Macintosh, Lisa, and IIGS Dealer and Developer Floppy Disk trove

[David Cook]

Well... I want to lock every disk before I image it. HP thought a single-use locking tab was acceptable.



To make up for it, they include an "AUTO SHUTTER".


The rounded corner disk window is kinda cool, though.

 

[David Cook]

It turns out I'm rich now. I possess the rare Apple misprint "Mascintosh" upgrade disk.



No joking -- someone is trying to sell one of these for $114.95 on eBay.

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- David

 

[bigmessowires]

That Mascintosh disk is like one of those rare misprint stamps with an upside-down airplane. I love it.

 

[LaPorta]

That is so cool with the misprint!

 

[Arbee]

I notice the 400K disks do not mount in System 8.1, at least under Basilisk II. Did the System stop supporting that format?

Basilisk doesn’t attempt to emulate the IWM/SWIM or Sony drive so I’d recommend a real Mac (ideally a Plus/SE/original II so the ROMs are older) as the test there.

 

[cheesestraws]

I notice the 400K disks do not mount in System 8.1, at least under Basilisk II. Did the System stop supporting that format?

Basilisk doesn’t attempt to emulate the IWM/SWIM or Sony drive so I’d recommend a real Mac (ideally a Plus/SE/original II so the ROMs are older) as the test there.

Changing emulator or using real hardware won't help - support for MFS (which 400k floppies almost exclusively were) was dropped completely in 8.0. 7.6 will kind of do read only but all the folders disappear. You really need to be running System 6 to do MFS gubbins.

 

[David Cook]

I've sorted the collection into the following piles. These are rough numbers.

100 Lisa (many backups)
20 IIgs
40 Commercial titles (Microsoft, Virex, etc)
75 Apple commercial titles (standard system disks, MacPaint, MacWrite)
40 QuickMail commercial disks. Looks like a pile that an IT person would have kept to prove they were licensed
100 Software development, mostly hand-labeled disks, including source code. Seems like he wrote "MacCheque", "MacDesk", and "MacPhone" circa mid 1984.
50 blank disks (40 sealed NOS)
175 misc hand-labeled mixed files
100 already copied. Half are the titles I've posted to this thread. Half are backup copies of those.

As expected, a good portion of the disks are backups or already archived common titles (Apple system software, etc). I get the impression that these are from at least two different original owners. I bought the collection on eBay.

For my next step, I'm going to cherry pick the most unique looking disks and randomly sample some from each pile. There is no way of knowing whether the label matches the contents without going through each disk.

In the end, I'm hopeful that we'll end up with a couple of dozen of novel items that truly add to the archives.

 

[MOS8_030]

What a great trove! Especially the Lisa/XL disks.
Quickmail, that takes me back. I still have work emails from the mid '90's in QM format.
I don't know know why.

 

[stepleton]

I haven't looked at them, but the "Sup" disks are likely different editions of the Macintosh supplement disks for the Lisa Pascal Workshop --- that is, the extra materials that allow you to make Macintosh software on your Lisa. We have some of these in places like bitsavers, but I think there were lots more versions, and you may have many of them! Thank you for imaging!

 

[olePigeon]

Well... I want to lock every disk before I image it. HP thought a single-use locking tab was acceptable.

View attachment 66176

To make up for it, they include an "AUTO SHUTTER".
View attachment 66178

The rounded corner disk window is kinda cool, though.

I have a couple of those, non-branded. I noticed that the plastic on the disk is also extra smooth when I touched it. It stood out amongst all my other disks.

I also have a nifty one where you rotate a red write-tab instead of pushing it up or down. The plastic is also a weird texture, almost like they tried to simulate stone.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Kind of interested on what the "Technical Communications Apple IIgs Demo" is. Also the AppleWorks 2.0 disk with AppleTalk would be interesting too, especially if it boots using ProDOS 8. If so, it likely has the ATINIT and prep files to setup AppleTalk printing without having to load ProDOS 16 or GS/OS. See here: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.apple2/c/pDA-0Y5F92k/m/ew0AR1eX958J