Software for a Mac Plus

[khannonnd]

So I have a Macintosh Plus and a Powerbook 180 - these are my only pre-OS X macs (and, coincidentally, my only floppy disk equipped macs).  Since neither machine is hooked up to the internet (and I don't even know what they would do if they were connected to the internet), I am not sure how I can get old software/games that will run on either machine.

Does anyone have some old software on old floppies they are willing to sell to a nascent collector?

Thanks for the help!

 

[kingchops]

The Powerbook 180 has a 1.44 "SuperDrive" floppy.  These floppy drives can read disks form more modern pc's or Macs.  Simply download stuff to a more modern machine and transfer to the Powerbook via floppy.  If you don't have a floppy on the more modern machine, you can buy a usb floppy drive for very little money.  The Powerbook floppy can also read/write 800k disks for the Mac Plus.

 

[mac-cellar]

There's always eBay, but in my experience prices are always a bit too high, and then there's shipping.

One other consideration - I've purchased a few lots of miscellaneous software on floppies in recent years, and I've run into more than a few older floppies that are corrupted or degraded to the point where they can't be read.  Never quite know what you are getting until it arrives.

There's a lot of old software up for grabs out there via download - really the best bet.

 

[tendim]

The Powerbook 180 has a 1.44 "SuperDrive" floppy.  These floppy drives can read disks form more modern pc's or Macs.  Simply download stuff to a more modern machine and transfer to the Powerbook via floppy.  If you don't have a floppy on the more modern machine, you can buy a usb floppy drive for very little money.  The Powerbook floppy can also read/write 800k disks for the Mac Plus.

To add to this, the 180 will the be easiest way to transfer material to the Plus, since the Plus can only read 800K floppies.  I was in the exact same boat a few years ago and ended up buying a Powerbook 3400 as the "bridge" machine:

Intel Mac Mini w/ USB Floppy ---1.4MB disk---> Powerbook 3400 [180 in your case] ---800K disk---> Mac Plus

I am not sure how I can get old software/games that will run on either machine.

Other alteratives are to pick up an Asatne EN/SC adapter to give you Ethernet or SCSI, and then run an FTP server off ofyour main machine.  However, you will still have a chicken-and-egg problem if you don't already have an FTP app on your classic hardware.

 

[Paralel]

Or you can get a Floppy EMU for the plus

 

[sstaylor]

You can also run a cable (regular old printer cable will do) between the powerbook and the plus and share files back and forth, rather than writing to 800k disks all the time.

Floppy emu is a nice way to go too.

 

[khannonnd]

You can also run a cable (regular old printer cable will do) between the powerbook and the plus and share files back and forth, rather than writing to 800k disks all the time.

Floppy emu is a nice way to go too.

Oh yes!  AppleTalk via the printer cable.  I forgot about that!  Thanks for reminding me!

 

[reallyrandy]

I bought a usb zip 100 and a scsi zip 100. Haven't tried transferring anything yet but I have a IIsi, a 7200/120, an SE/30, a Plus and 2 Anglepoise imacs. None of them are online as of yet but I'm thinking I can get the imac online with OS 9 and copy to a zip100 via USB and then put that Zip in the other macines on OS 8, 7 and 6.0.7 via scsi Zip 100.

That should work, right?

 

[sstaylor]

Should work, but be careful about zip disks and the Plus.  Seems like the Plus can use the Zip, but only with an older version (they're all old of course) of the Zip software/driver.  The challenge is that the newer driver will install itself over the older one just by inserting a disk.

Google Zip disk and Mac Plus, there's someone out there with a whole page dedicated to making it all work together.

 

[sstaylor]

Ok, I looked and these are the pages that I was thinking about:

http://www.jagshouse.com/zipMacPlus.html

http://www.vintagemacworld.com/pluszip.html

There are probably others out there.