Am I too dumb to burn a pre-OSX CD?

[MrFahrenheit]

I burned 3 different bootable 8.5 CDs from the ISO file I extracted and uploaded.

One using Toast on Mac OS 9. Another using a MacBook Pro, MacOS 11.7 and Finder built-in burn, and one using ImgBurn on Windows 10.

All are 80min/700MB CDRs. I burned them at maximum possible speed just to add some possibility of failure. They all boot, and all are HFS Standard volumes.

The ISO that I extracted has a few more bytes (about 1MB) more than the one on Macintosh Garden. Likely the boot driver and partition is missing on the MG English ISO.

 

[Phipli]

Then I got out my Linux notebook out and tried the same (yes I have hfsutils installed), downloaded the OS 8.5 again.

You don't need hfsutils to burn a HFS image from linux, you're just burning raw data to a CD.

You keep telling us what OS you're using, but not what disk image or burning software, and no mention of settings.

Just follow these instructions.

1. Delete all copies of the disk images from your Mavericks computer
2. Download this : https://mega.nz/folder/gSEVVSIK#e0oHPp74M7MwxJEIL5CrMw
3. Burn it using the Finder. Not any other program. Just the Finder. Don't mount it. Don't open it. Just burn it with the Finder. As slow as it will allow.
4. Boot your 6400 from it by holding the 'c' key while starting the computer with the disk in the drive.

Screenshot every step of the process and share the screenshots. Every step, not some of them, all of them. You are doing something wrong. We're 81 replies into this thread and other users have successfully burnt at least 5 bootable CDs and told you how, and you're still failing. Seriously.

 

[Mk.558]

If only there was some way to upvote that string of images on the previous page from our friend MrFahrenheit here. You gave me a healthy rewind back to 2003 and 56k!

I highly doubt the SSD / CompactFlash storage is a culprit here. A UDMA/Fixed Disk Mode enabled CF card will not have compatibility problems, and since they're usually SLC Flash, they can handle abuse a bit better than MLC Flash does.

A Linux machine wouldn't have changed the burn process. dd on OS X or Linux is going to function the same regardless of the operating system. The only time I've had issues with dd is for specific operations outside of what this post is about (specifically, I had to limit the block size to 1MB when I was fooling around with a Nook Simple Touch rooting operation).

(Oh, and ugh, besides the one time where I got of= outputing to the wrong /dev/ path and overwrote the first 50-ish MB of hard disk space before I realized what happened.)

Worst case scenario here, you just...load up an emulator and have it install Mac OS onto a temporary volume. Then you can pack it all up into a self extracting file, get it out of the virtual disk, shuffle it over the network, unpack it, bless the system folder and party.

 

[robin-fo]

I also want to see screenshots. Otherwise I won‘t believe you. There is zero reason that your CDs are formatted Mac OS Extended if you carefully follow our instructions and advice.

I more and more believe that you just drag files over and think this would bless a System Folder like on a floppy disk. This is not true for CDs. You need the invisible driver partitions on the CD to be bootable.

 

[Phipli]

I more and more believe that you just drag files over and think this would bless a System Folder like on a floppy disk. This is not true for CDs. You need the invisible driver partitions on the CD to be bootable.

Or a troll wasting our time

 

[MrFahrenheit]

I also want to see screenshots. Otherwise I won‘t believe you. There is zero reason that your CDs are formatted Mac OS Extended if you carefully follow our instructions and advice.

I more and more believe that you just drag files over and think this would bless a System Folder like on a floppy disk. This is not true for CDs. You need the invisible driver partitions on the CD to be bootable.

Which is exactly why a lot of “ISO images” on sites like the Macintosh garden or Macintosh suppository are bad - the uploader inserted a CD and chose to image the mounted volume, and not the actual full CDROM device itself.

 

[Phipli]

Which is exactly why a lot of “ISO images” on sites like the Macintosh garden or Macintosh suppository are bad - the uploader inserted a CD and chose to image the mounted volume, and not the actual full CDROM device itself.

Yeah, I've heard of people unsitting System folders on windows and dragging the files to a DOS floppy disk, but that's a worst case and probably not what we have here.

I suspect there are multiple issues, made worse by the lack of clarity / screenshots / details of what files and settings. While also only replying to some questions and not others making it impossible to close out possible issues.

With the outside chance it is a troll using an AI to produce "plausable" answers to us that lack substance.

 

[LaPorta]

At this point I only have two semi-useful things to say:

1: You’re doing something wrong, because it works for everyone else.

2: At this point, you may as well just have one of us mail you a disc. It will make this easier.

 

[bigmessowires]

I more and more believe that you just drag files over and think this would bless a System Folder like on a floppy disk. This is not true for CDs. You need the invisible driver partitions on the CD to be bootable.

I'm voting for this explanation.

 

[MacJunky]

Which is exactly why a lot of “ISO images” on sites like the Macintosh garden or Macintosh suppository are bad - the uploader inserted a CD and chose to image the mounted volume, and not the actual full CDROM device itself.

I went through this issue not too long ago and have a stack of non-bootable discs to show for it. Eventually someone pointed me to some images posted to help out BlueSCSI users and those worked.
Another thing I have noticed over the years is that with my particular PCs and drives, burning at higher speeds has always worked better than burning at a slower speed when trying to use the discs with older machines. Despite everyone being horrified at this concept, it works for me.

 

[LaPorta]

Another thing I have noticed over the years is that with my particular PCs and drives, burning at higher speeds has always worked better than burning at a slower speed when trying to use the discs with older machines. Despite everyone being horrified at this concept, it works for me.

Which in a way echos my experience. I’ve never understood that. Each and every disc I’ve ever burned has always been at “Maximum Possible” for whatever drive I’ve used, and they have all worked just fine.