Oooold Floppy format

JFASI,

"Oooold Floppy format"

Some of us are so Oooold that we use RV anti-freeze in our veins in the winter time so we do not get cOooold.

We remember when System 5.3 (or was it Finder 5.3, System 3.2 - I forget) was new. ( Of all the things I miss, I miss my mind the most.)

Seriously, you will want to find Apple File Exchange and use it to convert files to PC format and save those files to a PC floppy disk. If you run accross a program called Passport, it was the beta verson that leaked out to unofficial beta testers. Either program will do just fine in creating files readable by a PC.

Saving files first as text or RTF would provide the best guarantee of success.

Ji˜m

Let the PC format the disk and then see if the Mac will read the foreign disk.

If you can boot from a System 7.x disk with PC Echange, that will help the diagnostic process. As long as the disk drive is in good working order and the PC Exchange extension is loaded your Classic should see the disk. Try a couple of disks to make sure you are not fighting defective disks.

If you have a newer Mac available, save files as text or Apple File Exchange to a Mac disk, move it to the hard drive of a newer Mac and then to the PC floppy. What resources do you have, just the Mac Classic?

By the way, apple file exhchange must be running before the PC disk is inserted into the computer.

What type of floppy disks did you use. Back in that era there were two types - 800K & 1.44MB (2HD).

There are some 3rd party USB floppy disk readers that will read 1.44MB floppies, but not 800K floppies. Newer (but still old) Macs & PCs that have internal floppy drives will only read 1.44MB floppies.

What application(s) was/were used to make the files?

 Cheers, Tom

Floppy drive controllers are different from IDE Master/Slave hard drive controllers. Texas makes a good point about making sure you have the right floppy. The Classic will use the 1.44 IBM disks so be sure and use them.

If you can't get the floppies to work, have you considered either stuffing the files to a .sit and emailing them to yourself as attachments, then downloading them to the computer of choice? Or alternatively, you could ftp them to online storage space (using a program like an older version of Transit from www.panic.com or Interarchy or Fetch, and then downloading them from the computer of choice.

As far as I remember you can use AppleFileExchange with system 6 to transport the files to PC using Mac to MSDOS. Did this to transport files to my MS-DOS machine(text-files only)

The original Mac 400K single sided diskette was based on a SONY mechanism that crammed more onto the diskette by varying the speed of the drive. No other manufacturer copied that idea. Later, the two-sided version held 800K. PC equivalents (without the variable speed feature) held only 720K and neither drive could read the other's data.

The FDHD (Floppy Disk High Density), built-into Macs after the Mac II line and optional on some of them, could read and write 1.4 MB diskettes in both Mac and PC format. In addition, it could read and write 720K (PC format) and 800K (Mac format) diskettes.

External USB diskettes are PC-equivalent drives, and can read and write 1.4 MB diskettes only.

There are two distinct types of diskette media. They use different oxides, and are NOT interchangeable. Do not even think about punching out an extra hole or taping over the second hole to "fool" the drive into using the other diskette type. Your data will be unstable and disappear quickly.

The Mac will read and write Mac and PC and other formats right out of the Box.

The PC will read its own format, sometimes. As far as PCs are concerned, other systems do not exist. If you need a PC to read it, the diskette must be formatted for a PC. [System 7 and later Macs will happily store their files on a PC-formatted diskette. Older systems must have just the right extensions in place and active.]

JFASI
You mention 'backup', which is always a wise move, and it is implied(?) that you will keep the Classic to use the backup files if it is ever necessary to restore them. This latter consideration takes account of the awkward fact that few later Macs will necessarily support the applications that created the files in the first place.

Given the effort involved in using either later Macs or PCs as the repositories of your backups, why not consider the least-fuss alternative of acquiring an external SCSI drive for attachment to the Classic? In that way there will be no file format translations and no disk format puzzles to consider.