Writing Macintosh floppies in Windows?

[SalvationCoder]

For the past two nights I've been trying without avail to get Macintosh software downloaded from the internet onto Macintosh formatted floppy disks via my Dell running Windows XP.

This tutorial for example proved practically useless.

I've downloaded around 10 different utilities, and probably invited in a corresponding amount of malware in the process.  Literally nothing seems to work as advertised.

StuffIt Expander for Windows doesn't like the .sit files I'm finding on the web, so I found an alternative.  Some of the .sit files don't unpack as .img files at all, and it looks like they're full-blown Macintosh files that my PC has no clue how to respond to.  Some files I downloaded turned out to be in .hqx format (I gave up around the time I ran into those).  WinImage doesn't like a single one of the .img files I've been able to successfully unpack.  TransMac can't seem to talk to my floppy drive properly and won't even give me the option of writing anything to a floppy.  Some of the image files are even too big for a floppy anyway.  Various alternatives I've tried tend to have similar issues.

The result has been endless frustration.  It shouldn't be this complicated or this difficult.

Does anyone know of any foolproof way of getting this job done that doesn't require a half dozen steps and a slew of broken utilities?  Or anyone who does this kind of thing as a service?

 

[bigmessowires]

Self-promotion: my Floppy Emu disk emulator was designed to let people avoid exactly this sort of hassle. Check it out here: https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

Assuming you want to stick with your own solution, here are a few suggestions:

- This is only going to work if you're talking about 1.44MB floppy disk images. A PC floppy drive can't handle 400K or 800K floppies. Make sure your Mac can handle 1.44MB floppies (some of the oldest models can't).

- The tool HFVExplorer for Windows will enable you to open vintage Macintosh disk images (HFS images), view their contents, and add/remove items.

- Don't try to unpack .sit or .hqx files on your Windows computer. It will probably result in a mess. Instead, just use HFVExplorer to put them inside a disk image, write the disk image to a floppy with WinImage, and transfer the file to your Mac. Then unpack it on the Mac.

- Hopefully your Mac already has a hard disk and a working System software installation. In that case, you can just use a blank 1.44MB floppy disk image to transfer files. You can find one in the "blanks" archive here: http://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/extras/blanks/

- If you've found disk images that are too big for a floppy, they may be DiskCopy 4.2 image files instead of "raw" disk images needed by WinImage. Usually DC4.2 images are about 1K to 4K bigger than a floppy disk, because they have some extra header information. I've written a tool that will convert them to raw format, which usually has a .dsk filename extension: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2013/12/16/macintosh-diskcopy-4-2-floppy-image-converter/ 

- You can also use a software-based Macintosh emulator like Mini vMac to open and edit disk images. Mini vMac can read DC4.2 or raw floppy disk images, so you could mount one of each and copy the files between them. That's an alternative to a conversion tool like the one I wrote. 

 

[SalvationCoder]

I had seen Floppy Emu before when I was searching for a solution for Apple II software, but I didn't realize it worked for Macintosh disk images as well.  Looks like it would pretty efficiently accomplish what I want.

The oversized disk images I'm referring to are in excess of 5 MB.  Can Floppy Emu handle those too?

 

[bigmessowires]

5 MB isn't a floppy disk image, so it's not clear what it might be. You could use one of the tools I mentioned to open it and take a look.

 

[SalvationCoder]

I was able to take a look inside one of the images using TransMac (if I remember correctly).  It contained the basic program files you would expect, just quite a bit bigger than a floppy disk could hold.  Maybe someone just copied them from their hard drive onto a disk image without regard for disk size?

 

[powermax]

Maybe someone just copied them from their hard drive onto a disk image without regard for disk size?

Probably yes. You need to break large files into smaller pieces and use several 1.44 MB disks to transfer them to your Mac or find another solution (Floppy Emu, network transfer)...

 

[K55]

Using hfv explorer you can do this pretty quickly, or at least get yourself to a point where you can setup os7 and get networking/nettalk.

1. Download and install HFV explorer.

2. Plug in your floppy drive and insert a floppy, and format it (fat is fine for now)

3. Open hfv explorer, it should look like this:

4. Click on File->Format new volume.

5. A window will pop up, give your floppy a name and select your A: drive, click ok.

6. You should now have a new volume at the left tab called "test". Now browse to a folder in hfv explorer and copy a file you want to transfer, say mode32.sit. And paste it in.

Make sure to do all copy and paste operations from within HFV explorer, use the left side file navigator. The "edit" button lets you copy and paste files).

