How to bless an original system suitcase.

[nextse7en]

I have an original 400k Write/Paint Guided Tour disk.  I ended up formatting it after copying its contents to me SE/30's hard drive to test a 400k drive I just received.  The disk reads, writes just fine but once I copied the original contents back to the drive it will no longer boot.  Yes, I formatted it as single sided.

Does the original system suitcase need to be blessed?  How does one go about that on a system 7.1 machine?

Thanks!

 

[Crutch]

Your 400k disk probably lacks boot blocks.  To write boot blocks to it, you need to copy the System file from a bootable disk onto that disk.  I’m not sure if System 7.1 will do that for a 400k disk (it may .... I’m just not sure).  However, you can almost certainly start your SE/30 with a System 6 boot floppy, copy a System file onto your 400k disk, then boot into your System 7.1 HD and copy all the files you want over.  Your 400k disk should then boot fine (not on the SE/30, obviously....).

Nice treatment from dog_cow here:  https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=463

 

[Dog Cow]

Probably missing boot blocks. There is no concept of a blessed System folder on 400K MFS disk because MFS doesn’t have real folders like HFS.

Finder is supposed to copy boot blocks when you copy System file from one disk to another. 

Suggest you use FEdit to examine and write, if indeed missing, boot blocks. 

 

[Scott Baret]

Old versions of the system didn't have the Mac icon on the System Folder. As Dog Cow points out, MFS is one of the big reasons behind this.

I believe it was sometime around 4.1 or 4.2 when the icon started to appear.

If you run a later version of the System (like 6) and need to bless a System Folder, there are a few ways to do it. The most commonplace method is to drag the System file out, then back in. This usually does the trick. There are also utilities out there to do it, including one of Apple's own. I believe it was only ever included on the developer CDs from the 90s, however! (They're worth tracking down for little gems like this--and also complete reinstalls of Performa System Software).