How to get data from a Classic Mac to a modern USB Mac?

[RedJacketPress]

I have a customer with a non-functioning Mac SE, who would a back-up of data from the Hard Drive. My understanding is that it powers on, but to a Sad Mac, and I do not yet know anything of the state of the internal Hard Drive. But we'll assume / hope that the Hard Drive is functional.

I also have a working Mac SE. I'm thinking I'll pull the Hard Drive and connect it to the working Mac SE to make sure it's functional, data is accessible, et cetera. Also at my disposal are a RaSCSI / piSCSI, and a Floppy Emu.

If I can get to the point of being able to access the Hard Drive -- what's the best way to get data over to a modern Mac so it can be copied to a USB Hard Drive? It seems like most of the research I did was about getting file to, rather than from, a Classic Mac.

For the RaSCSI / piSCSI, I expect to use that I'll probably have to do this at home (as that's set up with an IP address on my home network, and would be difficult to get up and running in the shop). I have not yet set up the SCSI-to-Ethernet Bridge, though I'm not averse to trying.

I thought the Floppy Emu might be the path of least resistance. I understand it can read and write to Disk Images that can be read by the popular emulators, and I have some running on a Mac mini.

Interested in / grateful for any suggestions!

 

[Kouzui]

I've had no issues with my Floppy Emu HD20 images being read by mini vMac using an sd card adapter. I've also taken those same images, plopped them on a blueSCSI, and run them in my old machines that way. With mini vMac you can boot into the hard disk image, load up whatever floppy images you want, install, and eject when you're done and put it straight back into an old Mac. With an actual hard disk, if you have it plugged into your old Mac while the Floppy Emu is plugged in, they should both load and you could probably just drag and drop whatever files you wanted to save.

The issue that I haven't figured out, and I'm not sure if you're trying to do this, is get files out of the image and onto your actual new Mac hardware. You can interact with the disk image through mini vMac as I've said, but I haven't figured out a way to be able to pull files out of it and onto a newer machine. You might be able to get files across if you have something with OS X Tiger on it, and somehow connect scsi or just move files via floppy disk to that machine, and then to a modern mac, but I haven't tried it.

 

[Snial]

I've had no issues with my Floppy Emu HD20 images being read by mini vMac using an sd card adapter. I've also taken those same images, plopped them on a blueSCSI, and run them in my old machines that way. With mini vMac you can boot into the hard disk image, load up whatever floppy images you want, install, and eject when you're done and put it straight back into an old Mac. With an actual hard disk, if you have it plugged into your old Mac while the Floppy Emu is plugged in, they should both load and you could probably just drag and drop whatever files you wanted to save.

The issue that I haven't figured out, and I'm not sure if you're trying to do this, is get files out of the image and onto your actual new Mac hardware. You can interact with the disk image through mini vMac as I've said, but I haven't figured out a way to be able to pull files out of it and onto a newer machine. You might be able to get files across if you have something with OS X Tiger on it, and somehow connect scsi or just move files via floppy disk to that machine, and then to a modern mac, but I haven't tried it.

HFS Utils? It's available on all Linux systems and modern macOS via homebrew.

How to mount HFS Classic drives on MacOS Catalina and later

Opening old HFS Classic volumes on recent versions of MacOS is easier than you think.

www.matthewhughes.co.uk

 

[ktkm]

I find BasiliskiII useful when handling old disk images and sharing its content with later versions of MacOS.

 

[twelvetone12]

I have set up an FTP server on a linux box and connect to it via a serial cable, MacTCP and MacPPP and download stuff with Fetch. A bit slow and a hassle to get running but I don't need to swap the SD card all the time

 

[LaPorta]

I’ve done some crazy stuff in the past like that. Once….I hooked a SCSI to FW converter to a Classic’s external SCSI port, and hooked up the FW cable to the modern Mac…and it mounted the Classic’s internal HD as if it were an external FW drive. If you have a converter, that could be possible.

 

[Realitystorm]

Easiest would be to boot your friend's SE using your FloppyEMU with a bootable HD20 volume image on you FloppyEMU. Then copy any files from the non-booting HD (assuming it mounts). Next, on a modern system, use one of the multiple tools to get the files of the HD20 volume image. I have some guides on my site. https://www.savagetaylor.com/downloads/downloads-macintosh/

 

[LaPorta]

The assumption was that the SE was not working because of a hard drive issue but a hardware issue…right?

 

[RedJacketPress]

I've pulled the Hard Drive and I have it connected to a known-good Mac SE, where I can mount it and even start up from it. I wasn't able to spend much time with the Floppy Emu, but the next step will likely to be (as recommended above) to create an HD20 volume, copy files over to it, and then find a way to access that image and get to the data, most likely using one of the popular emulation tools.

(To my surprise, the customer's Mac SE actually started up successfully, after I had it open to remove the Battery and Hard Drive -- no Sad Mac!)

 

[RedJacketPress]

I ultimately followed the suggestion of using the FloppyEMU as a bootable HD20 volume, copying files to it and accessing those files with Basilisk II — worked great, customer was overjoyed, and I appreciate the advice.

That said, I‘m curious — was it necessary for me to create a bootable HD20 volume to copy the files to?

Also, I kept running into problems if I tried to copy anything from the System Folder of the Hard Drive to the HD20 image (from which the Mac was booted), even when copying to a new, empty folder and avoiding obvious System files. This caused a “fatal error” on the FloppyEMU, though the HD20 image never unmounted. I don’t recall there being an inability to copy System files, though my familiarity with 68K Macs is not what it was back in the day.

 

[Fred1212]

I use rdmark Debian release from github. Has smb and appletalk server so you can access it from a new iMac which you can use to download software from the net and then copy to debian server which you can access from your older macs via appletak. Works great as you have a repository for all you era macs.