Mac Classic II Software Update?

Bud,

Just an example for your information: A downloaded Network Access Disk 7.5 .bin file drag-copied to a randomly chosen 1.44 MB (actual formatted size approx. 1.3 MB) diskette leaves118K available. Perhaps you could reformat the floppy disk (Erase Disk in the Special menu) in the Classic II.

Jan

If your disk has only 1.1 MB available, it has some bad blocks and should be re-initialized in hopes of eliminating them. If you watch the process, it does "formatting ..." then "verifying format ..." and then if it begins the last pass with "Re-verifying format ..." (or similar wording), you can be sure it has found at least a few bad blocks and will be disabling them during that pass. A disk with all good blocks does not put up that Re-verifying message and does not run that last pass at all.

9894- System 7: Has Bad-Sector-Checking Mechanism for Floppy Disks

by double clicking this Network Access Image, the computer would restart with the Network Access system. Is this correct?

No, it will not restart from it, nor will it replace the contents of your Hard Drive. It will simply mount a pseudo-drive on the desktop, and allow you to manipulate it. If you want to start from it, you would have to get it onto a floppy. The best way is with DiskCopy.

I would also need to save the 19 OS 7.5.3 disk images, correct?

Once you have successfully installed 7.5.3 onto your Hard drive, the 19 images are expendable. If you wanted, you could also make physical floppies if the 19 images as backup before you delete them. Again, the best way is with DiskCopy.

Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

Bud,

With the Mac Classic II reformatting, I got 1k on disk after single verification.

This is normal when (re)initialising a 1.44 MB diskette to Mac format on a Macintosh computer with a built-in floppy drive.

As soon as I brought it over to the G5, it got 332k. When I brought it back to the Classic II, it had 310k on it. After reformatting it on the Classic II, it had 1k on it. This would seem to indicate some of the G5 (with OS 10.4.10) is putting those hidden files on the disk.

Yes, the USB disk drive driver software or the operating system on the G5 appears to do something with the floppies. Maybe someone else knows more about this.

The Classic II now, running System 7.5.3 is capable of reading and writing PC-formatted floppies as well. If this is OK with the USB floppy drive and the other system, just to compare during a test transfer, what happens if you use diskettes in the 1.44 MB PC format instead (keep the files encoded = .bin)?

by double clicking this Network Access Image, the computer would restart with the Network Access system.

If you first mount the Network Access disk image on the Classic II (this will only happen if you have Disk Copy 6.3.3 installed) and then drag-copy the mounted image to the hard disk, a new system folder will be installed. However, this is not what you are supposed to do in this very case.

Also, please note that some versions (not 4.0.1 but e.g. 5.5) of StuffIt Expander may be trying to interfere with the disk mounting process when decoding/decompressing. To avoid this, and to avoid confusion and erroneous error messages, make sure that the StuffIt Expander preferences (whenever applicable) are NOT set to mount disk images.

Would it have better to use Disk Copy 4.2 to create a sector of the Network Access Disk 7.5 disk image?

Yes, use Disk Copy 4.2, exactly according to the description in my message above. That will create a bootable floppy from the Network Access disk image.

I would also need to save the 19 OS 7.5.3 disk images, correct?

The nineteen decoded (that is, one .smi and eighteen .part) System 7.5.3 files are not separate disk images. They are segments of ONE large disk image. The way to mount this large image is by double-clicking the first file (the .smi), once all files are gathered in one common folder on the Classic II hard disk. A separate Disk Copy program is not needed to achieve this.

Jan