Good apps for B/W Powerbook - Macintosh Garden

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2012, March 30 - 4:09am

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

Good apps for B/W Powerbook

So I just won a PowerBook 180 in pretty nice condition, and its got a problem turning on (which I'm pretty sure I can fix).

My issue is that anything pre-OS 9 is quite foreign to me. Last time I used OS 8 even was in 2001, on one of the last Macintoshes that the local school had. So Mac OS 7 and related stuff is quite new to me.

Another bad thing is that my only good computer with a floppy drive is a 1997 IBM ThinkPad, but its got a CDROM drive on it and Windows 98...Will rawrite do this stuff? It would be nice...because this PowerBook will be the first floppy only computer I have.

Also: app and game suggestions! I'm completely unaware of what games and apps that work well on greyscale OS 7.

Sadly, SCSI and external display won't be attainable for awhile longer, but maybe.
So, whats some good stuff?

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

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2012, March 30 - 8:56pm

soudesune

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Joined: 2009 Dec 19

How do you intend to get software onto your nice new PB180?

I would suggest that you invest in an external SCSI CD-ROM and a 29-pin (square) PB-SCSI adaptor.
On a modern computer, download and run Basilisk II. You'll need a ROM file and all of the info you need to set it up is on the site. There is also a program to create HFS volumes, whose name eludes me at the moment. Create 640MB volumes. Install OS 7.5.5 onto your new volume so that you can boot up into Basilisk II.
You can now download files on your modern machine, decompress them within the Basilisk II emulator and order them as you wish. Once you have what you like, use Virtual DVD/PC to create an ISO-file of the volume. Bring this ISO-file out of the emulator into the modern machine and burn into onto a CD.
The newly purchased external SCSI CD-ROM plugs into the back of the PB180 with the aid of the adaptor and Bob-san ha ojisan desu.
This can also be done much more simply with an internal zip-drive in your modern machine and an external SCSI zip drive with adaptor. The benefit here is that you can read and write to the zip-drive from within Basilisk II.

All improvements, suggestions and amendments to this are welcome.

2012, April 1 - 5:50pm

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

Suggest a SCSI drive, then. Optimally I'd love to get a PowerCD, but as they're rare and expensive, all hopes of that are dashed.

Call me crazy, but before I even had a SCSI capable computer, I had a caddy based Apple CD-ROM drive, and because I couldn't do much with it, I gave it back to the guy who gave it to me (which I am even more sad to say probably threw it away after that). Few in my area deals in old electronics, less in the area of old computers, and even less to deal with Apples. That said, finding any technology that existed pre-highspeed internet is hard. I'd have to ship in everything, and tbh, that would tally up quite a bit of money...Probably more than I paid for the computer (33$).

Le sigh.

2012, April 5 - 8:57pm

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

Sorry for the doublepost/bump, but I've got a question you all might could answer:

I got the PowerBook in, and it thankfully has all the extras: full 14MB RAM, 120MB HDD (that works!), and internal modem. Its missing the right 'foot', but I'm mostly using this as a 'laptop' anyway, so that's no matter.

What is the matter is that I'd like to get everything cleaned off and up to date. Its got Mac OS 7.1 on it ATM, and I heard that with 14MB RAM that you can run Mac OS 7.5 on it decently, and that includes a few features I'd like to explore, as well as more application compatibility.

I probably wouldn't mid dropping the money on the SCSI drive if it was obtainable locally, but I'd have to ship it in costing more than I paid for the 'Book! If I could handle it through floppy disks, I'd much rather do that.

There is a problem, though, in that the system folder is kinda messed up. Alot of extensions and bits of programs are left behind where I guess the previous owner 'cleaned it'. The only remaining things are AOL and a sole copy of Word 6. I'd like to just format the drive and start over from scratch, but I can't find instructions on how to do this.

I will admit: I'm an OS 9 and OS X person normally. This is my first Apple from before 1999, so I'm deep in unknown territory right now. Anything you can help with will be helpful...(well duh).

As far as I can tell, I need a Disk Utility disk to do the formatting and partitioning, and some system software. AFAIK, the one free from Apple is just a 19 part CD image that you extract over an existing install. This has a nice amount of space left on the drive, but some of the mess left behind is NOT what I want to deal with. Starting with a blank computer would be alot nicer for me.

Any help?

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

2012, April 5 - 11:56pm

(Reply to #4) #5

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

What other systems do you have that can help you out here? Mac? PC? That 19 part CD image will be problematical to install from as you don't have a CD drive for the 180 or another disk drive to boot up from, and getting the archive as is, onto the 180 may also be an issue.

There is an archive of Mac OS 7.5 floppy disk images here, its the top Download link (15.88 MB). Install from this and you can then upgrade it to 7.5.3 or 7.5.5 if you need to.

