start up disk for Macintosh Plus

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Level 1

8 points

start up disk for Macintosh Plus

I need to make a start up disk for a Macintosh Plus I recently acquired. I have a Mac Classic that works. I have tried copying the System and Finder files onto a floppy using the Classic but I always get the message that the files are too large to fit on the floppy disk. What files are essential to a start up disk? Can I actually make one for the plus that will fit on one disk? I am using system 6.x. Thanks for your help.
Stu

iMac, 24 inch, 2.8 core 2 duo, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Sep 14, 2008 5:15 PM

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Answer 1

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

22,207 points

Sep 14, 2008 11:20 PM in response to Shakes

Stu,

First of all, remember that the Macintosh Plus only can handle 800K Mac floppies (DSDD/2DD), while the Macintosh Classic is capable of using 1.44 MB (HD). It is possible to format/write/read 800K disks on the Classic.

If necessary, you can find 800 K disk images containing system disks at the Apple download site. However, these are in a MacBinary format (.bin) that has to be decoded (via an appropriate version of StuffIt Expander or StuffIt) on a suitable Mac. The disk images then have to be written to floppies by Disk Copy 4.2 ( here).

Jan

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Answer 2

Sep 15, 2008 6:54 PM in response to Shakes

Suggest you join LEM-Swap for buying & selling Mac stuff. http://groups.google.com/group/lemswap
After you join, post a WTB (want to buy).

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 3

Sep 17, 2008 3:24 AM in response to Shakes

Shakes,

Do not forget that wonderful external SCSI port. The Plus will boot from it and allow you to use the internal 800k drive to create its own boot floppy. Find ANY external SCSI device like a CD-ROM drive and pull the cable. Attach that cable to a small SCSI hard drive and you now have an external boot device.

An SE or better will boot from an external zip drive. That means you can have an OS 8.1 boot zip disk, for example for your Classic. Use that SCSI port to its full advantage.

Jim

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Answer 4

Sep 17, 2008 2:43 PM in response to Shakes

You cannot just make 800 diskettes using System Files from your current Hard-drive resident System. The install diskettes (as issued) contain stripped-down versions of System and Finder, specially designed to fit on a diskette.

Follow the links Jan provided above and you can download images that can be made into boot diskettes. If you are not finding what you need, just ask, and folks here will be happy to help.

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Answer 5

Sep 20, 2008 7:45 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant offers a good reminder about stripped-down systems. All the more reason to take advantage of cheap hard drives for most of your work. It took less than a week of disk swapping between the system disk and the Word 1 floppy to go buy an external 800k drive. While they were a couple hundred Dollars in 1985, hard drives were over a thousand Dollars.

I mentioned zip drives. OS 8.1 will only fit on a 100mb zip disk by using the custom install feature to cut the files down to size. Remember, you can have a daisy chain of several hard drives so you do not have to use a floppy drive to boot your Mac Plus. BTW, 800k floppy drives retail for $5. email if you need a source.

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