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How do I get System 6 onto 800k floppies?

I acquired MANY years ago a pair of original Macs; a Plus and an SE. They're relatively complete, and worked at one point. I also have external 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives. The Plus has a keyboard (funky telephone-style connector) and no mouse, the SE has an ADB keyboard and mouse. Unfortunately its hard drive seems to be dead as it just makes a clunking noise and refuses to boot, although I assume it could still boot from floppy, a la the Plus.


I've lost the System 6 floopies though...I'd like to get them working, just for fun. Plenty of mice at the local vintage shop for $5 a pop and I have a basket of discarded, blank 800k floppies here at the office.


What I can't figure out is how to get a working set of system disks. I know it's easy enough to copy the OS to 800k floppies with a pre-OS X system because I actually did that when I acquired the Macs a decade or so ago, using my old Motorola Starmax 6000 clone (remember those?). Unfortunately I do not have access to anything capable of running OS 9 or even the Classic environment (I still have a set of OS 9 CD ROMs), thus no way of making the system discs.


Does anyone know of a way to either make the system discs in an OS X/Intel environment, or a source to acquire an OEM copy? None of the vintage stores I've found locally or online seem to have them available.

Posted on Jun 25, 2012 9:12 AM

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16 replies

Jun 25, 2012 12:17 PM in response to MikeinAustin

It would probably be correct to assume that the Macintosh SE is not of the FDHD kind, since your question merely refers to 800K floppies.


Unfortunately, it is absolutely necessary to create 800K floppy disks on another older Macintosh computer with a (built-in) floppy drive for 800K (and 1.44 MB) disks. This means a pre-1998 computer.


http://www.info.apple.com/support/applespec.legacy/index.html


A floppy drive capable of handling the special 800K Mac format has a variable speed, which means that a normal PC floppy drive cannot be used (the same is true for an external USB drive). The 2DD/DSDD diskette as such is the same, but a PC drive can only format/create 720K.


You would use Disk Copy 4.2 or 6.3.3 in order to make sector-copied floppies from disk images (the Make A Copy button in version 4.2, or the Make a Floppy command under the Utilities menu in 6.3.3).


http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/Utilities/Disk_Copy/


An Apple User Group in your area could perhaps be of help.


http://www.apple.com/usergroups/


Jan

Jun 25, 2012 12:50 PM in response to Jan Hedlund

Ugh. So in short, without an old Mac there's really no way to do this. And not just the OS, but other software as well. There's a ton of old software/abandonware out there, but again, without an old Mac with an internal floppy drive, classic Macs are pretty much hosed?


Hypothesis - what about an old Apple SCSI 3.5" floppy drive with a USB adapter attached to a Mac running OS 9 in SheepShaver?

Jun 25, 2012 1:41 PM in response to MikeinAustin

SCSI devices adapted for connection via USB would need an OS 9-compatible driver, so you'd be out of luck. Does your local vintage shop have any older Macs (and "older" can include the 1998-manufactured, beige Power Mac G3s) for sale at a reasonable cost? Three years ago, I passed up a $20 beige G3 at a thrift store, because I didn't need another one. Having a Mac with the SuperDrive (400K, 800K & 1.44 MB) FDD would solve your problem, but cost you some $$. As Jan suggested, you could check for a local Mac User Group, that might have the necessary hardware to accomplish what you need done.

Jun 25, 2012 1:41 PM in response to MikeinAustin

Interesting hypothesis but I'm not betting on it. From what I have read those emulation modes don't always work well, especially on the hardware level. Some older games didn't like being run in Classic because they couldn't control the hardware -- it was still under OSX control. Now you're hoping an OS 9 emulator will work through a USB interface hoping to correctly fully interpret SCSI, and all that on an Intel Mac.

Jun 25, 2012 1:43 PM in response to Jeff

Dang.


I'm sure I could track one down. My mom and my wife both have access to their school's surplus machines. The issue is that if I bring another piece of hardware into our house, my wife will slaughter me. We just have too much junk. Unless I could find a way to use it in the garage...


Which was kind of my motivation for getting the classic machine running. Get some basic spreadsheet software running to help track parts and tools for my Alfa Romeo, while keeping in that early/mid-80s theme.


But maybe an old "pizza box" gathering dust in my mom's closet and a cheap monitor would fit the bill?


I'll keep searching. Surely SOMEONE out there has a set of disks.

Jun 25, 2012 2:02 PM in response to MikeinAustin

Hi,


An older Mac capable of handling 800K floppies cannot be avoided if one wishes to produce 800K disks (such as a startup floppy). Once the Plus and the SE are running, there are additional ways of transferring files (for example, via modem, null-modem or a network).