7. Now eject your floppy, load it onto your mac and see if it works.

8. Tada ;D

 

[reallyrandy]

The oversized disk images I'm referring to are in excess of 5 MB.  Can Floppy Emu handle those too?

5 MB isn't a floppy disk image, so it's not clear what it might be. You could use one of the tools I mentioned to open it and take a look.

For larger spaces, doesn't Floppy EMU work in some kind of Hard drive mode as well?

I just ordered one so it hasn't arrived yet so I have not had the opportunity to explore it. But I think BMOW is just the guy to tell us.

 

[SalvationCoder]

Update:  I put the .sit file inside a HD20 image and used my new Floppy Emu to transfer the file to my Macintosh LC.  I was then able to copy the .sit file out of the HD20 image and used StuffIt Expander to unpack it on my Mac.  Inside was a .img file, as expected.

The problem now is that Disk Copy 4.2 does not recognize the .img file.  It's in the 4-5 MB range, so it's clearly not a floppy disk, and it appears to be something Disk Copy 4.2 can't handle.  As I mentioned before, it's very likely that the piece of software I'm trying to get at was a multi-disk installation that a person later copied from their hard drive into a larger than floppy-sized image.  As a result, it can't be mounted as a floppy disk.

So now what?

 

[kerobaros]

It might be worth trying Disk Copy 6.3.3 instead of 4.5. If you don't mind answering, what software are you trying to transfer across, and where did you get it from? We might be able to find it in a better format elsewhere; if you can find it as floppy images, your floppy emu will have a great time with it.

 

[SalvationCoder]

It might be worth trying Disk Copy 6.3.3 instead of 4.5. If you don't mind answering, what software are you trying to transfer across, and where did you get it from? We might be able to find it in a better format elsewhere; if you can find it as floppy images, your floppy emu will have a great time with it.

​

The software is the original version of Amazon Trail (not the CD version), which I found at Macintosh Garden.

Will Disk Copy 6.3.3 work on a Macintosh LC running 7.0?

 

[IPalindromeI]

4.2 IIRC only deals in floppies. Disk Copy 6.x will handle all sorts of weird image stuff.

 

[kerobaros]

Hm. According to a comment on the Garden's page for Disk Copy, 6.3.3 will only work on System 7.1.1 and up, which I did not know before. Might be worth giving a try anyway, if you haven't? It looks like there's an app on the Garden named MountImage that may or may not work for what you're doing.

 

[SalvationCoder]

Update:  I was finally able to run the software I wanted.  After following the steps I listed above, I upgraded my LC from System 7.0 to System 7.1 in order to run Disk Copy 6.3.3.  The Floppy Emu with the vintage software collection SD card from Big Mess o' Wires (which includes several System software installation disk images) made at least that part simple.  Then I used the Floppy Emu to transfer Disk Copy 6.3.3 from the Internet to my LC via a disk image I made on my Dell Windows 10 tablet in HFV Explorer.  And then Disk Copy 6.3.3 rejected the image of my game disk, giving me an invalid checksum error.  I figured out how to set Disk Copy 6.3.3 to skip checksum verification, and it finally mounted my image as a disk on the desktop.  I copied the files out of the mounted disk image to my hard drive (after running into a full hard drive and having to judiciously delete accumulated files from earlier steps as well as junkware from the previous owner), ran the game, and it worked.  Success at last!

But what an ordeal!

My next problem is trying to figure out what's up with some other disk images I downloaded.  After unpacking them, I have files with .img and .image extensions, but neither Disk Copy 4.2 nor Disk Copy 6.3.3 recognizes them as anything they can work with.

 

[kerobaros]

I have had some amount of luck manually changing creator and file type codes on disk images and getting them to mount through Disk Copy. As I recall, creator "dCpy" and file type "dimg" should do the trick.

 

[SalvationCoder]

I'm still working on finding various disk images and getting software onto my old Macs.  I've networked my new Performa 575 with my LC and 512ke, which has helped a lot with hard drive space.

I'm not usually one to be critical of people who donate their time and effort to the cause, but I feel the need to be blunt:  Macintosh archival efforts are an embarrassing mess.  There is no standardization of disk image and compression formats used, and for that matter there is not even any consistency in practice on whether to compress them at all, or whether to provide them in the form of files or in the form of disk images.  Many of the images I've downloaded are in some kind of non-standard format that none of my Macs recognize.  Some are flat-out corrupted.  Many are poorly documented online to the point that you aren't even sure what you're downloading.

The result has been that only about half of the old Macintosh software I've downloaded online has been usable.

I fear that eventually (if not already) some of this old software is going to be lost forever, not actually disappearing from the web, but inaccessible behind a wall of idiosyncratic formatting.