Why does a disk with flashing “?” appear at system startup time?
This indicates that the computer cannot find a startup disk and is often due to a hardware issue. Try the following: If you are using a Zip disk as the startup disk, make sure it is fully inserted in the drive before turning on the computer, and that you hold down the Option key at system startup time. Also make sure there are no disks in the computer’s floppy disk drive. If this does not resolve the situation, test the computer by disconnecting all external SCSI devices and restarting from the hard drive or from the CD-ROM disc that came with the computer.