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Best way to write a 400k System 1.1 disk?
- Thread starter PB145B
- Start date
tanaquil
Well-known member
It depends on what kind of hardware you have.
By far the easiest is to use the FloppyEmu, but of course that involves investing in a unit (which I recommend!). Then you can use a modern computer and an SD card reader to write a dsk image to boot the Plus (and yes, System 1.1 should work if the Plus doesn't have any unusual upgrades).
If you're using physical hardware, you will need a lower-end Mac that can write 400k floppies. (I believe that no windows machine can do this, someone correct me if I'm wrong.) System 7 is flaky with mounting this type of disk and my OS 9 computer won't do it at all. A computer with System 6 or below and an 800k drive is ideal, but I have done it in my IIsi by writing to a floppy in System 7 using a pre-exisiting Disk Copy 4.2 image. You'll also need to use a DS/DD floppy - don't use an HD floppy, it will not be reliable even if the write completes. If you use Disk Copy 4.2 with a 400K disk image, it should be able to format a single-sided disk no problem even in a 1.44-capable drive.
As you can see writing to physical disks in this era can get complicated, which is what makes the FloppyEmu so awesome. But I do enjoy writing to physical floppies and playing with those. I love my FEmu, but nothing beats the sound of real hardware.
By far the easiest is to use the FloppyEmu, but of course that involves investing in a unit (which I recommend!). Then you can use a modern computer and an SD card reader to write a dsk image to boot the Plus (and yes, System 1.1 should work if the Plus doesn't have any unusual upgrades).
If you're using physical hardware, you will need a lower-end Mac that can write 400k floppies. (I believe that no windows machine can do this, someone correct me if I'm wrong.) System 7 is flaky with mounting this type of disk and my OS 9 computer won't do it at all. A computer with System 6 or below and an 800k drive is ideal, but I have done it in my IIsi by writing to a floppy in System 7 using a pre-exisiting Disk Copy 4.2 image. You'll also need to use a DS/DD floppy - don't use an HD floppy, it will not be reliable even if the write completes. If you use Disk Copy 4.2 with a 400K disk image, it should be able to format a single-sided disk no problem even in a 1.44-capable drive.
As you can see writing to physical disks in this era can get complicated, which is what makes the FloppyEmu so awesome. But I do enjoy writing to physical floppies and playing with those. I love my FEmu, but nothing beats the sound of real hardware.
PB145B
Well-known member
Well, sounds like my 800k SE (running System 6.0.8) is going to be the right machine for the job!
The disk images I have downloaded have all been .img. If I had a dc42 image of System 1.1, I’d be set. I’ll do some more looking tonight......
Thanks for your help!
Edit: Yeah, I’m using a bone stock beige Plus (from early 1986). It even still has the stock 1MB of RAM.
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PB145B
Well-known member
Dog Cow
Well-known member
Extension .img is usually a Disk Copy dc42 format. So there's probably no more need to look. ;-)
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tanaquil
Well-known member
Depends on the content of the img. I have downloaded .img files that turned out to be DC 4.2 files (some people use .image as the extension for this), some were DC 6.3 (often identified in Mac OS X as "NDIF images"), and some - many - were files with the contents of their resource forks damaged. Don't quote me on this, because it's something I read a while ago, but I believe that a true DC 4.2 file (file type dImg/dCpy) can survive being stored on a non-resource-fork-aware platform and its functionality restored by restoring the appropriate type code, but a true NDIF image (file type rohd/ddsk) will be damaged beyond repair. Certainly my experience has been that DC 4.2 images have been easier to rescue. I think this is related to the reason why DC 4.2 images work on the Floppy Emu while DC 6.3 images don't. But this stuff is complicated and I have to keep re-learning and testing to see what works.
DiskDup+ images (and their cousins the .dsk images used in emulators and FloppyEmu) are yet another variety. I need to (re)educate myself on this because BMOW posted long ago to explain why .dsk files work better on the FEmu than .image files do even though both are usable. I believe it was because the .dsk images were less vulnerable to corruption (less resource-fork sensitive, among other things).
Anyway, @PB145B , I'll be responding to your PM shortly.
