Re: Retro Computing
By: Android8675 to Zet on Thu Feb 16 2017 08:35 am

Old Mac's are great, I'm trying to get a Color Classic ][ (Last all-in-one made in that old design style), it's got a modular mainboard that you can replace with a newer motherboard giving you a great color Mac in an all in one.

The best computer I EVER used was a Mac IIci with a cache card, 12 mb of RAM, 80 MB internal and 1GB external drives. System 6 back then. That thing never crashed.

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Poindexter Fortran to Android8675 on Mon Feb 20 2017 06:59:26

Old Mac's are great, I'm trying to get a Color Classic ][ (Last
all-in-one made in that old design style), it's got a modular
mainboard that you can replace with a newer motherboard giving you a
great color Mac in an all in one.

The best computer I EVER used was a Mac IIci with a cache card, 12 mb of RAM, 80 MB internal and 1GB external drives. System 6 back then. That thing never crashed.

I have backup disk images of system 6. I need a MAC with a floppy drive to write them out so I can install the OS on some old mac systems. I found out recently that my Atari ST could accomplish this with a Happy Discovery Cart from the TOS desktop, OR I could write them out via Spectre GCR emulation. I got the GCR cart, but I don't have any disks to install the Mac OS on my ST so the thing won't boot.

It's like I'm sooooo close to getting it working, but I'm missing that one stupid Spacely Sprocket that makes it all work.

Ah well. One of these days when I move I'm building a nerd cave with all these systems setup.

-A.

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Android8675 to Poindexter Fortran on Wed Feb 22 2017 13:14:37

I have backup disk images of system 6. I need a MAC with a floppy drive to write them out so I can install the OS on some old mac systems. I found

I don't know if there is anything special on the image that you would like to save, but I have been able to create bootable floppies using a USB floppy drive and a Linux/ newer Mac computer.

It's actually very simple. I downloaded floppy images from MacintoshGarden, and then just simply used the dd command to write the images to the floppies. I was surprised that it worked that easily actually. Obviously, this will not work for 800K floppies, but for normal 1.4mb floppies, this method really worked very well.

If there isn't anything special on the floppies, this is really a viable way of getting the OS at least installed :)

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Zet to Android8675 on Fri Feb 24 2017 09:55 am

this will not work for 800K floppies, but for normal 1.4mb floppies, this method really worked very well.

I thought 800 K were single sided, but the same density?

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Zet to Android8675 on Fri Feb 24 2017 09:55 am

I have backup disk images of system 6. I need a MAC with a floppy
drive to write them out so I can install the OS on some old mac
systems. I found

It's actually very simple. I downloaded floppy images from MacintoshGarden, and then just simply used the dd command to write the images to the floppies. I was surprised that it worked that easily actually. Obviously, this will not work for 800K floppies, but for normal 1.4mb floppies, this method really worked very well.

Yeah, 800kb floppies is what I need, the Mac CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) drives are pretty much exclusive to Mac and old Amigas I think. Writing out these disk images from non-CAV systems (USB floppies, PC floppy drives, etc) require a hardware mod of some kind or special software. My ST can do it with
a Happy Discovery Cart, or within a working Mac Spectre GCR enviornment, a working Mac with a floppy drive can do it, but I don't have any of that at the moment.

I have a bunch of G3 power mac's with system 6, 7 and 9, but no floppy drives attached to those systems.

Honestly if I thought about it really hard I'd probably find a simple solution, but haven't been very fortunate lately, and I don't have everything setup or laid out so I can look at it all and lego it together.

Working on a P3/500Mhz system. Got a new Intel Slot1 board online that was sealed for less than $40, finally found a working combination of PC133 ram (only came up with 256MB working out of like 4 gigs worth of old ram), I'm troubleshooting the Sound Blaster Pro which after all these years still sounds amazing, next up is the LAPC-I, and figuring out what OS I want to setup. (I think Win98SE that boots into DOS is going to win). I have to find a nice joystick for my daughter.

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Poindexter Fortran to Zet on Sat Feb 25 2017 07:08 am

this will not work for 800K floppies, but for normal 1.4mb floppies,
this method really worked very well.

I thought 800 K were single sided, but the same density?

Double Sided (DS) / Double Density (DD)

1.44mb is DS/HD (High Density)

there is a 2.88mb DS/QD format, but it's rare and died due to the plummetting cost of hard drives at the time.

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■ Synchronet ■ Shodan's Core @ ShodansCore.com (Port 2323 for Nethack)

Yeah, 800kb floppies is what I need, the Mac CAV (Constant Angular
Velocity) drives are pretty much exclusive to Mac and old Amigas I think. Writing out these disk images from non-CAV systems (USB floppies, PC floppy drives, etc) require a hardware mod of some kind or special software. My ST can do it with a Happy Discovery Cart, or within a working Mac Spectre GCR enviornment, a working Mac with a floppy drive can do it, but I don't have any of that at the moment.

amigas did not use CAV but a different format on DSSD 3 1/2 disk. But amiga used 11 sector per track where ibm used 9, that where the difference was, giving 880k instead of the 720k offered on a ibm format. Apple was offering
800 because of the cav having a variable number of track from 8 to 12.

Amigas could read ibm format with the proper software it's floppy hardware being more flexible. But if my memory serve it was requiring an actual mac floppy to read them, because it was possible with a piece of hardware where
you would plug a mac rom to use an amiga as a mac since they where sharing the same processor (68000)

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Re: Retro computing
By: Zet to All on Fri Jan 27 2017 02:19 pm

Hi Zet, I own an ibm thinkpad 600x and Apple Powerbook G3 Lombard/Bronze keyboard 333.
My thinkpad is in working condition although faulty(PC card slots stopped working) so I use it from time to time mostly for some retro gaming. :D
Feel free to msg me.
Have a good 1.

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quadluka wrote to Zet <=-

Working on getting a C64 to host a BBS.

Stay Tuned. :)

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Re: Retro Computing
By: Android8675 to Poindexter Fortran on Mon Feb 27 2017 08:51 am

there is a 2.88mb DS/QD format, but it's rare and died due to the plummetting cost of hard drives at the time.

I'd say it also had to do with competition from other formats for portable media. I think around the same time is when higher-capacity media became popular, such as Zip drives and disks (100mb, and later 250mb), and SuperDrives (120mb), CD-Rs and CD-RW discs, and there were also things like the Syquest Sparq and IOMega Jaz, which used removable cartridge hard drives that stored 1GB.

Nightfox

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