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MacOS 7.7 Prototype Drive Imaging

Johnnya101

Well-known member
It looks like I may be the one honored to image/backup the prototype 6360 IDE drive spoken about in the other thread running System/Mac OS 7.7. I have an external USB IDE enclosure I am planning to use for the task.

How would people like this drive imaged? I have not done older Mac drive imaging before. I have a TiBook G4 available with USB, or multiple Windows 10 PCs. Would this be better done on a Mac or on Windows? And what software do people recommend? Don't want to mess this one up.
 
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Johnnya101

Well-known member
DiskCopy 6.3 should be able to create an image of the disk volume.
Ok, thank you. So I will plan on using the Ti for the task then. I will provide updates when it arrives. I wonder if 7.7 would still be technically considered MacOS 7 still and run on Macs than only went up to 7.6, or if it will be considered 8?
 
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chelseayr

Well-known member
johnnya well this is just 'in theory with no cite' from me but..
I would think that given that basically both 7.6 and 8.0-8.1 were 'fat' and didn't even depend on enablers I suspect that as long as you had a 68040 or any form of ppc it should be able to boot 7.7 natively, but on the other hand a 68030 I would have no idea about as it seem that most of the apple ones topped out at either system 7.5.5 or os 7.6.1 officially (even although a 68030+68882 somewhat isn't too that different from 68040 to the os)
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
Officially, for instance, the IIfx tops out at 7.6.1. It will be interesting to see if it will boot with 7.7. Of course, as you said, the later PPC and 040s should run it fine, but the 030s are what I am interested in to see what happens. I'm guessing it wont run, but we will see.
 

MrFahrenheit

Well-known member
Mac OS 7.7 was OS 8, except for the numbering.

All of the code bits should be the same, and the machines 8.0 requires to run should translate to 7.7.

I was an Apple developer in the 90s and I have various seeds of 7.7 on CDs that Apple mailed out regularly. Sadly since I moved I haven’t been able to find them. They are in a garage completely fully of boxes of stuff, somewhere.
 

David Cook

Well-known member

LaPorta

Well-known member
Johnny, I'd take a copy of that image. Yes, I agree - Disk Copy 6.3 should do nicely.
 

jajan547

Well-known member
It isn't 7.7a2c5 it is simply a2 its I believe a precursor to that image and some of the icons and software on this IDE drive are very different from that one @David Cook had above, it has a built in debugger and various built in programs for shaping the software. There was even some information on unrealeased items I think. Another note is the Hard Drive strictly said "Apple Internal Firmware", neat! I played with it a bit but it's on its way to @Johnnya101 surrounded in about 2 inches of packing foam and about 10 pounds of bubble wrap.
 

bakkus

Well-known member
Wouldn't just doing "dd" using linux make a perfectly good image?
DD doesn't care about file systems and such. And the image can be compressed afterwards for anyone wanting to take a look (and to save jajan some space)
 

Johnnya101

Well-known member
Got the drive today. Currently backing up as a DiskCopy 6 read only image on my TiBook with 9.2.2. just in case. Will that be okay for archiving? If not, does anyone have any other ways they would like it saved? If its with DD on a newer Mac, I would just need step by step instructions, as I really don't want to mess this up.
 

Phipli

Well-known member
Got the drive today. Currently backing up as a DiskCopy 6 read only image on my TiBook with 9.2.2. just in case. Will that be okay for archiving? If not, does anyone have any other ways they would like it saved? If its with DD on a newer Mac, I would just need step by step instructions, as I really don't want to mess this up.
I wouldn't use dd for this it doesn't do any verification, so won't catch it if it misreads. DiskCopy is a good start. I'd compress it with Stuffit 5.5 or 6 then, before sending it to someone else so there are copies in two places.

Thank you for sorting it :) I'd be interested in a copy if you can do an upload to mac garden or a google drive share or something? Assuming it isn't full of personal data.
 

jajan547

Well-known member
I wouldn't use dd for this it doesn't do any verification, so won't catch it if it misreads. DiskCopy is a good start. I'd compress it with Stuffit 5.5 or 6 then, before sending it to someone else so there are copies in two places.

Thank you for sorting it :) I'd be interested in a copy if you can do an upload to mac garden or a google drive share or something? Assuming it isn't full of personal data.
I think that’s be awesome!!!
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I’d love a copy. Using DiskCopy in my opinion is the best way to make it easily accessible on its target machine. Using dd, raw images and all that won’t make it easy to open on a System 7.x Mac.
 
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