DiskDup+ images (and their cousins the .dsk images used in emulators and FloppyEmu) are yet another variety. I need to (re)educate myself on this because BMOW posted long ago to explain why .dsk files work better on the FEmu than .image files do even though both are usable. I believe it was because the .dsk images were less vulnerable to corruption (less resource-fork sensitive, among other things).
Anyway, @PB145B , I'll be responding to your PM shortly.
BadGoldEagle
Well-known member
I'd say every .dsk image I came across in the last four years worked flawlessly as expected. I actually recommend DiskDup+ to anyone who wants to make or write images to disks. Some versions can even overcome that nasty hardware DRM stuff Apple put on some early disks. (most notably the Guided Tour disks... I've tried numerous times to image those disks properly and all of the images except the DiskDup one were bad. I'm not sponsored by DiskDup+ because clearly, the people and the company who made this are long gone... Although it'd be quite cool if they were still somehow around making software)
Anyway, I didn't know one could damage a .image file by just having it sitting on the desktop doing nothing. Best to keep it .dsk in that case.
To answer the OP's question though, there are really only two or three ways.
1- Floppy emu at the back of a 400k Mac (Pluses count as 400k machines, in my mind. It's just an evolution, not a big step forward.), boot from the image, launch DiskDup+ or DC4.2, duplicate disk and boom. Done.
2- Stuff that image into a .sit file to prevent any corruption from happening (you'll have to use Basilisk or Sheepshaver for that, or an old Mac with network capabilities...), transfer the .sit file to a floppy using a modern-ish computer. Then transfer that .sit to an 800k disk using something like an SE FDHD or any of the compacts made after that (anything I'd say that doesn't run 7.6 or later, I'd say), unstuff that image, and finally use DiskDup or DC4.2 to deploy that image to a 400k floppy. By the way, 800k floppies can be used and formatted as 400ks but you'll damage the top part of the disk by doing so (there's a bit of felt instead of a head on the 400k drive).
3- Skip the floppy transfer thing and use a Jaz or a Zip drive...
4- Did I mention the Floppy emu yet? :wink: That's really by far and away the easiest way. Plus it comes pre-bundled with a bunch of 400k disks so you don't have to do anything but plug it in!
Anyway, I didn't know one could damage a .image file by just having it sitting on the desktop doing nothing. Best to keep it .dsk in that case.
To answer the OP's question though, there are really only two or three ways.
1- Floppy emu at the back of a 400k Mac (Pluses count as 400k machines, in my mind. It's just an evolution, not a big step forward.), boot from the image, launch DiskDup+ or DC4.2, duplicate disk and boom. Done.
2- Stuff that image into a .sit file to prevent any corruption from happening (you'll have to use Basilisk or Sheepshaver for that, or an old Mac with network capabilities...), transfer the .sit file to a floppy using a modern-ish computer. Then transfer that .sit to an 800k disk using something like an SE FDHD or any of the compacts made after that (anything I'd say that doesn't run 7.6 or later, I'd say), unstuff that image, and finally use DiskDup or DC4.2 to deploy that image to a 400k floppy. By the way, 800k floppies can be used and formatted as 400ks but you'll damage the top part of the disk by doing so (there's a bit of felt instead of a head on the 400k drive).
3- Skip the floppy transfer thing and use a Jaz or a Zip drive...
4- Did I mention the Floppy emu yet? :wink: That's really by far and away the easiest way. Plus it comes pre-bundled with a bunch of 400k disks so you don't have to do anything but plug it in!
PB145B
Well-known member
Yeah, I will probably be investing into one of these eventually!
A SCSI Zip drive is very high on my want list! I’ve already got a usb one, so that will make file transfers super easy!
tanaquil
Well-known member
The .image file ought to be ok if it isn't used and never leaves a Mac environment. What I am vaguely remembering (the thread should be on the forums here somewhere, I just can't point to it right now) is that using an image on FloppyEmu, and then trying to open that same image file with DC 4.2 later, will result in the image file reporting as damaged or corrupted when it really isn't. dsk images don't have that problem.
