Boot System 7 from floppy disk

Question

Boot System 7 from floppy disk

Hi everyone!

I'd like to buy a Macintosh plus on ebay but first I've got to work out something:

I want to be able to quickly swap systems (i.e. system 1, 3, 6, and possibly 7). I saw that "system disks" were available for System 1 so that you can directly boot from the floppy. But I can't find any equivalent for System 7. I have no idea why. Maybe Apple changed the name? (Disk tools, Tidbits ...). It seems to me that you can't boot from the floppy anymore on System 7 through 9. You can only INSTALL System 7. Am I wrong?

For example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Macintosh-Mac-System-7-Software-Manuals-Complete-i n-Box-3-5-Floppy-Disks-/271442454449?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f333b27b1

Every little helps, If you have a solution to my problem, please feel free to just post whatever your idea was 😉

Thanks,

Bad Gold Eagle

Posted on May 2, 2014 10:41 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

May 2, 2014 11:02 AM in response to Bad Gold Eagle

Well it really depends on the Mac model. A lot of old Performas had system specific enablers.

And then you have the fact the Mac Plus only took 4 MB of RAM, which limited the amount software you could run at once on it. Virtual memory helped some, but you need ot read about 32 bit clean on the 68000 on this page:

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

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Answer 2

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

24,235 points

May 2, 2014 1:41 PM in response to Bad Gold Eagle

Hi,

The Macintosh Plus can only handle maximum 800K floppy disks in a special Mac format (on standard 2DD/DSDD diskettes). It is not possible to use 1.44 MB floppies (HD diskettes).

http://support.apple.com/kb/sp190

System 6.0.3, 6.0.8 and 7.0 are all downloadable from Apple as 800K disk images (the 7.0 disk images are contained in one large .smi file).

http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html#system

It is true that System 7.0 must be installed (a complete system needs more space than 800K), but you can at least use the separate Disk Tools floppy for startup purposes (in addition to the disk with the installer).

If necessary, you could easily connect an external hard drive to the SCSI port of the Macintosh Plus. It is even possible to have several system versions on the same hard disk (a utility such as System Picker could be used to switch between systems).

Jan

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Answer 3

Jan Hedlund

Level 7

24,235 points

May 2, 2014 2:31 PM in response to Jan Hedlund

Addendum

In order to create 800K floppies from downloaded disk images, you would really need access to another approx. 1991-1997 Macintosh computer (with a built-in floppy drive for both 800K and 1.44 MB) as an intermediate machine, preferably with an Ethernet port.

You will also need an appropriate version of a utility called StuffIt Expander to be used for the decoding of MacBinary (.bin) files.

Disk Copy 4.2 (the Make A Copy button) and 6.3.3 (the Make a Floppy command under the Utilities menu) are used to produce properly sector-copied floppy disks from disk images.

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/Utilities/Disk_Copy/Disk_Copy_4.2.sea.bin

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English -North_American/Macintosh/Utilities/Disk_Copy/Disk_Copy_6.3.3.smi.bin

A self-mounting image (.smi) will mount when double-clicked upon (if the intermediate computer is running System 7.0.1 or higher).

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