System 7.1 Software?

[Juliet Elysa]

Hi all. As some of you know I recently acquired a working PowerBook 145. It has a black and white screen and runs System 7.1. It came with Microsoft Word and SimpleText and/or TeachText (too lazy to check right now). But that's it. So I need some more stuff!

I would ideally like some games that run well on a monochrome screen, as well as some utilities (disk reformatting, optimization/defragmentation, recovering corrupted/deleted files, etc.) and diagnostic tools. A set of 7.1 installation disks would be great too - I have 7.5 from my Performa, but I think 7.1 looks better with black and white screens.

So, does anybody have ideas as to where I can find some of these programs, as well as suggestions and recommendations? I want to make the most of my PowerBook.

Thanks!

Edit - Ideally I would like the utilities to work on my Performa too, it doesn't have any either and it would be nice to only need to buy one set of programs. Being able to run on both my Performa and my PowerBook would be a plus for games, but since my Performa already has tons of games compatibility with black and white displays is way more important to me.

 

[bibilit]

Macintosh garden ?

 

[Juliet Elysa]

I can download stuff from the Garden, but I have no way of transferring it to either my Performa or my PowerBook since my bridge computer with a floppy drive died.

 

[Mr. Ksoft]

Macintosh Garden is basically the only place to go these days... so it sounds like a USB floppy drive is in order.  Or even better, if you can get one, a LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge.  Then you can use the serial ports on your old machines with AppleShare to transfer files >1.44MB.  (Slowly.)

 

[Juliet Elysa]

I don't have the patience for AppleShare and whatnot, so USB floppy drive it is! :lol: Can I use my Windows 7 64 bit computer to write stuff to a floppy disk that my PowerBook and/or Performa can understand?

(After actually thinking about it, it would be nice to have a floppy drive that my iMacs can use too. Is this compatible with Windows 7? If not, a flash drive can work for transfers between Windows and iMac.)

 

[Charlieman]

Somehow, you need to perform some magic. Over the air and magically, you need to install a utility (eg PC Exchange) which will read DOS/FAT formatted floppy disks on the PowerBook. Or maybe somebody local can supply a copy on disk. 

You could try a utility such as MacDrive on the Windows 7 PC. This would allow you to write HFS (Mac format) floppies. Off the top of my head, I don't know whether there are any HFS drivers which work with 64 bit Windows.

But you've got a working IMac...

1. Write the data to a DOS/FAT format floppy on the Windows 7 PC using a USB floppy drive. Spend a tenner plus postage for any USB floppy drive. You don't need the Imation drive.

2. Transfer the the USB floppy drive and data to the iMac.

3. Format a new floppy disk as HFS on the iMac and copy over the data.

4. Transfer floppy disk and data to the PowerBook. There's a gotcha here. The files will be packed as HQX or SIT, so you will also need to transfer an unpacker to the PowerBook. Most of the time you will be able to do it on the iMac, until an unpacked file is greater than 1.4MB.

To get stuff this way from Windows 7 to your Mac Plus will require an extra step. The Plus cannot read 1.4MB floppy disks and the USB floppy drive cannot write 800KB floppy disks. You'll have to perform an extra exchange via the PowerBook.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Floppy-Drive-Transfer-Between-Latest-Mac-and-Vintage-Mac-/171745827898?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27fcd95c3a

May not be the cheapest on eBay but I can vouch for the seller and the drive. It may say Toshiba but it's a high quality TEAC drive, and it works just fine with iMacs and OS 9. It won't write an 800k Mac floppy though, as has been said, so you'll need to take things to the PowerBook, then use the PB to make 800k diskettes. Also, you really can't format a 1.44MB diskette as an 800k unit, you'd need real 800k diskettes.

 

[Charlieman]

Oh, and install something like PC Exchange and the unpackers on your PowerBook asap. Once you have them, you can take floppy disks straight from Windows 7 and install apps on your vintage Mac.

If you have courage and time, have a go at AppleShare exchanges or FTP to transfer to 68K Macs. Networks take a while to construct, but when they work they are brilliant.

 

[Mr. Ksoft]

You can use HFV Explorer to write to Mac formatted disks in Windows.  Clunky old app but it's always worked okay for me.

 

[Juliet Elysa]

That got me thinking, it might be easier to put the data on a flash drive and take that to the iMac, then put the data on a properly formatted floppy from the iMac. Theoretically that would skip having to deal with DOS/FAT formatted disks.

What unpackers would you suggest? StuffIt Expander has a lot of sentimental value to me (though I think my copies of it for my various Macs are lost to time, can't find them anywhere... >< ), but if something works better I'm all for it.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

That's what I usually do, and I just use Stuffit to unpack, and then Disk Copy to make the 800k disks on the PowerBook.

 

[Charlieman]

If you are looking at really old Mac software, you have to understand PackIt archives. For a decade later, think about Base64 encoding and MIME. But mostly Stuffit.

 

[Paralel]

Just use Mini vMac to make disk images and write them to the USB floppy using RawWrite. It will write HFS disk images created in Mini vMac on modern versions of Windows no problem.

Also, if you're going for System 7.1, I suggest System 7.1.2 from the Legacy Recovery CD, as an upgrade to 7.1.1, (aka. System 7 Pro), which you can also get from the Legacy Recovery CD. Its the last member of the System 7.1.x family and it runs a later version of Finder (7.1.4) than System 7 Pro, which can allow you to run some software that says it will only work on System 7.5.x

 

[NJRoadfan]

Said CD has two different versions of System 7.1.2, the one for x100 PPC Macs, and one for a handful of 68k machines. I'm guessing the latter is the one that works on older hardware.

 

[Paralel]

Said CD has two different versions of System 7.1.2, the one for x100 PPC Macs, and one for a handful of 68k machines. I'm guessing the latter is the one that works on older hardware.

Indeed

It should work on any system that can run System 7 Pro, since that's the base install. I've personally tested it on several different Macs and Powerbooks and it definitely works with machines beyond those specified on the CD.

 

[Juliet Elysa]

Ooh, if 7.1.2 works on my PB 145 I'm interested. I just started it up (with headphones... in case anyone hasn't tried starting a Mac with headphones before, it's loud!) to check and it doesn't say what version of 7.1 it's running so I could do 7.1.2 and still be original to the best of my knowledge.

Took a look at the Garden and found a bunch of software, just need a floppy drive and to find out if my Mac-formatted floppies from 2005 that I never used are still any good.

 

[CC_333]

If you do Get Info on the System file and look at the version, I think that will tell you the version of the system file (which would imply the overall SSW version).

c

 

[Juliet Elysa]

Yeah, it does tell you the System file version. I did it on the PB and it just said 7.1. Just for fun I did Get Info on Finder too. It says version 7.5.1, and below the word Finder next to the icon in the Get Info window it says Color SW 1500 v. 2.2.1. I also remember seeing color-related control panels. That's interesting considering it's a monochrome display.

 

[Paralel]

It sounds like you're running some weird combination of System 7.1 & a Finder from System 7.5+

This is what you should see if you have a successful 68k System 7.1.2 installation:

If you see anything else, something has gone wrong.