5 Feb
2007
5 Feb
'07
8:41 p.m.
On 2/5/07, Marvin Johnston <marvin at rain.org> wrote:
I have a Mac 128 and I want to duplicate the system disk. Probably a stupid
question, but how do you make a copy of a disk on that computer (single internal
disk drive.) Needless to say, I am not a Mac person. Thanks!
Hmm... if you have a 128K Mac, I'm guessing you are using an older
version of the Finder (1.1g, perhaps?) I don't recall off the top of
my head what the newest version of the OS fits into 128K, but I'm
guessing it's 3.5 or older. I mention this because I think there were
some changes made later, once single-drive systems were somewhat rare.
If I am remembering correctly, older systems can't format during a
copy, but later ones can. What I seem to think was the single-disk
copying procedure is to eject the System disk (Flower-E or Flower-1?),
then insert a previously formatted target floppy, eject _that_ one,
which should leave its icon on the desktop, but grayed out, then drag
the System disk icon over the target disk icon. The machine should
slurp up 20%-25% of the System disk, spit it out, prompt you to swap,
write out what's cached, spit the target floppy out, ad nausem, until
all 400K passes through memory to your destination disk. While doing
this, you will be subjected to your internal drive playing a little
tune as the drive changes speeds through at least 4 zones. After a
while, you might learn to listen to how far the copy has progressed,
but hopefully you won't be doing this often enough to have it drilled
into your head.
It's all quite tedious, but possible. If there's anyway you can
borrow a second 400K floppy, you will find this somewhat trivial. You
can also copy 400K disks in more modern Macs, so don't think you are
limited to using a 128K Mac to copy single-sided MFS disks. I can't
say for certain how new the gear can be, but at the very least, I'd be
surprised if a Mac SE or SE/30 running System 6 couldn't still do it.
Of course, you might only have that 128K handy with no way to
find/borrow an external drive, but unless this is the case, or unless
you are attempting a masochistic experiment to drive a Mac like it was
still 1984, you may find this activity much easier on friendlier
hardware, even an unexpanded 512K Mac.
-ethan