30 Nov
2005
30 Nov
'05
12:15 p.m.
I actually have one of those old Central Point Software "option board"
thingamajigs, made for backing up copy protected software and writing Mac
disks.
That right there is proof that you need additional hardware to properly
write Mac disks.
However, there is a program on the PC called HFVexplorer that does write mac
disks pretty well on a PC. I'm not sure how it does it, but it does.
You can find it with some searching on the web.
Julian
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of compoobah at valleyimplants.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 1:13 AM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: "Market" for old macs?
The 800k format is very proprietary, I'd be surprised if there was any way
that stock IBM hardware could write it, no matter what the programming
tricks were. More data was packed on the outer tracks than the inner
tracks (done so that they didn't have to change the Lisa ROMs (expecting
400k single-sided) according to rumor). The 1.44s can be done on any
machine that has DD or RAWRITE or anything similar, provided that it also
has a 1.44 MB mechanism. All '030+ macs have SuperDrives, as do SE-FDHD,
LC, and "upgraded" IIs with the IIx ROMs (fair number of upgrades were
sold by Apple).
For an OS, I'd use either 6.0.8 (very fast, can turn MultiFinder off,
"classic" look but won't do Virtual Memory or 32-bit addressing (max
memory=8MB, everything else is ignored)) or 7.1 PRO (fastish, and you can
patch in much of the stuff that's nice in 7.5/7.6). If you're running 7,
be sure to get Mode32, available free+legal. ROMs from the pre-IIci era
aren't fully 32-bit, so they have problems if you turn on 32-bit
addressing. A/UX also runs on the SE/30, it's the only compact Mac that
can run it. For these old beasts, assuming that you aren't going to be a
heavy Photoshop/PageMaker user, 16-20 MB of RAM works just fine with 7.1.
System 6 won't see anything over 8. Remember to get your long-blade Torx-
15 and case cracker, and to unplug SCSI, power, etc. before trying to
slide out the logic board.
Scott Quinn (SE(6.0.8), II (6.0.8), IIci (7.1), Quadra 950 (pegasys, A/UX
3.1), Quadra 700 (7.6)).
P.S. The LC is weird because of several things: 020 but no PMMU option,
16-bit data bus, only will run up to 10MB RAM and 1/3 ht HDD, funky
nonstandard video that doesn't run on all monitors. The only excuse I can
think of for Apple was that they didn't want to eclipse the II in power.
The 24-bit addressing bug in ROM I can find no excuse for- the 68000 was
designed with a 32-bit outside address bus successor in mind (full
internal 32-bit registers)- they must have just been lazy.