The tricky bit with this archive tho' (for novices), is the original uploader made DiskDup+ images of the floppies, then archived them as ".bin", compressed them as ".rar" and further compressed this as ".zip" - something of an overkill IMO. - To obtain floppies from this archive, you need to extract the ZIP file, then a RAR file, then the BINs and lastly, write the ".image" files to floppy disk. All requiring two or more separate apps to complete.

Otherwise, this is an excellent floppy version of Mac OS 7.5 - it also has the SCSI disk formatting tool in the "Disk Tools" floppy.

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

2012, April 6 - 4:01am

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

Other systems...oh...none too helpful. I've got a custom built PC, a Sony Vaio (out of action, but could be brought back. Has a floppy drive, which will be useful), an IBM ThinkPad 380ED (very old laptop, CD and floppy)...And I've got a PowerBook G3 Pismo, PowerMac G4, PowerBook G4, and an iMac G3.

All in all, not a good mix to work with this guy. I'd love to get a desktop Mac from the middle era. Early PowerPC, but with Ethernet, CDROM, Floppy...would be nice, but shipping is a major hurdle.

As I mentioned earlier, I've got no SCSI devices or connections at all. I was first thinking CD-ROM, but am now thinking ZIP. My G4 tower has a zip drive in it, and I do have a PC one as well (and the board in my PC still has floppy IDE connectors in it). I've also got a few disks, but that won't help me now without a SCSI drive.

Thank you, however, for that link. I was looking for those (I knew they existed). I've gotten through the ZIP and RAR, but BIN doesn't mean much to Windows 7... I'm planning on moving the images one by one to the ThinkPad, then using HFVExplorer or rawrite to write the disks. I'll be swapping disks out because collectively, I've only got...10. (My fascination started with the iMac G3...and floppies went straight out the window)

all I need is to decode the BINs, and we'll be in business.

Thanks SO much for that link, though. I was getting lost looking at all the CDs <_>;
(Oh, I also have all those images un-binned and compressed with simple zip or 7zip. I could upload the archive if it would help anyone)

UPDATE: So I've got RawWrite on the ThinkPad churning out disks. I've got only 5 that still read and write correctly. I'm a little wary on proceeding,but I think I've hit a wall. When I try booting from that Disk Tools disk, it says I don't have enough memory, or one time it told me it wasn't able to boot this mac.

I can boot from the 7.5 Install 1 disk, and it looks like it would carry me through. Can I run the Disk Tools under 7.1 and then boot from the install disk? Or is that not how it works here?

2012, April 6 - 10:33pm

(Reply to #6) #7

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

(Oh, I also have all those images un-binned and compressed with simple zip or 7zip. I could upload the archive if it would help anyone)

Please don't. The ".bin" part is there for a reason - to protect the hidden classic Macintosh file's Resource forks via file transfers. Zip & 7zip do not preserve these resource forks and if you use Mac OS X to zip these files it may retain the RFs but they can only restored using Mac OS X which not everybody uses. - You can use MacZip (a classic Mac app) but this also requires MacZip on a classic Mac OS to inflate. So they are best kept in this .bin format for better pan-OS availability. - Unless that is, you use some form of the Stuffit compressor on a Mac (DropStuff), which must be set to saving as ".sit" & not ".sitx", using the slowest compression option and set to exclude hidden (Mac OS X) system files. Then you can stuff the un-binned archive and upload.

When I try booting from that Disk Tools disk, it says I don't have enough memory, or one time it told me it wasn't able to boot this mac.

I can boot from the 7.5 Install 1 disk, and it looks like it would carry me through. Can I run the Disk Tools under 7.1 and then boot from the install disk? Or is that not how it works here?

Use the Disk Tools floppy from the main install set of floppies, not the Disk Tools inside the folder (that one is for the Q630 and other Macs with IDE drives, I think). You should be able to boot up using the Disk Tools floppy from the main set of disks. Boot up from this to check the health of your drive and reformat the drive too, if necessary.
You could do as you suggest, run the Disk Tools under 7.1 but if any errors are found with the drive you won't be able to repair them, as you have to boot up from an OS not running from the hard drive that you want to check/fix or reformat.

[Edit] If you're still stuck, you can also try booting from the Mac OS 7.5 "SuperBooter75" floppy disk. This is a modified Disk Tools floppy for Macs with SCSI drives, it contains the patched "HD SC Setup" utility, - patched to recognize and format most SCSI drives, not only Apples (handy if your HD is not a original Apple drive), contains a few other diagnostic tools as well, so its a useful addition. Only the Disk Copy 4.2 archive of this on the links page appears to be a working download, grab it before it too disappears.

