Macintosh Plus with BlueSCSI - how best to create original 800K System Disk floppies?

[pipkato]

I have a Macintosh Plus 4GB booting into OS 7.1 from a BlueSCSI V2 emulator and working fine. However, although I’m reasonably computer literate on modern Macs I know nothing about many aspects of the older Macintoshes. I want to create the original 800K system disks for either 7.1 or 6.0.8 so that I can have the original Macintosh floppy disk booting experience. I have a 6.0.8 MacOS image which I can put on the BlueSCSI and is probably my best choice since I only have four 800k formatted floppies.

But I’m completely confused by what I’ve read online and the videos on YouTube. Can anyone point me at a step-by-step tutorial aimed at a complete newbie that does not assume any knowledge about .sit files, .dsk images, ‘Disk Copy’ or other utilities. I’m guessing it might be possible to tell the BlueSCSI MacOS to write the 800K system disks using the Macintosh Plus’s internal floppy drive but so far I haven’t found such a tutorial.

I have found lots of sites that allow me to download images of the System Disks and I’ve done that too, but don’t know how to take it from there. Obviously I need to get those images on the BlueSCSI in such a way that they can be used to create 800K floppies but I’m stumped as to how. Thanks in advance for any pointers or help.

 

[LaPorta]

Ok, well, first things first: how did you get what you have on the BlueSCSI now, and where did you get it from? It would be much easier to get the disk images on the Plus first, then have the Plus make the disks, if the Plus is your only vintage Mac.

What machines do you have otherwise, that you are using to transfer to the BlueSCSI? What other Macs (if any) do you have?

 

[Mk.558]

If you have 4GB of RAM on a Macintosh Plus I'd say that is surely one of a kind right there sir!

Easy way:

1. Source the 800KiB disk images. These were available from Apple's website but since are long gone. The general premise of 68kmla is not a file sourcing website, so I'm not generally supposed to link you stuff directly. However I'd imagine if you went to a website that's called "Macintosh Garden" and searched for something titled "Mac System 6.x" (exactly) I'm sure you'd find some 800KiB disk images for System 6. I can't imagine they wouldn't have System 7.0.1 or 7.1 on 800KiB disk images.

2. You cannot write 800KiB or 400KiB disk images on *any* machine that is not compatible. Based on what you wrote, I don't know if you have any bridge machines, so the Plus will have to write out the disk images itself. For more technical information about disk images, disk drives, software, utilities, and so on, refer to the Working with Disk Images section of the CMN Guide.

The easiest way to do this if you want to write disk images and then use the said disk images to install the software is to network the images across, then write them. If you have a file server setup, that is doable for sure.

3. Once you get the disk images, you may need to decode them, decompress them, change type and creator to something Disk Copy can recognize, and then finally write them.

Decoding: MacBinary II (.bin) requires a program that can decode .bin files. BinHex (.hex or .hqx) files are text documents with the file(s) inside encoded as ASCII text.
Disk Copy: Explained in the Guide.
Decompression: .sit is usually Stuffit created, but these have different versions, and later versions can unpack earlier versions, but not the other way around.

If I was to do this from a plain jane set up this is how I'd do it, this is assuming you have no hard drive.

1.) Boot from a System 4.1/Finder 5.5 Network Access Disk.
2.) Load up a 1MiB RAM Disk to serve as a swap space, if albeit a bit limited.
3.) Connect to a AFP file server and copy the first disk image into the RAM disk.
4.) Fire up Disk Copy 4.2. Load the disk image from the RAM disk into memory, then write it out.
5.) Repeat step #4 for the other 3 disks.
6.) Boot into the System Tools disk and install away.

The ultimate in lazy-man would be to install a System onto a swap volume under Mini vMac, copy / install everything you want to, then box it all up and ship it over the network.

 

[LaPorta]

If you have 4GB of RAM on a Macintosh Plus I'd say that is surely one of a kind right there sir!


1.) Boot from a System 4.1/Finder 5.5 Network Access Disk.
2.) Load up a 1MiB RAM Disk to serve as a swap space, if albeit a bit limited.
3.) Connect to a AFP file server and copy the first disk image into the RAM disk.
4.) Fire up Disk Copy 4.2. Load the disk image from the RAM disk into memory, then write it out.
5.) Repeat step #4 for the other 3 disks.
6.) Boot into the System Tools disk and install away.

