Johnnya101 Posted January 10, 2017 Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 Hi all, I'm getting a compact mac soon, an SE/30 (hope the deal goes through). So I'm going to buy an scsi2sd in the future. But in the meantime I need a way of getting software on the thing. I went on amazon and found a 10 pack of maxell disks, 1.44, and a USB drive. Someone even said they used the disks in the reviews for an SE! Anyways. My pc has an OS X virtual machine. I'll be creating floppies in that. Is it possible to do this with the newest OS X still? Will it work fine the the drive below? Thanks! https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E9MD700/ref=ox_sc_act_image_2?smid=A29Y8OP2GPR7PE&psc=1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Johnnya101 Posted January 10, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 Should say es, I know t says OS X compatable. But does anyone know if it's the best option? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
olePigeon Posted January 10, 2017 Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 I'm pretty certain current versions of OS X no longer have support for floppy drives, USB or otherwise. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
techfury90 Posted January 10, 2017 Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 Even if they do, I would not use OS X with a USB floppy. Here's why: it never supported low level formatting disks. You may say "sure, I can erase a disk in Disk Utility!", but it just writes over the file system structures. It will not write new IDAMs, etc. like a full format operation does, which can cause reliability issues with old media. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Johnnya101 Posted January 10, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 I ordered them. I'll try using windows then. Will windows mess up disk images when writing to the disk? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
techfury90 Posted January 10, 2017 Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 (edited) The more important question is if your SE is a SuperDrive/FDHD model. If it's not, you will need an old Mac to make the disks. There is no getting around this, as 800k disks cannot be written on a PC in a format an 800k SE can read. Edit: oh wait, saw it was an SE/30. Yes, you can make those disks on Windows with a USB FDD. Edited January 10, 2017 by techfury90 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Johnnya101 Posted January 10, 2017 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 Yup. As you said, it's an SE/30, which I think ALL have a super drive? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anonymous Freak Posted January 10, 2017 Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 Two options:1. Format the floppies as "Mac" on the SE/30, then use them in OS X via a USB floppy drive (yes, they will work - you can't format HFS/Mac format on OS X, but you can read/write just fine.) 2. If you have PC File Exchange installed on the SE/30, just use the disks in FAT/DOS/Windows format. For writing disk *images*, you can use dd in the command line in OS X (or any UNIX/Linux) to write an .img file to the floppy drive, although it seems hit-or-miss for me. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Cory5412 Posted January 10, 2017 Report Share Posted January 10, 2017 Moved to compact mac subforum. I believe USB diskette drives should still work in Sierra. A webcomic artist recently connected one to a Mac with Type C ports and was able to fit a bunch in. The real challenge might be getting software that fits on a single floppy, or using an archival format that the Mac can understand and join multiple segments. (Stuffit Deluxe can do the thing, but you need a source of split archive files.) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mac128 Posted January 11, 2017 Report Share Posted January 11, 2017 Hi all, I'm getting a compact mac soon, an SE/30 (hope the deal goes through). So I'm going to buy an scsi2sd in the future. But in the meantime I need a way of getting software on the thing. I went on amazon and found a 10 pack of maxell disks, 1.44, and a USB drive. Someone even said they used the disks in the reviews for an SE! Anyways. My pc has an OS X virtual machine. I'll be creating floppies in that. Is it possible to do this with the newest OS X still? Will it work fine the the drive below? Thanks! https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E9MD700/ref=ox_sc_act_image_2?smid=A29Y8OP2GPR7PE&psc=1 You don't need an OS X virtual machine, what works better is something like a Mac OS emulator like Basilisk II, or SheepShaver for Windows. There's a few tutorials here, geared toward a Mac, but they will give you the idea: http://www.mac128.com Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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