7.5.3 Network Access Disks

[Cory5412]

Ah, I missed that bit.

Any reason why a boot CD can't be used with a PowerPC or very late '040 machine? The 580 and most PowerPCs that are from 1994 and newer have CD-ROM drives. Plus, I know a lot of us have one or two externals and the necessary cables + termination equipment to hook said external to any given machine we're using.

At 1440k for a floppy, it's not like you're going to be doing too terribly much with the remaining space once you get 7.5.3 and any necessary network access stuff on there. (Presumably you'd want localtalk and ethertalk, and if I were making a wish-list, it would have an AppleShare over IP client as well, so I could access shares on a netatalk, Mac OS X, or Windows NT/2000/2003 server without worrying about the complete network infrastructure.

 

[Charlieman]

Any reason why a boot CD can't be used with a PowerPC or very late '040 machine?

You may, but anything that needs to write to the boot disk may fail. Try booting from CD and connecting to an AppleShare server.

 

[Mk.558]

I'm beginning to believe I'm going to have to find room for the Memory/Startup Disk CDEVs.

If someone has 16MB of RAM, that's more than enough to load a RAM disk and have some working space. Freeing up the FDD slot is a real priority, since System 6 was the last OS to work fine off a single floppy slot (sort of). System 7.0 is so bad it's not even funny...like 7-8 times swapping just to mount the 2nd disk on the desktop.

Last time I had some time to work on this, ResCompare crashed before it got to the gpch resources. I'll have to move down the line manually to figure what resource is causing the hiccup. Memory? Nah fixed that by increasing its allocation from 2048K which was the Preferred size it suggested to 8192K. If that's not enough the iBook has 640MB RAM in it, 40 of which is used, so figure 590 to spare

Kinda funny because when I dumped all the resources in one go the first time, which by my ignorance just made 7.5.3 System into a 7.5 whole and through, it didn't crash at all. tsk

You won't be able to fit an AppleShare over IP client in. In fact, I'm not aware of such an application. I could also work on a bootable CD image which is meant to be dumped into a RAM disk. Should be able to make such a thing fiddling with this thing and cram it all into ...say, 8MB?

Anything New-World (aka G3) is going to be on your own...

 

[Mk.558]

YEEE HAWWW

I tried transferring all the resources that don't exist on the 7.5NAD to the 7.5.3DT, and well, it crashes...and when I applied everything as well as I could, it takes up too much space. grrrr

Soooo I found some hints on Google about some Aladdin Resource Compression Toolkit. Huh. Further google-foo turned up LZWRes from umich.edu's Mac archive...which ---- is a resource compression scheme which *glances at the readme* uses the LZW scheme.

What we'll do next is that we'll use the 7.5.3 Disk Tools System folder as a host, and we'll use the 7.5.3 CD Install to add File Sharing capabilities to it. Then we'll trash the fat, figure out what changed in ResCompare and compress the differences.

*sighs deeply*

EDIT: A bit ago I mounted a RAM disk and used the CD Install to "install" the Memory and Startup control panels. It handily included a System file that was 61k with some resources. Sooo that means I'll see that IF I have enough room left, I may be able to cram that stuff in. I'll need some testers.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

I'm sorry to hear that transferring the 7.5 NAD resources into the 7.5.3 DT didn't work for you. Anything is worth exploring at this point.

The System 7.5 NAD's extra resources are not the same as the respective resources in the full system 7.5. So using the 7.5.3 installer on top of the 7.5.3 disk tools disk is not similar to the method that Apple used to make the 7.5 NAD. It's possible that the 7.5 NAD's extra resources are from an older system or maybe they were even created specifically for the NAD disk. Maybe it was space, maybe something else, but I'm sure they had a good reason.

An alternate approach would be to take the 7.5 NAD and systematically update it towards 7.5.3 by replacing its resources from the 7.5.3 DT a little at a time, trying to keep it bootable and keep the networking going. At some point along the line, it may turn into some sort of PPC-bootable hybrid disk, part 7.5, part 7.5.3.

 

[Mk.558]

Well progress has stalled because opening the Network control panel on even a Minimal Install of 7.5.3 freezes the computer.

I'll have to wait until I get my SE/30 logic boards back.

I am convinced there is a way to do it, but it won't be exactly "easy". It doesn't help that the devs of the System back then are gone for good, and any innate knowledge required to make such a thing is going to be as dust in the wind. I still have no idea why they didn't build two disks, a 7.5.3 PPC and a 7.5.3 68K. I mean 7.5 works for all the 68Ks, but so does System 6, and System 6 is WAY better in such an application. But nearly all the PPCs require 7.5.3+, so 7.5 is pointless. Unless, of course, you have an '040, as '040s don't run System 6.

The way I'll try it out next time is with the SE/30, installing onto a RAM disk a Minimal Install for this Mac. The fun part lies in figuring out what exact extensions are needed, and compressing them. LZWRes can do that, but as resources. We don't have the know-how to integrate extensions into the System itself, then compress them. With resource compression, the compressed data is stored on disk, but decompressed into memory and retained there, perfect for such FDs.