I started out to convert a lot of my .image files to .dsk files for this reason but got distracted and didn't finish the project. It is not difficult but the process was tedious. I never found a way to do it that didn't involve opening, tweaking and re-saving each individual image. It would be really cool to automate the process but I have no idea how.
I had no idea about this! (In other words, you can't format a disk as 400k, use it in a 400k machine and then later re-format as 800k and expect it to work?) As far as I know a previously used 800k disk can be reformatted and used as 400k with no problem. And I haven't had a problem moving 400k disks back and forth between machines.
I have been seeing a lot of floppy disk failures lately. Part of it, I'm sure, is that a lot of my media is old and/or much-reused, but I wonder if using as 400k and later re-formatting as 800k is part of my problem. I do this sometimes when I'm shuffling "spare" floppies back and forth.
ETA: I just took a box of "bad" disks - I was having so many failures that I set a bunch of them aside to experiment further on - and tried re-initializing them in the 512K 400K drive. With the exception of one or two, they initialized flawlessly. I guess from now on I'll know to keep disks that have been formatted as 400k in a separate box.
I wouldn't trust any previously failed disk with mission critical data, but the 512K is just my play/experiment machine anyway. Thanks!
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BadGoldEagle
Well-known member
Me too! Although I think I'd be more of a Jaz man more than anything else.
I have a SCSI2SD so it's already pretty easy to transfer things back and fourth between my Compacts and later PPC Macs. I have an iMac G4 running Tiger (It's the most recent *working* machine I have that can read and write to "standard" HFS) as well as a USB to SD adapter. I use my SCSI2SD mainly for backups. It's the best way to make a proper bootable image of an old hard drive I think. It's so easy and it's faster than the Floppy EMU for large file transfers.
Anyway, I'd like to get hold of one some day, just for funsies.
OK. So that doesn't concern me then... By 'Mac environment', you do mean classic MacOS and OSX/macOS, right?
It'll work just fine for quite some time but if you use that disk with a 400k drive too much, that felt WILL damage/demagnetise the top part of the disk. It won't happen immediately, it'll happen overtime. I think but don't quote me on that, that those early 400k disks had a different type of coating on the top. Since it wasn't meant to be used, I guess they saved a buck by not covering both sides. That's why you can't format them as 800ks. Not all of them are like that though. And the 400k disk was quickly phased out. It lasted what, two years, right? And was used by the 128k, the 512k, the Lisa and the Atari ST only...
Me too... That's really depressing. But for me it's not only the old stuff. I have floppies from the early 2000s that went bad as well!
The worst part is when your disk damages the heads. And you can't really tell beforehand which ones will do that! I should get a standard PC drive just to check that. Would hate junking an original Apple drive...
We're getting a little carried away here. Sorry PB145B for slightly highjacking your thread...
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tanaquil
Well-known member
Yeah, both classic MacOS and OSX are fine as long as you're just storing/copying/moving files.
Beware if you try to FTP directly between the two without stuffing/encoding first, though. I FTP things to/from my MacBook Pro often and learned this the hard way.
It'll work just fine for quite some time but if you use that disk with a 400k drive too much, that felt WILL damage/demagnetise the top part of the disk. It won't happen immediately, it'll happen overtime. I think but don't quote me on that, that those early 400k disks had a different type of coating on the top. Since it wasn't meant to be used, I guess they saved a buck by not covering both sides. That's why you can't format them as 800ks. Not all of them are like that though. And the 400k disk was quickly phased out. It lasted what, two years, right? And was used by the 128k, the 512k, the Lisa and the Atari ST only...
That makes sense. Some of the disks I was trying to reformat were very old floppies that may have been used as 400k disks in the first place (only things that had already been written over, I don't reuse good commercial disks). I inherited a lot of my stuff from people who were trying to declutter their closets and the boxes were full of 400K stuff. And now that you mention it, I vaguely remember hearing that some of the earliest 400k disks were disks that had failed verification on one side and were used by companies that cheaped out.
And yes, sorry for slight thread hijacking. @PB145B, tell us how your System 1.1 adventures go!
PB145B
Well-known member
PB145B
Well-known member
Skate323k137
Well-known member
That is really neat to see. Thanks for sharing the photos!
