del-#, set it as the start up disk
I even tried another (albeit external) drive. No dice. Again, the drive functions properly when booted from the HDD and OS 8.1 but it will not act as a boot disk.
On a lark I tried zapping PRAM and swapping out the battery - pretty sure the new one is functional. If it could be the battery I guess I'll pick a new one up later.
The 6100 boots from CD, and holding 'c' should work. Pretty sure the 6100 is not one of the Macs that requires a working pram battery to boot properly, though a questionable battery could cause problems.
This is a bit of a cheat, but are you able to boot from HDD and use Disk Copy to make a bootable floppy of the Disk Tools image that should be somewhere on the OS CD? Booting from that floppy would still give you CD access and allow you to reinstall an OS to the HDD, assuming that's your plan.
Right on. Clever. If all else fails, I'll go that route.