Installing System 7 on a Quadra 630 with no CD drive...

[Floofies]

I'm going mad trying to do this with limited resources. I am seriously going to lose it if I can't get this working. I need to install System 7.5 on my Quadra 630, but it's proving to be nearly impossible. It currently has Mac OS 8.0 on a 500MB HDD, but I want to install System 7 on my bigger 10GB HDD instead.

It has a floppy drive but no CD drive. I have 2 USB floppy drives, so I thought I could make some installation floppies from my Windows 7 PC from this page. The problem is, I have no idea how. I have tried Rawrite and WinImage, but only get "invalid image" errors. I also tried Disk Tools 2 from this page, but the Quadra just ejects the floppy automatically.

The Q630 also has an Asante Tech PDS (MCLC) ethernet card, so I thought I could download the images and make the floppies right from the Q630's existing Mac OS 8 system. Nope! The TCP/IP control panel doesn't even open, saying OpenTransport isn't loaded, which is probably because it doesn't exist on the system. The card doesn't seem to work at all and I'm not even seeing a link light on my router.

What should I do? There HAS to be a way to make bootable System 7 install disks from a PC, I've seen people all over the internet saying WinImage and Rawrite works for that. Additionally, if I need OT to use the ethernet card, how do I get it onto that existing Mac OS 8 system?

I'm nearly begging for help, here. :c

 

[360alaska]

Where in Florida are you?

Try this: http://www.jagshouse.com/Macs_and_PCs.html

 

[Floofies]

Where in Florida are you?

Try this: http://www.jagshouse.com/Macs_and_PCs.html

Naples.

Thanks for the article, it's useful, but I don't think I can do anything differently with it. Also, I just learned the "System_7.5.3_##of19.smi.bin" files I was trying to use aren't actually floppy images, but rather a single CD image split up to fit on floppies. Because of that, it's not bootable from floppies... which means the only way I can use them is from an already installed system... which means I can't use my 10GB drive. The only way I can do this now, I guess, is booting via floppy.

PS: I have an ooooooold SCSI external hard drive, I'm going to try to plop all the CD installer parts on it, and boot from a Network Access Disk, then try to install from that. Will report back on that shortly...

EDIT: Nope again. Drive Setup says <not supported> and won't let me initialize the drive at all. It's a LaCie Joule HD 730. I'm screwed

 

[360alaska]

Naples? Far from me... Yes, I'm from Alaska but right now we're living in pcola... If you still can't get it I can lend my floppy emu to you with a deposit...

 

[Floofies]

Naples? Far from me... Yes, I'm from Alaska but right now we're living in pcola... If you still can't get it I can lend my floppy emu to you with a deposit...

 It's looking very appealing, but I may have found a solution.

I had a good idea and popped out the 10GB drive, and plugged it into a PATA>USB converter. With a Gparted + Ubuntu live usb stick, I was able to partition the drive with some HFS and FAT partitions. I decided the easiest way to do this would be to install System 7 to the drive... from the drive! I made 2 main partitions, one for the installation files, and an empty one to be installed to. I also created a disk image of my old 500MB hard drive with Mac OS 8 and plopped that on the drive as well, just in case I needed to boot from it.

Then... uh oh. The drive isn't detected at all. I get the  :?:  no boot disk icon flashing when it boots. I made a Disk Tools 1 disk and it isn't detecting the drive either. I have the pin header set to "master". What did I do wrong?

Edit: Lol, I looked up the spec sheet for the drive and apparently with standalone installs you're supposed to remove the jumper completely. It works now!