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PowerBook Duo 210 Best way to get software/data onto it

glynjones

Member
Hi all,
Tomorrow my PowerBook Duo 210 arrives and really looking forward to it. Been using Macs for nearly 20 years and decided to try a bit of vintage computing.

The spec is quite good as it comes with a few things:

PowerBook Duo 210
Apple Mini Dock
Apple External Floppy

Also have on the way an Apple SCSI Cable, HDI-30 to C50.

The question I am asking which I'm sure has been asked many times is how to get software and data onto it? I've been reading through loads of stuff on the internet but am yet to get a simple answer.

The PowerBook has 7.1 so the first thing I need to do is get it up to at least 7.5.3. There are lots of images for the floppy's on the internet but how do I get them across to the PowerBook? Would an external SCSI CD-Rom be best for this or some other solution like SCSI2SD be better? I looked into the FloppyEmu but was told this was not compatible with the PowerBook Duo. Could I create floppy images copied to floppy disks? If so, how?

What I have is the following additional hardware/software that could help:

iMac with Apple Silicon that has Basilisk II running 7.5.3. I have read that Basilisk II on Mac can't write to floppy disks but windows can. Is this correct?
Windows 10 PC
MacBook Air running Mojave. This also has VMware Fusion so could run OSX Lion for HFS support.
USB Floppy Drive
USB CD Burner

I know this is a lot for a first post but trying to find the best/easiest way to get stuff on my new (well to me) machine. I work in I.T. and this is giving even me a headache.

Thanks in advance on any replies.

Glyn Jones.
 

Spidey01

Well-known member
For what it's worth, I got a Duo 230 about a month ago and here's my two cents. Bare in mind however, I don't have the Mac background most here do.

I've found three methods the easiest for getting software on my Duo 230:
  1. Floppy disk
  2. Zip disk
  3. A younger Mac
My PC can access both floppy and zip using USB and FAT. That works great for files that are can simply be copied as sit/hqx/bin and extracted on my Duo. For larger files that can fit on 2-3 floppies but are downloaded as one large archive: it's been more effective to use a younger machine that can run classic software.

My Wallstreet series has a floppy module and an Ethernet port, so it can more readily split files with this program so I can reconstitute them on my Duo. Unlike the pain of getting DropStuff working on my Duo to deal with segmented StuffIt archives, I could fit Split & Join on one floppy disk and reduce the profanities involved with Expander + DropStuff. This has worked pretty well for me if I need to convert a several meg file to a handful of diskettes. Since it supports HFS (unlike my PC), I can easily copy the split files over on Mac formatted floppies without effort. It also has the same HDI-30 port on the back as my MiniDock, so I can shuffle the zip drive over for larger files but that's enough shuffling equipment around that I'll usually constrain zip disks to PC->Duo. While my PC and Duo work great with the zip drives, I'm finding my younger PowerBook is a bit flaky with the SCSI zip drive :/. But it has an Ethernet port as well as HFS, so it can be handier than my PC at times.


Realistically there's no real reason to prefer the floppies over the zip100s, except I like floppies. I acquired an IDE zip250 and a SCSI zip100 drive more recently with a handful of zip100 disks. At first the floppy drive was the only removable media on my Duo!

In the longer term I plan to build a RaSCSI to use as an external HDD. One of those seems like it would be far easier all the way around. But I haven't had time to build the kit yet :(. From the looks of it, I believe RaSCSI will be best option.


The PowerBook has 7.1 so the first thing I need to do is get it up to at least 7.5.3. There are lots of images for the floppy's on the internet but how do I get them across to the PowerBook?

7.5 fits on few enough floppies that it's easy enough to floppy jockey that onto a system.

7.5.3 is large enough that I found it easier to create a disk image in Basillisk II from a net install CD image, and then copy that and the 7.5.5 update files onto a Zip disk. To boot my Duo: I made a Disk Utils floppy and copied the "Iomega Guest" to the Disk Utils floppy. Then I booted my Duo off a Disk Utills floppy, loaded the driver, and launched the installer from the zip disk. I got the Iomega Guest from an installation of Zip Tools.

My Duo came with a dead SCSI drive and the power supply blew its caps within about 15 minutes of plugging it in. So my first two problems to solve were power and storage. For storage, I went with a BlueSCSI because it was readily available and had a bracket. Technically I could have done all the OS setup in BasilliskII and put the disk image on the MicroSD card. But I didn't really want to "Cheat" nor keep taking 30 year old plastic apart. Therefore my OS installs were done via removable media.

In fact the whole reason I bought the younger PowerBook was the use its charger to power my Duo. Trying to splice the tip onto an iBook G4's charger didn't work out, so I needed a charger. It turned out to be a greater help than running BasilliskII.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Younger Mac with SCSI and CD combined with a SCSI Disk Mode cable/connection to the Duo/MiniDock would be the most painless way to transfer anything larger than Zip100, or much of anything larger than a floppy unless you're already invested in the Zip system.

