Yep, it was tags. Apple deprecated tags (see also Tech Note #94 by Bryan Stearns) shortly after HFS was introduced, so later versions of Disk Copy did not include them in the disk images that it made.
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Best way to archive vintage Mac floppies & CD's to images
- Thread starter pcamen
- Start date
Best way is probably an AppleSauce controller paired with the appropriate floppy drive. It can handle 5.25" Apple II, 3.5" 400K/800K, and soon 1.44MB as well.
https://applesaucefdc.com
This is how the 3.5" flux-level disk imager looks:
Don't use DC 6.x, it does not preserve all the data on the disk. DC 4.2 works well for any disk that's in good shape and standard format, which is the vast majority.
https://applesaucefdc.com
This is how the 3.5" flux-level disk imager looks:
Don't use DC 6.x, it does not preserve all the data on the disk. DC 4.2 works well for any disk that's in good shape and standard format, which is the vast majority.
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I've also seen DC 6.x not bother to image unallocated sectors. I haven't determined in which modes this is the case.
@balrog How do you know they'll support 1.4MB disks? I've been looking for a solution for a good archival format. I've almost pulled the trigger on a Kyroflux more than a few times, but the lack of official support for Macintosh disks has always kept me from doing so. There're handful of threads where people have gotten it to work.
I'd love for an actual Apple-based solution. Connecting a real Apple floppy drive that knows how to properly read the variable speed disks would be great. With Kyroflux, it's hit or miss which brand will be "more compatible" with the older disks.
Incidentally, a System 7+ extensions that adds WOZ image support to Disk Copy would be awesome.
I'd love for an actual Apple-based solution. Connecting a real Apple floppy drive that knows how to properly read the variable speed disks would be great. With Kyroflux, it's hit or miss which brand will be "more compatible" with the older disks.
Incidentally, a System 7+ extensions that adds WOZ image support to Disk Copy would be awesome.
The developer of the Applesauce device tweets that it is coming soon.
But for my needs, I doesn't matter. I already have a good solution for archiving 1.44MB floppies using the dd command, and it seems to work fine. Still, will be nice if the Applesauce device supports 1.44MB for those hard-to-copy-protected disks.
Buuuuuttt, even if it does support 1.44 MB floppy drives and floppies, it is somewhat academic, as external Superdrives almost impossible to find; the ones for sale on eBay are very very expensive.
I've theorized that a 1.44MB mechanism might be put inside of a standard A9M0106 case in place of the 800k mechanism, but I haven't heard of anyone that has tried this, so it is an unknown.
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It works, I've done it to two of my drives. I even took one of the boards out of 800K case and put it inside my IIci so I have a working floppy LED.
Now my HDD LED window does double-time as a floppy indicator, too.The trick is to buy the really cheap drive that were a dime a dozen on the IIgs, then just throw a Superdrive in there. Works like a treat.
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That’s the awesome part about the Applesauce — it hooks up to a real Apple floppy drive.
As for software support of WOZ imaging, I’m afraid the SWIM isn’t quite good enough for that, but if someone wants to do it please be my guest!
Ah, perfect!. I'd just never seen anyone confirm this is possible.It works, I've done it to two of my drives. I even took one of the boards out of 800K case and put it inside my IIci so I have a working floppy LED.
The trick is to buy the really cheap drive that were a dime a dozen on the IIgs, then just throw a Superdrive in there. Works like a treat.
I'm working on a program called TeleDisk that does a block-read of a floppy and sends the data out the serial port. It's fast.
I've been using it to make backup copies of my work disks.
Oooohhh... I never even considered that possibility....
Yeah, definitely possible, and now you've got me intrigued, thinking about it.
By the way, this reminds me of a weird trick I discovered a few weeks ago. Using MacsBug, it is possible to call the ROM routine that puts up the "question-floppy" icon, and puts the Mac in a loop looking for a device to boot. You just jump to this subroutine and there you are. But what makes it cool is that MacsBug, the RAM-based operating system, and everything else is still loaded in RAM. So you can re-enter MacsBug at any point during the boot process and trace it, meaning that you get to see exactly what is loaded during the startup process.
The second trick involves the boot blocks. These contain some executable code and in fact this is where the File Manager is initialized and the startup disk is officially mounted and placed online. You could put your own code here instead that does whatever you want, such as calling the ROM serial driver and downloading code or data from the serial port.
But we are only scratching the surface of possibilities for custom boot blocks. You could have multiple operating systems, or even have a floppy disk that's dual-formatted for both MFS and HFS.
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I've never heard of any hard drive, that attached to either the modem or printer port, that could boot a Mac straight from the question-floppy screen. As far as I know, they all required a floppy disk to boot.
But you could do it with the knowledge that we have now. There is a diagnostic hook in the ROM. The ROM code checks a certain address very very early in the power-on sequence. This hook could perhaps be leveraged to allow for netboot or direct boot from an HD.
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I'm reasonably sure said hook is how they made internal HyperDrives bootable so I wouldn't really say this is new knowledge unless you've figured out some way to inject code into the stock hardware of a cold-booting Mac via one of the standard interfaces. I was under the impression that leveraging this basically required an extension ROM or similar hardware shim.
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Something else that would be nice would be a USB laser scanner that'd record the surface of a LaserDisc. That way people could actually archive their LaserDiscs into a digital format. The digital copy could then be played back on an emulator with no loss in fidelity, and presumably could be recorded back to a LaserDisc master if you really wanted to (assuming someone out there still has one of those. I've seen occasional discs, but never a drive.)
Perhaps so, but I don't think Apple published the diagnostic hook.
That's my impression too. Steve Jobs had that lid down pretty tight on the Mac.
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