If the SE had been an FDHD model, it would have been possible to use a 1.44 MB startup floppy (which can be created on other platforms as well).


An external SCSI hard drive containing a suitable operating system could per se be used to boot a compact Mac, but the problem is to get a valid system folder onto the properly formatted hard disk without access to another older Mac.


It would of course help if you could, somehow, solve the internal hard drive booting difficulties of the SE, especially if the hard disk already contains communications software. You mentioned a noise. Does the hard disk appear to spin? Any messages on the screen, or just a floppy icon with the question-mark?


An LC/LCII/LCIII or something similar could be very useful as an intermediate machine. Even better, a model with Ethernet and/or a CD-ROM drive.


Jan

Jun 25, 2012 2:02 PM in response to Jan Hedlund

I'll double check the models again. The SE is MAYBE an FDHD, but I don't think so. If it is, and if I remember correctly, the SCSI boot order tries the floppy before the HD. So if that's the case, I could use the "Tape over the Hole" method to make aboot disk with a regular 1.44 HD floppy? And I could do that with a PC?


The problem is that when I try to boot it up, I don't even get a sad Mac. I just get what looks like a series of binary. I've never seen that before. I'll try to get better descriptions of everything when I get home this evening.

Jun 25, 2012 2:28 PM in response to MikeinAustin

> the SCSI boot order tries the floppy before the HD.


The computer tries the floppy before the SCSI chain.


> if that's the case, I could use the "Tape over the Hole" method to make aboot disk with a regular 1.44 HD floppy?


If it is an FDHD, a normal 1.44 MB HD diskette (without tape) can be used to boot that machine. System 6.0.8 is available on 1.44 MB disk images, too.


If it is a plain SE, an 800K 2DD/DSDD disk would be needed.


The tape method is sometimes used as a very temporary way of making a floppy drive for both 800K and 1.44 MB believe that a 2DD/DSDD diskette is used (the magnetic material is different). So, the method could possibly be used if one wants to create 800K boot disks without access to genuine 2DD/DSDD diskettes. However, since you have real such diskettes, there is no need for this.


> And I could do that with a PC?


Yes, this is possible with some (Disk Copy 4.2) disk images (using a special technique, involving an appropriate PC disk image utility. But once again, only 1.44 MB.


The following web page even describes a method using Mac OS X (I have not tested this).


http://lowendmac.com/brierley/08pb/classic-mac-boot-floppy.html


Jan

Jun 26, 2012 9:50 AM in response to Jan Hedlund

Great news - the SE is indeed an FDHD. I also happen to have an old Dell with Win XP sitting under my desk, complete with working floppy drive.


Where might I find a tutorial on this "special technique" for creating boot (an I'm assuming application) disks on a PC? I haven't been able to find anything, really.


EDIT: The disks here at the office are Sony 1.44 MB MF-2HD, still in a shrink-wrapped box. Will those work? I have a stash of older ones somewhere in a closet at home...

Jun 26, 2012 11:57 AM in response to MikeinAustin

Hi again,


In order to get a general picture of the procedure, the following link could perhaps be of interest.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/123048?answerId=613836022#613836022


The NAD 7.5 in the message can be replaced by, for example, System 6.0.8 (1.44 MB) or System 7.0.1 files (the latter if the computer has at least 2 MB of RAM).


http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_6.0.x/


http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -British/Macintosh/System/System_7.0.1/


Another version of Aladdin/StuffIt Expander for Windows may or may not work.


The diskettes that you mentioned should be fine. Remember that it is important to have error-free freshly formatted floppies (reformat them as in the message before you begin).


Jan

Jun 26, 2012 2:17 PM in response to MikeinAustin

Yes, I noticed that Aladdin Expander 2.0 is difficult to find today. The latest StuffIt Expander for Windows seems to be limited to two file types, whereas (the not free) StuffIt for Windows apparently supports further formats.


StuffIt Expander for Mac on the other hand has support for many formats, which could matter if you wish to try the Mac OS X procedure in the aforementioned LowEndMac article instead.


The interesting formats here are MacBinary (.bin) and StuffIt self-extracting archives (.sea).


http://www.stuffit.com/products/file-formats.html


Jan

Jun 27, 2012 4:12 AM in response to MikeinAustin

The freeware utility StuffIt Expander for Windows 1.0 can be found on the Internet, for example at the site below (using a Windows PC, one could point at the download link, right-click and choose to save the stuffit-expander-10-windows.uu file). The uu must be decoded before the file can be used.


http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mac/info-mac/_Compress_&_Translate/


http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mac/info-mac/_Compress_&_Translate/00cmp-abstracts.t xt


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuencoding


Jan

How do I get System 6 onto 800k floppies?

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