Finding Bootable System 6/7 800k Disks for a Mac SE

[texasyojimbo]

Hello all,

I bought a MacSE "as is" at a hamfest last weekend for $10. It seems to turn on, but I get the dreaded "blinking question mark" and there is no boot into System.

I'm not sure if the hard drive works at all or not; it seems to make occasional noises and I have seen a red light on what should be the hard drive indicator.

At any rate, the first step to getting this Mac SE functional in any way shape or form is to get it to boot, and I would need a bootable System 6 (or maybe 7) disk for that.

I have already endeavored to fool the Mac into believing (originally DOS-formatted) 1.44 high-density floppies are 800k disks, using rawrite for windows, stuffit, and the images on the Apple Web site. The Mac dutifully rejected every one of my disks, even after I tried taping the hole. So that won't work.

I'm pretty much left with having to beg someone in the vintage Mac community to make a set of 800k System 6/7 install disks for me.

Anyone here willing to help me? I'd be willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for shipping, cost of the disks themselves and your time.

 

[JRL]

I have multiple System 6.0.4 sets laying around here. Your cost: Free for the price of shipping.

 

[tomlee59]

I have already endeavored to fool the Mac into believing (originally DOS-formatted) 1.44 high-density floppies are 800k disks, using rawrite for windows, stuffit, and the images on the Apple Web site. The Mac dutifully rejected every one of my disks, even after I tried taping the hole. So that won't work.

Yes, you've (re)discovered the sad fact that, unfortunately, 800K Mac floppies cannot be written by a Windows floppy drive. The formats are so different at a fundamental level (including, but not limited to, zone-bit recording -- achieved in the original implementations by varying the spindle motor's speed) that an 800K Mac floppy must be written by a Mac floppy drive. No software cleverness can provide a workaround. So, you're right to go for Plan B and ask for someone to provide them to you.

 

[Scott Baret]

A good bet for the future is to get a Macintosh Classic, which can usually be picked up rather inexpensively. It has a 1.4MB floppy drive that also reads 800K disks. If you can find a 3.5" external floppy drive to go with it, you're even better off.

I have a Plus that I use on a regular basis (including for RetroChallenge). When I want to get files from it to the iBook or MacBook (which happens all the time when someone wants a report, term paper, etc e-mailed to them), I will save them on an 800K disk, start up the Classic with the external floppy drive, and copy the file to a 1.4MB disk. It can then be opened with TextEdit, Pages, etc on the MacBook.