Blessing the System File in OS 7.5.5

[GerrySch]

Okay, I'm officially pissed.  I thought what I had done was fine but now I appear to have screwed myself so I need some help.  Here's what's going on.

I replaced the System drive in my LC475 with an SCSI22SD version 5B and a 32GB SD card.  Of course I know I would have to partition the card and since the SCSI2SD card supports 4 separate SCSI IDs, I spread the storage across all 4 IDs of 8GBs each.  It took a while but it worked and I had 12 drives on the desktop (ID 0 had four 2GB (approximately) partitions and two 32MB ProDOS partitions for the Apple IIe card; IDs 1 through 3 had two 4GB partitions each).  I am running OS 7.5.5.

It worked fine.  But then I decided to add SCSI devices, a CD-ROM, external HD and an Asante EN/SC ethernet adapter and that consumed the rest of my SCSI IDs.  Okay, I have no plans to add more SCSI devices so I'm good.  But then I decide to put in a new SD card and install OS 8.1 and I learn I can have 8GB(?) HFS partitions under this OS.  But that means I will waste SCSI IDs if I build the partitions that big.  The firmware in the SCSI2SD card holds the SCSI ID assignments so I have to reprogram it if I want to change my setup.

Sooo, I pull the SCSI2SD card out and blow away the other SCSI ID assignments and put the entire SD card under ID 0.  I was wondering if Apple's partitioning software would support so many partitions but, as it turns, out it does.  I copied my MacHD boot partition to two different locations along with whatever was on the other partitions.  I reassign all the storage to ID 0 and made the first partition less than 2GBs in size, built two ProDOS partitions, and added 7 more 4GB partitions.

I restored the first partition successfully but the 7.5.5 system file is a regular file.  Also during booting, the Mac reports this is a floppy disk installation and pleas perform a full install.  What? That doesn't make sense so since the system file is a plain directory icon, it must be needing a blessing.  So I look up how to bless the system file.  I move the System suitcase and Finder out of the System folder and back in.  No change.  I move these two files from the system folder and put them in the root directory by placing them on the MacHD desktop icon and then move them back to the system file, but still no change.

So I wasn't sure if perhaps the boot drive partition is too big (it's 1979845.5K).  So I go through a full install of OS 7.5.3 and upgraded to 7.5.5.  The system folder has a little mac icon in it so it now boots properly.

So what am I doing wrong?  How do I bless my original system folder so it boots like it did before I started screwing around with it?  How do I back up my system drive and restore it to proper working order if I have to restore?  This part of the Mac OS always confused me.

I still haven't done my OS 8.1 install yet.  What do I need to be aware of when I move this OS over to the new partitioning?

Thank you for your time and help,

Gerry

 

[just.in.time]

Rebuild the desktop file. You do this by holding down option and command right as you hit power. Keep holding until desktop loads and it asks if you want to rebuild. This may fix your problem.

 

[GerrySch]

Thank you just.in.time for your suggestion.  I tried it and rebuilt the desktop files all Mac partitions.  But no change with the system file.  It's still a plain subdirectory icon.

Gerry

 

[rickrob]

Not sure about this but try booting off a floppy or CD, with Startup Disk on it, then use Startup Disk to Select the SCSI2SD partition.

'System Picker' might help with that too. That's an old shareware app that allowed booting multiple systems.

 

[GerrySch]

Thanks rickrob, I tried booting from a floppy and used the Startup Disk to select the first partition but it made no difference.  It didn't fix the System Folder.  I haven't tried 'System Picker' yet.

What I did do was reinstall 7.5.3 from floppy and upgrade to 7.5.5.  The using the "Installing a Modern System 7.5.5" by Tyler Sable posted on the Internet, I updated to Open Transport 1.1.2, installed TCP/IP Networking Tools, QT 4.0.3, Appearance Manager 1.0.3 and Java support.  So, I'm back up and running but this raises a very important question.  How do I back up this OS installation and have it restore properly if copying the files to another partition destroys the System File?