The ultimate in lazy-man would be to install a System onto a swap volume under Mini vMac, copy / install everything you want to, then box it all up and ship it over the network.

The first part is absolutely priceless!

As far as the "Connect to AFP file server" part, how is he supposed to do that with no bridge machines and no true way of connecting to a network even if a virtual Netatalk or some other AFP server were set up? There's no ethernet. That's why I want to know how he got the BlueSCSI set up in the first place. He may be able to download and place 6.0.8 or some equivalent 800k images onto his BlueSCSI and use Disk Copy from there.

 

[Mk.558]

An AppleTalk bridge. My favorite is the now expensive Farallon iPrint LT which uses PhoneNET, but any AppleTalk bridge can work. Alternatively, a System 2.01 NAD comes with MacTerminal 2.2, which can shuffle stuff over via RS232 terminal emulation using XMODEM.

Probably going to update that System 2.01 NAD with RAMDisk+ 2.01 just in case for the II/SE/Plus users. 512Ke -- yeah memory would be a problem for sure. Aside from MemINIT 2.0.5, I'm not aware of any System 6 or earlier tool to look at RAM space. Good news -- he's got 4GB of memory to play with

By the way, System versions before 7.5.3 do NOT like volumes greater than 2GiB of disk space. Even System 7.1 with OT 1.3 and ASC 3.7.4 do not properly register disk space correctly. See below (SE/30). 7.5 raised that to 4GiB and 7.5.3 raised that to 2TiB. Under System 6 or (I believe 7.0.1/7.1) if you load up a volume greater than 2GiB then the system can bomb. Fix: Install AppleShare WS 3.5.



The actual sizes reported in OS X are 18.14GiB in disk and 21.87GiB available out of a 40GiB drive. You'll likely get different numbers each time you connect.

 

[LaPorta]

I load a multiGB file share on my IIfx under 7.1 all the time. The sizes are all messed up, but it still works just fine.

Yes, almost anything is possible with hardware, etc, but most people won’t shell out $200 to just get the Plus on a network via SCSI. I think this guy just wants an easy way to get the images on the Blue SCSI.

 

[bigmessowires]

OP has a BlueSCSI and is already booting System 7.1 from it. All he needs to do is get a SCSI disk image that contains DiskCopy 4.2 and image files for the floppies, then put the image file on his SD card so the Plus will see it. No networking or file servers required.

 

[LaPorta]

OP has a BlueSCSI and is already booting System 7.1 from it. All he needs to do is get a SCSI disk image that contains DiskCopy 4.2 and image files for the floppies, then put the image file on his SD card so the Plus will see it. No networking or file servers required.

That's basically what I was getting at, he just needs the right one with all the stuff on it. Whether or not he can make one with the equipment he has is the question. If not, I am sure one of us could make a custom image with just what he wants to load onto the BlueSCSI. I, however, have only experience with the SCSI2SD...what sort of format does the BlueSCSI need? I can always make one for him.

 

[bigmessowires]

It shouldn't need any equipment, just some software tools or emulators like Basilisk. If you have a standard HFS disk image containing all the necessary stuff, Disk Jockey can quickly turn it into a device image suitable for Blue SCSI, Zulu SCSI, RaSCSI, etc. https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu/

 

[LaPorta]

It shouldn't need any equipment, just some software tools or emulators like Basilisk. If you have a standard HFS disk image containing all the necessary stuff, Disk Jockey can quickly turn it into a device image suitable for Blue SCSI, Zulu SCSI, RaSCSI, etc. https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu/

Thanks, that clears up some questions I had about all of that. I am getting closer now to possibly trying out one for myself.

 

[pipkato]

I owe all of you who replied an apology since I do not seem to have responded here after my original post. As some of you have said it should be simple with BlueSCSI which has a file sharing folder to share files on the microSD card with the Macintosh Plus. I only discovered my lack of response when I posted again today with a problem about those shared 'Stuffit' and 'Disk Copy' files which refuse to open in MacOS 7.1. Thanks again to everyone who took the trouble to respond to my earlier query. I've had to put my Macintosh Plus aside for the past few months and I'm only getting back to it again now.