Best way to archive vintage Mac floppies & CD's to images

[pcamen]

Absolutely.  I am hoping to fit this into my normal work day, swapping disks as I continue to do other work, but I've got several Lombards which can multi-task the CD archiving part.  The floppy part is pretty quick with Applesauce. 

 

[LaPorta]

I did it on my off time, while having a family to attend to.

Your turnaround time will likely be shorter.

 

[pcamen]

Oh yea, so glad summer is over, my productivity with a 5, 8, and 10 year old banging around the house was terrible, working from home as I do. 

 

[LaPorta]

Didn't realize it was from home...oof.

 

[0xABE]

The Macintosh Repository has some info regarding images and tools here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/articles/75-how-to-mount-a-disk-image-under-mac-os-7-8-or-9

 

[pcamen]

The Macintosh Repository has some info regarding images and tools here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/articles/75-how-to-mount-a-disk-image-under-mac-os-7-8-or-9

Incredibly helpful, thanks. 

 

[pcamen]

Oh silly me - Applesauce can't yet do HD / MFM disks.  I thought it could.  I large number of my "failures" are simply HD / 1.44 floppies. 

 

[pcamen]

I guess I'll pull my PB 540c back into the mix to do HD floppies.  Lombard isn't good for that, even with a VSD drive as it can't run DC 4.2. 

 

[olePigeon]

An actual installation instructional video was finally released for Applesauce (or rather, I only noticed it now.)  I missed a step because I couldn't find any good directions, and I didn't notice a critical part in the reference picture I had used.  I never stuck on the little black piece that goes under the sensor.  So I'll need to reupload my flux dumps.

 

[pcamen]

An actual installation instructional video was finally released for Applesauce (or rather, I only noticed it now.)  I missed a step because I couldn't find any good directions, and I didn't notice a critical part in the reference picture I had used.  I never stuck on the little black piece that goes under the sensor.  So I'll need to reupload my flux dumps. 

You mean the magnet that you cut off the small magnet strip, yes? 

Yea, that would be pretty essential to the sync sensor working.   The tool has a test mode that will tell you if the sync sensor is working.  You can manually spin the platter and see it show a sync signal whenever the magnet is under the sync sensor. 

 

[Cory5412]

The Macintosh Repository has some info regarding images and tools here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/articles/75-how-to-mount-a-disk-image-under-mac-os-7-8-or-9

Good reference, but the underlying problem that made this article necessary should be fixed. Toast is nice to have around, and can burn ISO files which we've made available for modern computers (such as some I keep on my modern web server for OS install media) but it shouldn't need to be part of the standard loadout.

Part of my interest in this thread is that i think we as a community should be deciding on, at minimum:

• Image format(s) for using files directly on vintage machines, using a community respository like vtools
  
• image format(s) for archival onto a site like Internet Archive
  
• Image format(s) and techniques for any "complicated" CD-ROMs, such as multiplatform discs or discs that contained both data and CD-Audio.
  

Ideally, in the long run, we would find things like shrinkwrap images in particular and convert them into formats that are easier to use. (In practice: this means dc42 for older floppies and NDF/DC6x for newer floppies and any simple CDs, plus either ISO or bin/cue for complicated CDs, and ISO for CDs where it would be relevant to burn them from a modern computer.)

The reason I say this is that, VTools for example, might not end up being the best place for flux images, both because space limitations and because ofthe practical aspects of needing specialized knowledge and tools to use them.

On the other hand, I know that the "serious archivist" types don't believe NDIF images are good enough for archival, so it's important to think of them as separate tasks.

 

[Cory5412]

Here's Mac Repository's preferred formats: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/articles/65--preferred-formats-for-software-preservation

I'll be honest, pursuant to my post above, I hate that they've decided that Toast should be the defacto format for vintage CDs.

 

[olePigeon]

@pcamen Yeah, the magnet.   Hehe.  Well, I installed the magnet and made new flux images.  This time the sensor spit out errors as it came across the copy protection.  Something it didn't do before.  John from AppleSauce said he'll try to add the copy protection schemes to the next release of AppleSauce.  Apparently I discovered a new type of copy protection he hadn't seen yet on my Ferrari disk.

@Cory5412 Toast doesn't require separate .cue and .bin files that can be lost.  Unfortunately .toast isn't an open format, so using a proprietary format for archival seems like a dumb move.

Incidentally, is there any software for classic System 7 or newer that can create and/or burn .cue/.bin files?  I remember this being an issue for ... well, for ever.

 

[olePigeon]

A bin/cue app for System 7+ would be invaluable.

 

[Cory5412]

Toast doesn't require separate .cue and .bin files that can be lost.  Unfortunately .toast isn't an open format, so using a proprietary format for archival seems like a dumb move.

Well, and that's my point entirely, regarding using Disk Copy NDIF for smple images, ISO for things that need to be burned on modern computers, or bin/cue for multi-session/crossplatform/hybrid discs.

Granted, finding reputable bin/cue apps even for modern Mac OS X isn't particularly easy. I don't even know what's accepted on Linux/Windows these days, to be honest. @Alex or @balrog might have some recommendations, which we can put on, say, a vtools page or a 68kMLA wiki page.

 

[uyjulian]

cdrdao can be used to create bin/cue on Linux and macOS

 

[pcamen]

Speaking of toast, I am trying to mount this image of a MacAdvocate CD from archive.org in toast on Sheepshaver.  I suppose there is always a possibility the image is bad, but I don't think so.  I was able to mount it using Disk Image Mounter under Mojave, and I was able to burn the image to a CD using Toast 15 or something. 

But for some reason, I get an error when I try to mount the image in OS 9.1 in SheepShaver using either Toast 4.x or 5.x. 



Any ideas?

BTW, speaking of PITA stuff with disk imaging and what not, I downloaded Toast from the Macintosh Garden and had a heck of a time getting it installed in SheepShaver.  Quite a few of the .sit archives I downloaded and then unzipped with Stuffit within the VM ended up corrupt.  I actually had better luck unstuffing in Mojave with the Unarchiver and then running in the VM.  Very strange (and annoying). 

 

[pcamen]

Well, the burned image worked perfect on a Lombard with CD drive, so not sure why Toast is having an issue. 

 

[quorten]

Hey @Dog Cow, earlier in this thread (and a few other places in the 68kMLA forums) you've mentioned you're working on TeleDisk to send disk images over a serial connection.  Do you have a link to that and a source code repository?

I've also written a similar program for that particular purpose.  It worked for me, but it is much more mundane than what you have in the works, a single K&R C source file:

 
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/quorten/bpc-play/09b056a253ad2a97bcd18c76c1e3e5ec4bf1b298/asman-0.2/src/Super/macimgxfer.c
 
Elsewhere in the forums I also saw mention of another Teledisk... presumably not the same thing that you're working on.  Here there is also mention of ImageDisk as a replacement for Teledisk.

http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/teledisk.htm

 
In any case, I'd be interested in where to look for a good base project of this kind to build more advanced features into.  The network boot idea would be a great idea to explore in a larger project, but for my own project, I decided that should be out of scope.

 

[Dog Cow]

Hey @Dog Cow, earlier in this thread (and a few other places in the 68kMLA forums) you've mentioned you're working on TeleDisk to send disk images over a serial connection.  Do you have a link to that and a source code repository?

TeleDisk is still a work in progress. I'm working on MacBinary encoding for sending single files. I had hoped to release TeleDisk in August, but now it'll be good if it comes out at all this year. :-/