I just purchased a SCSI2SD V6 card that I want to install in an external SCSI case for backup.  It is presently bootable from the HD so if I need to startup from there.  But how can I protect the System Folder when I migrate from the physical drive to the SD card?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Gerry

 

[just.in.time]

I'd give it another try of copying the entire drive. I've never once had the issue you ran into. Hopefully it was just a strike of bad luck corruption. Make sure the drive you copy to is formatted as HFS.

 

[rickrob]

I'd give it another try of copying the entire drive. I've never once had the issue you ran into. Hopefully it was just a strike of bad luck corruption. Make sure the drive you copy to is formatted as HFS.

Same here-- never had an issue. I just copied the entire drive over to an external hard drive, then back once the new drive was installed.

Gerry-- I have a utility that I just found on a 92' Developer CD. It's called 'Blesser'.  I can send you that if you want. It might help if you run into the problem again.

 

[GerrySch]

There is a wrinkle I thought of this morning that I haven't mentioned because I thought it shouldn't matter.  The external SCSI backup HD is less than a gigabyte in size so I don't have any place to put all my copied files locally.  With a IIe card mounted, the LC475 ethernet network connection is through an Asante EN/SC SCSI I/F.  I've set up file sharing through Appleshare with my iMac G3 running 9.2.2 so it's system drive is available to the LC475 and I backed up my files there.  Could this make a difference?  I would think not as Appleshare would mask the type of connection and be transparent to the Finder application.  

Am I wrong here?

Thank you,

Gerry

 

[rickrob]

I don't think copying the files to a shared drive would make a difference. As long as there were no network issues, it should be fine.

 

[GerrySch]

I wanted to update this for everyone.  I decided to take a different tack on this issue and work with SCSI drives to see if it would make a difference.  So I ordered a SCSI2SD version 5 and version 6 adapters to see if they would work any better than the backups I was doing before.  Yesterday, I programmed the v6 SCSI2SD card for one SCSI ID (1) and tried to use Drive Setup to partition the 64 GB SD card for four sections.  No matter what I did Drive Setup would fail partitioning the SD card.  Yes I did program the SCSI ID to be a Seagate vender (w/ one space first), the product ID to ST225N (w/ ten spaces first), and the revision to 1.0 (w/ one space after).  It appears version 6 of the SCSI2SD card is not compatible with a Mac LC475.  So I installed the version 5 card and it worked just fine.  Just to note both SCSI2SD cards don't require external power.  They both run fine from the power supplied by the SCSI bus itself.

Anyway, after partitioning the external SCSI2HD and initializing, I copied OS 7.5.5 over to the new drive and the copied System Directory was blessed!  I tried booting with no problems.  I did the same thing with my OS 8.1 installation and it too copied over and booted with no issues.  I wish I knew what was going on.

This is so confusing.  Sometimes it works and other times it doesn't.  What's the deal?

Gerry

 

[GerrySch]

Final update on this topic.  With all the shenanigans I've been doing with the SCSI2SD I/F and the LC475, my ProDOS partitions have been copied a lot and the Apple IIe card would no longer boot from them.  After scratching my head a bit, I made copies of the partitions and booted the IIe card from an Apple II Utilities 3.5 disk and formatted the 32 MB ProDOS partition.  Then I deleted everything on the partition except for the PRODOS file and copied everything back except for the PRODOS file and now the Apple IIe card boots from that partition.  So my LC475 appears to be up and running at 100%.

As a side note, I seen entries reporting that the Mac OS doesn't handle ProDOS files properly.  I've had no issues except not being able to boot from a ProDOS partition after copying files and the above procedure corrects that problem.  If there are other issues that I'm not aware of, I'd love to test them on my system to see if I can duplicate them.  I also have 01 and 03 Apple IIgs(es) that are fully functional so I can test both sides of the equation.

I'm doing some speed mods to the LC475 motherboards that I will post soon.

Thanks,

Gerry