I've loved the Zip since day one, but with the different SD systems available now, I wouldn't suggest going Zip, but for authenticity's sake. MO and such were around, but Zip was ubiquitous, the others were also ran situations, even if "more reliable."

Hooking the Duo up as a hard drive on the younger Mac's desktop makes things very simple when it comes to transferring files.
 

Spidey01

Well-known member
SCSI Disk Mode is a great idea, although may need to watch out from HFS / HFS+.

The papers that came with my Wallstreet series seemed to suggest SCSI Disk Mode wouldn’t work with my Duo’s OS. I presume because it came with MacOS on an HFS+ and System 7 doesn’t have a driver for the newer file system. But mounting the Duo in SCSI Disk Mode on a younger mac would presumably work just fine.
 

glynjones

Member
All good suggestions. Lost out on a SCSI CD today. Still looking at others and Zip drives but everything SCSI is so expensive.

SCSI disk mode is an option but have nothing at the other end to connect it to that has SCSI. All my other stuff is modern.

Gutted as 25 years ago I had a SCSI Zip drive and I'm sure that is long gone during a purge.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Sounds like you should be looking into a 6xxx desktop in the Q630 form factor as a bridge Mac. They have SCSI CD and and conveniently, an IDE HDD and VGA output. With an adapter and a USB reader you could use CF or SD as your boot drive on the "RoadApple" and transfer the memory card to the reader on your modern rig to download straight from the Web onto it and then sneakernet the card back to the SCSI Disk Mode setup.
 

glynjones

Member
Can you target disk a Q630 to access the CD or would I need to do it the other way round. Looking at a possibility of going down the Q630 route.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Duo appears as HDD on Q630 desktop when hooked up in SCSI Disk mode. You should be able to open the CD on the Q630 desktop along with the Duo's HDD/folders. Drag and drop files into the Duo's folders should be easily done without bothering with the CF/SD SneakerNet shuffle. Backing up all your transfer files to CF/SD boot drive of Q630 would be a good idea.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
De nada! Q630 was an awesome, game changing machine as were its offspring. IDE, ComSlot, Video I/O (if only consumer levell) TV Tuner etc. Sot, PC Compatibility Card provision and VGA/SVGA output capabilities were harbingers of future PPC architectures.

Suggested 6xxx because it would likely be much less expensive, more on the order of the SCSI CD you mentioned looking at earlier. Let us know how this works out for you, please.
 

glynjones

Member
Won on eBay over the weekend an LC630CD for £45 :) .

First thing I did was remove the Rayovac 4.5 battery. No leakages and no corrosion.

Now, I need to get some software onto this thing. Burned a CDRW disk but would not read. Worth a try. Burned a CD-R and the 630 says it needs initialising so must have been burned in a bad format.

What is the best format for this? I am using Toast 17 Titanium but can burn on my PC if that is better.

Thanks for all your help so far.
 

glynjones

Member
Not sorted. All then file formats are 8.3 names :( good old DOS names.

Burned a few CD all wasted.

I have the following options in toast 17:

Mac Only
Mac & PC
DVD-Rom (UDF) - Gives DOS naming so does not work
ISO 9660

Do any of the above work without screwing up the file names on the LC630 or not being read?

Sorry for all the newbe questions.
 

Trash80toHP_Mini

NIGHT STALKER
Don't remember, if Toast options don't work maybe clean the drive or do it anyway? Half asleep don't think CD was an option, avoiding CD-RW was a very good choice?

Helping each other at any level is why we're here. ;)
 
Last edited:

glynjones

Member
ISO 9660 is the winner.
This managed to keep its application association but still file names show as 8.3 DOS naming. On other machines this shows up with normal file names.
Going to do a full install of System 7.5.5 and see if that fixes things. Was always my plan to do a reinstall as this has the previous owners setup on but had removed personal files.
 

Spidey01

Well-known member
I don’t think Long File Names was supported in non Mac file systems until MacOS 8, not sure about the various forms of “Standard” CD-ROM. Separate extensions came into being for PC LFN, Unix file attributes + LFN, and Mac resource forks as CD-ROM took over. It’s kind of a mine field that modern systems tend to just cope with.

I’d assume “Mac only” would be best, unless your version of Toast believes this to mean APFS or HFS+ instead of the standard HFS.
 

glynjones

Member
I don’t think Long File Names was supported in non Mac file systems until MacOS 8, not sure about the various forms of “Standard” CD-ROM. Separate extensions came into being for PC LFN, Unix file attributes + LFN, and Mac resource forks as CD-ROM took over. It’s kind of a mine field that modern systems tend to just cope with.

I’d assume “Mac only” would be best, unless your version of Toast believes this to mean APFS or HFS+ instead of the standard HFS.
Thanks. I was thinking it might be my version of Toast on a Apple Silicon iMac.

Just bought a PowerBook G4 12" so I'll put Toast 8 on it and try that. At least with this Mac I can download from the internet or if need be use the USB 1.1 port. Slow but it will get there.
 
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