Problems on System 7 with SCSI2SD

[PotatoFi]

I have installed a SCSI2SD in my Macintosh SE along with 4 MB of RAM, but I've been having some trouble with System 7 and resource forks. When I install from floppy disks, at the very end of the System 7 install process I receive a message similar to:

The installation has failed. Your disk may be damaged.


That's paraphrasing, as I didn't snap a photo. There's also a cute "Sorry!" button which restarts the installation. I can't tell from the message whether this is an issue with my SCSI2SD or one of my installation floppies.

Despite the error message, the system DOES boot and seem to work fine... except for system icons and file associations. Applications copied over via floppy disk don't have an icon until I reboot and rebuild the desktop. I have to do that every single time I add an application.

In addition, I've started to use Fetch to download applications, usually in .SIT files. Fetch almost never seems to set the correct Type and Creator. And if it does, when I try to unpack it with StuffIt Expander, all kinds of unpredictable things happen from system reboots to lockups.

Okay, what the heck'n am I heck doing wrong here. Heck!

 

[Johnnya101]

Finally, someone else who was having the same issues I had!

Had the same or very similar issue while trying to get 7.5.5 on my Quadra 700. Floppy images simply did not work. It was very weird. The installation would go about halfway and then say installation failed . To solve, I made a Legacy recovery disk, and installed an OS from the CD.

Don't know if that will be your solution, but installing from a CD works so smoothly.

 

[PotatoFi]

Finally, someone else who was having the same issues I had!

Don't know if that will be your solution, but installing from a CD works so smoothly.

Good to know that I am not the only one! Sadly, I don't have a CD drive.  I do have a SCSI CD-ROM drive that I used to use with my 4/86 and a special SCSI PCMCIA adapter... but I looked up the system requirements and there was absolutely no mention of Mac support, so that's probably not a solution for me.

 

[mraroid]

Can you boot to a boot floppy?  If so, can you run disk repair?  If you do, can it find any issues with your hard drive/SD card?

When you formatted your SD card, how large did you make your partitions? 

mraroid

 

[PotatoFi]

Yep, I can boot with floppies (that's how I installed System 7). Regarding Disk Repair... is there a specific utility I should use? When I formatted (using the modified SD HC utility), I formatted it to about 950mb or so (1 GB microSD card in my SCSI2SD).

 

[Johnnya101]

Use the PATCHED one! I made the mistake of not using it on one of my hard drives. Woudlnt boot after the installation. Just look up patched SD HC or something like that. Think its on Uniservers site (Maccaps).

 

[PotatoFi]

Use the PATCHED one!

Right, I used the word "modified" but meant "patched". I have SD HD 7.3.5+, patched. The disk tested just fine, and I did just reinitialize it. I'm going to try rewriting my installation floppies and reinstalling now. I'm getting pretty fast at this.

 

[mraroid]

Do you have disk first aid on that boot floppy?  What happens when you run disk first aid?

mraroid

 

[PotatoFi]

Do you have disk first aid on that boot floppy?  What happens when you run disk first aid?

Disk First Aid 7.2.2 says that the volume appears to be okay! So it seems like either:

1. My partition is too big
   
2. My installation floppies are bad
   

 

[mraroid]

I think if your partition is under 2 GBs that is fine.  If not, re partition and try to install again.

mraroid

 

[PotatoFi]

Ok, I used two known good floppy disks for the entire install, and got through it. It was a bit of a pain reimaging the same disks over and over but it worked.

Sadly, I'm still having trouble with application icons not working unless I rebuild the desktop, and and .SIT files that I download with Fetch are corrupted and can't be opened with StuffIt Expander.

 

[davidg5678]

I would recommend following the HFSFromScratch guide from the SCSI2SD website. It is buried several pages deep, so many people do not seem to know about it. 

This guide allows you to create an emulated hard disk that can then be transferred onto a SCSI2SD. It involves downloading and installing the operating system to an emulated disk image on your modern mac and running the provided hfdisk utility to correctly transfer everything over to the SCSI2SD while keeping things bootable. This method should allow you to bypass any physical media related install issues. I have had success with an SD card  "hard drive image" slightly smaller than 2GB. (1.8ish GB) I would also recommend using Mini vMac over Basilisk II.

 http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php/HFSFromScratch