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Restoring a 6100/66 DOS Compatibility, need help with software

Verault

Well-known member
So  I am restoring a PowerMac 6100/66 DOS Compatibility computer and setting up new software on the SCSI2SD I installed on it (which by the way seems much, much slower than even the 500MB HDD that was original to it.)

I am still learning when it comes to classic MAC OS, I was wondering if someone could point me to a few applications on Macintosh Garden or another site. I am looking first for a program I have seen that came on my Macintosh LC and various SE's where in the upper left of desktop was a blinking icon to let you know the hard drive activity.

Secondly I was looking for a program that would display hardware specific information. On OSX you can list detailed hardware specifics but on older MAC OS's there is no way I know of. What program would you recommend to display cpu type/speed, cache, rom versions, etc for machine specific hardware info?

Thanks

edit: Also, how can I open DMG files on MAC OS 8?


 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I believe one of the better programs that will help list and also test your built-in hardware is a program called MacBench. It will test your hardware against a standardized list of other machines. It likely has the 6100 already in it. As for the HD activity. there are standalone programs, but there is one included with programs liek Norton Utilities 3.0, which should work on wahtever flavor of System software you are running on the 6100, and I would recommend running on it as is.

I also have disk images of all of the original 6100 DOS Compatibility floppies, if you need those as well.

Which version of SCSI2SD do you have installed? There should be no slowness; in fact, it should be slightly speedier depending on what version you have. That could possibly depend on there being incorrect software settings on the SCSI2SD, or possibly due to a slow SD card if not one of the newer, speedier ones.

 
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Verault

Well-known member
I ghave scsi2sd ver 5.1 It could be the SD card but it is super slow. I went over the settings. They all appear correct.

Laporta I would love the disk images if you have them.

Im not a fan of norton utilities and the LED activity programs I have seen have not been norton.

Also, anyone know how to open a DMG file in mac os 8?

 

Juror22

Well-known member
I thought that version 6 of the SCSI2SD was needed for PPC level Macs, that might be causing your performance issue.

 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
No, it certainly is not required by any means. It could make file transfers faster, but v5 is certainly plenty fast to start up the machine, get it to run, etc.

Opening a DMG in OS 8 may not be possible. If it is one created by OS X, it probably won't work. Some experimental versions of Disk Utility 6.5 did have some capability of that, but what you really need is to get images that were either made with Disk Copy 4.2 or 6, and you could open them on 8 with it's included Disk Copy 6.

As for Norton, it is just a control panel that came with Norton, not the entire suite itself. If that interests you, I can send it.

As for the other 6100 disk images, I can send them over if you PM me your email address.

 
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Verault

Well-known member
Can you guys tell me what some high speed SD cards I should buy are? Mine are all pretty old, they suit my needs fine but I never needed to use them as hard disk storage I suppose. I dont need anything high capacity. The one in the 6100 is an 8GB. A 16GB or 32GB would be more than enough if that is the smallest I could purchase.

 

netfreak

Well-known member
Can you guys tell me what some high speed SD cards I should buy are? Mine are all pretty old, they suit my needs fine but I never needed to use them as hard disk storage I suppose. I dont need anything high capacity. The one in the 6100 is an 8GB. A 16GB or 32GB would be more than enough if that is the smallest I could purchase.


When SD cards advertise transfer rates, I think typically that is maximum burst transfer not what the card is rated at for constant reads/writes which is far more important for using it as a hard drive. For a scsi2sd I don't expect you'd need anything higher than guaranteed 10MB/sec sustained transfer, so cards that say like V10, class 10 or UHS-1 are probably fine.

 

jessenator

Well-known member
MacBench will certainly give you a readout of your Mac's hardware. TechTool is another you could try.

upper left of desktop was a blinking icon to let you know the hard drive activity.
I know this was part of SpeedDoubler (I would disable it when I installed the whole suite), but it very well could be a standalone control panel as well. I want to say Norton Utilities also had something like that as part of Speed Disk. IIRC the standalone control panel is called "activity light" ot something along those lines. Might be a good term to search.

For your DOS card software, you can find every version, and lots of other useful tidbits, on the Apple Legacy Recovery CD image. That disc has proved quite handy.

 

Verault

Well-known member
Thanks for the info guys. Netfreak, I  took out the SD card and its a micro HC in a standard SD size adapter. It's got a rating of "2" on it. So I guess that is really bad. I have read alot about fake chinese sd cards out there on amazon and where-ever so I don't want to buy something that is no better than this.

My next question is, once I get a faster better SD card, how do I copy the entire contents of the old one to the new one to save me from having to reload the entire system?

I still have found no program called "activity Light" or "activity LED"

What do you guys think of this Sandisk sd card? https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-microSDXC-Memory-Adapter/dp/B073JYVKNX/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fast+transfer+sd+card&qid=1607705990&sr=8-4

 
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Verault

Well-known member
So I purchased that SD card I mentioned in the previous post, should arrive today. Is copying the contents of the old SD card to it straightforward or do I need a 3rd party program to do it?

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
What you should be able to do on a modern machine is just make an image of the SD card and then copy that to the new SD.

 

jdlanza

Well-known member
I thought that version 6 of the SCSI2SD was needed for PPC level Macs, that might be causing your performance issue.
Not a bad thought, but I have three PowerMac 6100s running SCSI2Sd v 5.x and they are quite peppy.

johnl

 

Verault

Well-known member
So noone has a sure fire method for copying an SD card huh? I really dont want to have to reload the whole computer.

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I thought that you did, i did not realize that. Even on a PC, there must be some way to clone a drive and write it to another.

 
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