I'm a little confused as to the advice being given here ...
First, what kind is your hard drive and what is it attached to presently?
To use the 1.0 disk image, you need a Mac that supports all of the following: System 6, MFS and SCSI, (meaning most Macs released between 1986 and 1990). It's possible to use System 7 & 8 to copy the disk on a SuperDrive equipped Mac, but it requires special care, procedures and software to make a reliable disk. You'll need an 800K disk, you cannot use 1.44MB HD floppies. So a bit more information would be helpful since you ask for options of "more than just find an old mac and do it".
The best thing to do, to get yourself up and running as quickly and painlessly as possible is to
check out this link.
When you say "I could probably figure out a way to make boot disks", honestly, there really is no other way to make a boot disk for a 128K without the correct hardware which can only be found on an "old Mac". Once you get a boot disk, you'll still need to come up with a way to transfer files between your more modern Macs and the 128K, which still requires an intermediary Mac to set up. Once you are up and running, you can try a MacTerminal transfer directly to your OS X Mac,
via this method, which also works with intermediary Macs up to OS 9 as well.
Even if you eventually use the MacTerminal method, I always recommend keeping at a minimum, a Mac Plus for emergencies and for Making disks for a 128K or Stock 512K/e. The most straightforward approach, requiring the least effort is to obtain some cheap ZIP SCSI & USB drives to move files from an OS X Mac to the Mac Plus. You can also use Mini vMac under OS X to manage disk images and transfer individual files directly without using disk image software.
