Guide for installing System6/7 on SCSI2SD from scratch?

[LittleJackal]

Hey guys and gals,

So I bit the bullet and bought a SCSI2SD after the original disk in my SE/30 died. I'm trying to find some information on how to do a clean installation but to be honest I'm coming up empty. There seems to be a lot of information about getting everything set up if you've already got a spinning disk and bootable SE/30 or second Mac available, but unfortunately the only machines I have at my disposal are my MacBook Pro and Windows desktop. 

Neither machine can write floppies, and even if it could I think the floppy disk on my SE/30 is inoperable.

Any suggestions on where to look or what to search for? I apologize if this has been covered before.

Thanks!

 

[LittleJackal]

Quick update: Found http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=HFSFromScratchand managed to install 7.5.3 using BasiliskII on a 1.9GB image (I'm using a 4GB SD card, it's literally the smallest I could find). BasiliskII seems to boot well enough off this image.

I then created the +96 sector final image, partitioned it (though the writeup seems to be a little wonky, when I downloaded and compiled hfdisk it didn't have some of the features I see, and also the examples that are given on that pare are inconsistent (at one point he creates a partition called Mac_Volume but then when he prints the partition table it's called Apple_HFS?).

I dd'd the lido drivers to the required offset, dd'd the system753 disk image to the required offset and called it a day. 

OSX seems to see the SD card as a proper HFS image and offers to mount it as ReadOnly.

When I pop it into the SE/30 however, I still get the unfortunate "?".

I'm not really sure where to go from here. Any suggestions?

 

[gobabushka]

Only way I can think of to do this is to create a System 7.5.3 boot floppy set. Or get a disk tools floppy, plug the whole mess into the se/30 and see if maybe you can see the filesystem. if you can, then you can use lido on the mac itself, write the drivers, and make sure the system folder is blessed still.

 

[LittleJackal]

Only way I can think of to do this is to create a System 7.5.3 boot floppy set. Or get a disk tools floppy, plug the whole mess into the se/30 and see if maybe you can see the filesystem. if you can, then you can use lido on the mac itself, write the drivers, and make sure the system folder is blessed still.

Yeah, I've broken down and I'm trying to put together a beater computer with a floppy drive and SCSI card. Hopefully it's fairly easy to make a boot floppy using Linux or something like that.

Thanks for the advice, I'll update once I've got something positive

 

[LittleJackal]

Ordered a FloppyEmu so I can boot a HD tool on my SE/30 -- by the time I buy a real floppy drive and diskettes I'm halfway to the cost of one anyway.

In the meantime, is there a chance that someone could post a disk image of their SD card and their SCSI2SD settings? I have been trying just about everything to get a bootable image working but I'm lost. 

If the FloppyEmu shows up first I'll do it the old fashioned way

 

[Scott Squires]

Are you using SCSI2SD v5 or v6?

Edit: Could you give us a screenshot of your scsi2sd-util settings?

 

[LittleJackal]

v5. I will take a screenshot when I get home for sure.

 

[finkmac]

I'd inspect the floppy drive closer, the auto-inject floppy drive in the SE/30s is known to get gummed up. Might just need some lubrication.

And for writing the disks, a cheap USB floppy drive will work fine.

 

[LittleJackal]

OK I actually found a SCSITools.img somewhere on the internet a few days back which appears to be a bootable 7.5.3 SCSI2SD image and dd'd that to my SD card and everything seems to be working now. I'm not particularly sure why my steps didn't work unless there's fundamentally something wrong with the HFSFromScratch writeup.

Since I want to put together a disk image with both Sys6 and Sys7 I'm going to try to use this SCSITools.img to piece together another working image with two 1.5GB partitions since I'm working with a 4GB card. I'll try to document it in case anyone has the same issues.

As for the floppy drive, I about gave up on that altogether. I did buy a USB floppy drive for $15 but in the end I decided I wasn't in the mood to either buy floppy disks at a high price OR wait for cheaper ones to be shipped from China, so I ended up buying the FloppyEmu. I have an AppleII+ on the way and I'll be able to use it for that as well as any floppy related tasks that need doing on this bad boy here. 

For anyone who's curious, my scsi2sd-util settings were all default, except my Device1 tab where I modified the sector count to correspond to what scsi2sd-util debug log reported, and I changed the vendor/product to the SEAGATE stuff that's going around.

I'll update once I have something interesting to update with, thanks!

 

[hunter44102]

Thanks for posting all this. I will be doing scsi2sd soon. Already have a floppyemu

Once the SD is all set the way we want, can it be cloned (as a backup) using dd in Linux or winimage?

 

[LittleJackal]

Sorry about the lack of updates; I haven't had a lot of time to play with my SE/30.

Once you make the SD card you can certainly make a bit backup. I use dd on my MBP but any bit dump will work.

 

[mraroid]

I installed a SCSI2SD in my Color Classic and I had a heck of a time getting it formatted correctly so I could install an OS.  Any OS.  90% of the issues I had were because I did not understand the differences between formatting between an older "classic" OS and more modern ones. I ended up using a 3rd party formatting utility and I finally got it so that an OS would install correctly. 

I decided on a ScanDisk Class 10 SD card.  I am very happy with the results.  My "hard drive" is so darn fast now.  And it draws less current from my power supply.  Our computers never did run hot, but we have even less heat in them now.  It is a good solution I believe.

mraroid