How to make GS/OS boot disks?

[Retro Rider]

I have 2 Apple IIGS's recently without a hard drive or boot disk and the drive I got only reads 800k disks and I know you can format a 1.4 MB disk by putting tape on one of the wholes but idk how to put a GS/OS image on there or where to find one, so how do I do it and is there a better, cheaper way of doing it?

 

[Dog Cow]

You can use Disk Copy 4.2 on a Macintosh to make the disk. But I recall you use Windows, right? Someone could always send you a bootdisk in the mail. That's the old-fashioned way of solving this problem. ;-)  

 

[Retro Rider]

You can use Disk Copy 4.2 on a Macintosh to make the disk. But I recall you use Windows, right? Someone could always send you a bootdisk in the mail.




1

I have a mac, I'll have to get that though. Would that be on a new Mac or old? I have a MacBook Pro (Running MacOS High Sierra of course), I have Windows through Virtualbox.

 

[jefframsey]

Do you have a serial cable and a serial to USB adapter? If so, you can bootstrap the IIgs into ProDos/ADTPro and then make the disks on your IIgs. Download and install ADTPro to your modern computer, connect the serial port on the IIgs to your USB adapter and then connect that to USB on your modern computer. Download the GS/OS images and put them in the disks folder under the ADTPro application, and then follow the guide here: http://adtpro.com/bootstrap.html

This is how I did it. It took about 10 minutes, start to finish.

 

[Dog Cow]

Do you have a serial cable and a serial to USB adapter? If so, you can bootstrap the IIgs into ProDos/ADTPro and then make the disks on your IIgs.

Agreed. This is also a good solution!

You would need an old Mac, a 1997 Power Mac G3 or older, to use Disk Copy to make disks.

 

[Retro Rider]

You would need an old Mac, a 1997 Power Mac G3 or older, to use Disk Copy to make disks.




 

Good, because I just got a beige PowerMac G3 (the desktop, looks like this) is there a download link?

 

[Retro Rider]

Do you have a serial cable and a serial to USB adapter? If so, you can bootstrap the IIgs into ProDos/ADTPro and then make the disks on your IIgs.




 

No, I don't and I don't really wanna spend the money and time waiting for the cable. But I have heard of that.

 

[Retro Rider]

No, I don't and I don't really wanna spend the money and time waiting for the cable. But I have heard of that.

About that, I found some online, but the type of serial it is, it would go into the printer port, and Idk if that'll work. Here's the cable I'm looking at, it would go to the printer port, but I don't think that takes data, but can someone please verify? Also, eBay says it'll get here between June 25- July 10 but I want something faster

 

[Dog Cow]

I bought my USB-to-serial adapter from RetroFloppy. Good deal, and you're supporting the Apple community too.

 

[Dog Cow]

Good, because I just got a beige PowerMac G3 (the desktop, looks like this) is there a download link?

Great! That is one of the best computers ever! Try Disk Copy 6.3.3 on that machine. You can read and write ProDOS floppy disks with the G3.

 

[Retro Rider]

Great! That is one of the best computers ever! Try Disk Copy 6.3.3 on that machine.

What type of files does this read, I've mainly seen .2mg files if it does something else, can you please send me an image with the correct format, please? I guess I'll have to connect it to the internet, I had a wifi extender, but that broke.

You can read and write ProDOS floppy disks with the G3.

I've kinda seen that, but I really want GS/OS

 

[Dog Cow]

What type of files does this read, I've mainly seen .2mg files if it does something else, can you please send me an image with the correct format, please?

I've kinda seen that, but I really want GS/OS

Disk Copy works with Disk Copy and Dart images, these are typically of .dc42 or .img file extension. Yes, you want GS/OS, but the file system that it uses is still ProDOS.

 

[Retro Rider]

I can't find a GS/OS disks in .dc42 or .img that's 800k. I found mostly .po and .2mg files, I found some .dsk and one .sdk, but no .dc42's or .img's

 

[Dog Cow]

They exist. My problem is I have this collection called Mac GUI Vault which has too many files so sometimes it's hard to find things. But if all else fails, I can convert the images to work with Disk Copy. Should have time to do this this evening.

Apple distributed those disk images in Disk Copy format (because 2mg and po formats were invented many years later for emulators). You'll find them on Apple software compilation CDs, and maybe some other sites too, such as Apple Older Software Downloads.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Apple's software downloads were Disk Copy 4.2 images compressed in self extracting archives.

 

[Gorgonops]

I've kinda seen that, but I really want GS/OS

Just throwing this out there: GS/OS really doesn't work on a floppy-only machine, especially GS/OS 6.x. It's technically *possible* to sort of run it with disk swapping but it's not very practical.

Not to drone on about it too much, but my favorite solution for dealing with a GS without boot media is a2server (available as a pre-packaged VM or easy to install on a Linux PC or Raspberry Pi) plus some sort of Localtalk to Ethernet bridge. With this you can boot *over the network* into a fully-functional GS/OS 6.x installation and use it (with some limitations) just as if it were installed on a hard disk.

In theory you could run the VM for this on your modern Mac or PC, but without a Localtalk bridge that doesn't help you. Apple distributed some free software to use an Ethernet-equipped Mac as a bridge, but this says the G3 won't work. You can get a stand-alone bridge off of eBay, but how much one will cost on a given day is a big question mark.

 

[Dog Cow]

RetroRider: I have located Disk Copy 4.2 images of all GS/OS 6.0.1 install disks and made a zip file. Send me an email (see my address in sig) and I will send it to you.

 

[Retro Rider]

I've been trying to put the images on a floppy then putting it on the hard drive, but every time I eject the disk, the image disappears from the desktop

 

[NJRoadfan]

I haven't used Disk Copy in a while to remember the menus, but open up the program and there should be an option to write an image to a disk. It should prompt for the image file and then prompt for a disk to write that image to. After its done, eject the disk and repeat for the next.