Just picked up a 512k, but how do I get it working? :)

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Just picked up a 512k, but how do I get it working? :)

Hi all,
I stopped in at my local computer store to sell of a bunch of PC parts that were making me angry as they set around and very quickly became "yesterdays technologies", and in the corner under a table set this little 512k mac. Long story short the little apple is setting in my kitchen right now waiting for an os disk, and the pc parts turned into gas money.
So what do I have to do to get this cool old mac up and running? It has the 400k drive in it, and a external 800k floppy drive as well, but I don't know how to get an OS converted to disk, or if apple even offers system 6 free anymore. I have a 5400 and an Imac ready to make some disk if needed, but I don't know what to do from there.
Thanks in advance for your help, these forums are great.
Chris

Powermac 5400/200, Mac OS 8.6 or Earlier

Posted on Nov 1, 2006 1:42 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 1, 2006 2:40 PM in response to Chris O

Chris,

Start here and browse through your options:

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

I did not see system 5.3/Finder 3.2, which is what I started with, but all flavors of 6 are there.

Enjoy,

Ji˜m

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Answer 2

Nov 1, 2006 3:22 PM in response to Chris O

This is a cool resource for the ol' Mac.

http://www.mac512.com/index.html

I personally don't know much about Macs that old (I was using an Apple IIgs back then), but someone did a lot of work compiling this information.

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Answer 3

Chris O Author

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Nov 1, 2006 3:56 PM in response to Appaloosa mac man

Thank you for the quick replies, great info in those links. I'll fire up the Indego and try making some floppys, hopefully if all goes well I'll be able to unleash the 8mhz of furry on lemmings!

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Answer 4

Nov 1, 2006 4:27 PM in response to Chris O

The 5400 has a better shot at making compatible 800k floppies. Maybe your iMac has a USB floppy drive, but I don't think it can make 800k Mac floppies.

Let us know how it goes...

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Answer 5

Nov 2, 2006 6:24 AM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

One on this forum has done it with a lot of work-but seems to be very difficult.IF 5400 can connect to internet and uses OS up to 9.1,it's easy to make the disks there. An SE can also make 400 k disks.

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Answer 6

Nov 2, 2006 7:00 AM in response to AppleIIFreak

One addition:
800k Disks(DSDD,one hole) should be used.

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Answer 7

Chris O Author

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Nov 2, 2006 8:23 AM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Woohoo! It took a lot of tinkering but the 512 is running and my little cousain is giving the calculator a work out right now, thanks for the help.

What I ended up doing was using my Toshiba Satillite to grab the 4 system 6.0.3 .bin's and using MacDisk copy them over to mac formated floppys on a usb drive. Then they went to my 5400 and its very touchy floppy drive, 6/10 tries failed to read the disks; but I kept at it untell all the bins were safley stashed on its harddrive. Then the floppys all had the hole oppiste the protection lock taped over, and they were fed back into the 5400 and formated as 800k's. Then it was just a matter of running the diskcopy program. I know the 1.4mb floppys probley won't live very long pretending to be 800k's, but It was worth it just to see the old 512 show the happymac sign.
Heres a pic of the old apple showing its finder version and the calc.
http://img233.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mvc001she3.jpg
Thanks again everyone for helping me out, now if I can just find some neat old games for it lol.

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Answer 8

Nov 2, 2006 8:40 AM in response to Chris O

Taping over the hole on an HD diskette may work for file transfer, but the diskettes will be unstable and the information will decay very quickly.

HD High density diskettes use a different oxide and are, strictly speaking, not compatible with Double Density 2D diskettes.

Apple 800K, Apple 400K and IBM 720 K diskettes are all diskette 2D Double density. They can be easily reformatted back and forth, but diskettes written in 720K format are not directly readable on a 400K or 800K drive. The Apple drive, made by Sony, changes speeds for the inner vs outer tracks.

A "Froogle" search will turn up dozens of seller of genuine 2D diskettes.

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Answer 9

Nov 2, 2006 10:50 AM in response to AppleIIFreak

Actually, this particular Mac 512k came with an external 800k drive. So hopefully, a bootable 800k system disk is all that needs to be created. After booting up the Mac 512k with that disk, it can be used to create a (harder to make) 400k system disk on its own internal drive. Then you'd have a system with a 400k disk for the OS and apps, and a 800k disk for additional apps and storage. For it's time, a "power user" system.

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Answer 10

Nov 2, 2006 12:03 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Support for 400K diskettes MFS - Macintosh [flat] File System was removed at Mac OS 8.0, to simplify support for the impending HFS+ Extended format for large Volumes that was first useable in Mac OS 8.1. Before that, you should be able to format diskettes as 400K MFS.

If I remember correctly, the difference between 400K drives and 800K drives was that the 800K drives had a read/write head on each side, while the 400K drives just had one and recored on one side only. If that is correct, you could probably upgrade your 400K drive with an 800K mechanism and have it "just work".

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Answer 11

Chris O Author

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Nov 3, 2006 8:46 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I don't expect the 1.4mbs to last long as 800ks, but they have held up for the last 3days without a problem so far and worked good just for testing. I'll probley end up buying some real disks for it soon, but for the moment these seem to be okay. I found out that the internal 400k disk drive can also read some of the 1.4mb/800kb disks, my sister typed up a little story in teachtext and saved it on one with out issue while the system disk was on the external 800kb drive.
When trying to transfer some games to the 512 from my 5400 the 5400's floppy drive keeps hicuping and hasn't made a good disk yet. Its real flakey anyways for some reason and has a hard time reading real mac and ibm disks, even its own OS 8.1 Disk Tools disk. So I havent had a chance to play Mario Teaches Typing yet, but maybe soon.

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Answer 12

Nov 3, 2006 11:21 AM in response to Chris O

Try formatting disks with the destination machine instead of the source computer. That sometimes makes a difference for me.

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Answer 13

Chris O Author

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Nov 6, 2006 8:34 PM in response to Appaloosa mac man

Well the 1.4mb disks are still kicking as 800k's, but I would like to find some real 800kbs soon. The only one I have has an error on it and won't format. Does anyone know if the 800kb or 720kb IBMs are still sold anywhere? I spent a good 45 minutes searching google/froogle/yahoo etc with only one retailer that stocked them at $45.00 for a box of 50. Thats a little too much to invest in the little old 512 for me. It sure would be a lot easier if I could put the guts out of a superdrive in that external drive to use the 1.4's, but I doubt that would work.

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Answer 14

Nov 6, 2006 10:03 PM in response to Chris O

No, you can't just insert a 1.4 MB superdrive and have it work as a 1.4 MB drive. It needs a different controller.

Try this search:

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=disketteDS+DD+3.5-HD&btnG=Search&lmode=online&scoring=p

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Answer 15

Chris O Author

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Nov 7, 2006 9:44 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks a ton for that link Grant, I knew I missed something when the searches turned up empty.

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