Apple

Hi there,

I've an old LC II macintosh that had a dead hard disk .. I've not replaced said dead disk (with a gigantic 2.1GB drive .. oh my god the power!!!!)

I want to get System 7.5.3 onto that disk .. how ?

The only tools I have to me are :

SGI Fuel (no floppy drive, but can mount the Macintosh SCSI disk)
Mac Mini running OSX (no floppy drive and no SCSI)
Linux PC (with a floppy drive)
Macintosh LC II with a SCSI hard disk and a floppy drive .... no OS.

So far I've managed to create a boot floppy from a disk image file and dd'ing it to a floppy using the Linux PC.
I've also copied all the System 7.5.3 files from the Apple site (they have released them as "free") onto the SCSI disk by plugging it into the Fuel and mounting the disk up.
If I then boot the Macintosh I can;t double click the self extracting System7.5.3 image .. I guess because the metadata about the file has been lost in the copy process ? It just says "WTF is that ?" ... basically.

Anyone know how to get around this ?

If I could find some System 7 floppy disks in an image format (ala rawwrite or dd) I could just write them back to real floppies ... but Apple have not made it easy!!

Mark

You may have luck running Basilisk-II on Linux, if you can download a harddisk image with operating system and locate a suitable ROM image.

strandedinnz wrote: If I then boot the Macintosh I can;t double click the self extracting System7.5.3 image

Is the file still in .bin format or is it already in .smi format? If the former, search for the IRIX version of mcvert to convert it to something more useful. There should be a version at the old SGI Freeware site.

The files are these :

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Su ... ion_7.5.3/

All the files are .bin ... if I run "mcvert" against them while I have the SCSI disk mounted on the Fuel .. will it allow them to be doubleclickable when the disk is put back in the Mac ?

Thanks

Mark

I would expect them to be MacBinary SMI (Self Mountable Images). You need somebody with a Mac to write them all to floppies, then get raw copies of the floppies.

And that's the issue I have ... don't have anyone with a Mac that is the same vintage or like me they have an OSX machine with no floppy drive

I even resorted to googleing to see if I could find a website that already has them as disk images .. not much luck their either, just some other people in the same boat as me.

Mark

If I can find the time, I'm sure I could do something.

porter wrote: I would expect them to be MacBinary SMI (Self Mountable Images). You need somebody with a Mac to write them all to floppies, then get raw copies of the floppies.

Right - they are MacBinary (.bin) encoded Self Mountable Images. Once they are on the SCSI drive on the SGI, McVert should be able to convert them to native SMIs, which should then be launchable on the Mac once the drive is reattached to the Mac.

The first file contains the SMI executable and a piece of the mountable image, and all the other files are the remaining parts of the mountable image.

As long as the original poster is using a bootable floppy with System 7.0.1 or higher, he shouldn't need to write them to floppies first.

strandedinnz wrote: I've an old LC II macintosh that had a dead hard disk

(a) you can run System 6.0.8 on a LCII to get started

(b) you may be better served getting a CD-ROM image of the OS and booting from CD.

I presume you have replaced the harddisk? If so you'll most probably need the hacked version of HD Setup.

porter wrote: If I can find the time, I'm sure I could do something.

You would forever more be my hero and should I find I have any illegitimate children then I'll gift them to you .. or I could buy you a beer should you ever come to New Zealand, your choice

Mark

strandedinnz wrote: or I could buy you a beer should you ever come to New Zealand, your choice

Been here for quite a while now......

An external CD-ROM drive would be the best way to handle this particular issue, but do yourself a favor and buy an external USB floppy drive for your Mini. They can be had for next to nothing, and it'll make your life 100x easier when dealing with older Macs.

porter wrote:

strandedinnz wrote: or I could buy you a beer should you ever come to New Zealand, your choice

Been here for quite a while now......

doh I should really learn to read those little boxes on the right so I can't fob off children onto you ? And I have to pay for beer ? Bugger!

Mark

strandedinnz wrote:

porter wrote:

strandedinnz wrote: or I could buy you a beer should you ever come to New Zealand, your choice

Been here for quite a while now......

doh I should really learn to read those little boxes on the right so I can't fob off children onto you ? And I have to pay for beer ? Bugger!

Mark

You'll note how he quoted your post so you can't go back and change it, too.

The guy really wants his beer.

If you have a network adapter on the old mac, you can do as follows:
- somewhere on the internet there is a bootable floppy image named "network access disk" with os 7 on it and lothsa eth drivers. Find-it and dd-it onto a floppy.
- on a linux machine on the network insmod the appletalk kernel driver, install netatalk and configure a public share. Copy the 7.5 images you downloqded from apple there
- boot the mac with the floppy. Switch localtalk from the serial port to the eth. Mount that share from the chooser. Doubleclick the 1st disk image and it will mount the install kit. Use that formatting utility ( HD SC or something ) to partition (max 2gb per partition ) format the disk and install drivers. Then install os7
- boot from the hd

ps: you might need a 3rd party formatting utility as the apple one requires apple branded drives. Install-it on that share
ps2: if you don't have a eth card, you can network with another ancient mac running os7-9 using a serial cable.