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

2012, April 8 - 1:48am

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

I just realized what went on. Both my old PC laptops have old floppy drives that seem to hate all the floppies I have...except two. Writing the images to these two disks yielded the correct results.

I just kept writing and rewriting the disks (not a good practice, I know), but I eventually got Mac OS 7.5 installed, then slowly transferred each of the 19 parts of the 7.5.3 image over and am running that.

Now that I have this down to a science I can more quickly enact...maybe point to a good guide on lightweight system installations? I'd love to have this thing a little lighter on memory and disk space if possible. I'm only planning on using this for some Word, Excel, maybe a little classic gaming (if I can find good ones that work well with a greyscale display), but nothing serious.

BTW, having a desktop Mac would be A LOT more helpful right now. The raw images I have zipped took ages to get out because I had to work with it all on Windows. I also had to use the HFVexplorer to copy the .BINs to floppy .DSKs, then write those .DSKs to floppy, then copy from that to the PowerBook hard disk.

Not looking forwards to doing that again, but I would rather have it all leaving as much resources for programs as possible.

I'm also going to try and get to the local market and see if I can possibly score SOMETHING SCSI to help me out.

OR.

I've got computers that connect to ethernet or wireless with modems all over, the iMac and PowerBook G3 being some examples (both running OS 9). Is there anyway I can make some cable and run some software that can let me file transfer by hooking the modems together? That would be so much easier...

UPDATE:

Right, this is almost getting on my nerves...So all I wanted to do was get Word 5.1 and Excel 4 onto the computer. Fair enough, lets go find the files. Word is in floppy images, Excel in a compressed folder. Awesome. Lets just do Word for now, then. Oh, no program will write the Word images to floppy disks. Well, what about the Mac? *do trickery to get the images over to the PowerBook* No software to handle them under 7.5.3. Well, what about getting the mounting software. Its all DiskCopy, it seems, so lets get that. Wait, its .SIT. Crack it open, oh, there's an .IMG. Its too large to write to floppy disk. and I have no software to open that and remove the unnecessary files.

Sheesh! Is it absolutely impossible to work with just floppy disks anymore?! I'm going to HAVE to get some alternate form of data transfer...but HOW? I guess this is the point I just break down and shelve the 'Book till I find a SCSI drive and adapter...darn.

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

2012, April 8 - 10:59pm

(Reply to #8) #9

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

Sheesh! Is it absolutely impossible to work with just floppy disks anymore?! I'm going to HAVE to get some alternate form of data transfer...but HOW? I guess this is the point I just break down and shelve the 'Book till I find a SCSI drive and adapter...darn.

In the meantime use the program "Split & Join", have a copy of this on your iMac & PB G3 & also on your problematic PB 180. Use it to split the archives you want to use into smaller than floppy disk sized chunks. Transfer the split parts to your PC with a floppy drive and copy the chunks to floppies - you don't need to use HFVExplorer to write these chunks to Mac formatted floppies either (Mac OS 7.5.x will be able to mount PC formatted floppies) copy the chunks to a folder on the PB 180's drive then use Split & Join to reassemble them for use.

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

You could look into purchasing a USB floppy drive to use on your iMac or G3 as a cheapish alternative and aid to cutting out the middle, PC write to floppy, bit.

2012, April 9 - 12:48am

#10

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

Ah, brilliant. I saw that a week or so ago and completely passed it by. That should help nicely, though I think in the end I'll have to go through PC till I find a USB floppy drive...or ZIP drive.

I think I decided on zip, despite it being a semi-tempermental type of format. I've got an internal PC drive, an internal Mac drive, and I've got eyes on a relatively cheap SCSI one on eBay. I also found a shop that just might have something that old in it...hmm.

So, currently my workflow is: download and split on the Pismo, transfer parts via USB to Compaq, HFVExplorer/normal Explorer to write files to disk, and then open files on PowerBook. Man.

Thanks again for the help though. I do wonder, however, about 7.5.5. I've got 7.5.3 running ATM and its doing alright, but is there any real reason to go to 7.5.5 in my case? I'll just be running basic productivity (older versions, at that) and maybe the occasional game, but it shouldn't be a problem otherwise, correct?

And this is the point I think I can finally get back to the original topic of what are some good programs to load on this thing? I love the keyboard and do a lot of typing, so Word is in the process of transfer, but what about sound work or B/W gaming? Most of the games I was looking at seem pretty extensive color wise...

2012, April 9 - 11:04pm

(Reply to #10) #11

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

If you are making split part files of larger archives and/or any other archives you are moving, are small enough to fit onto a floppy without needing to split, then you don't need to go down the HFVExplorer route. Copying directly to a DOS formatted floppy is OK and one less step in the equation. As long as the archives you are moving are in ".sit", ".bin", ".hqx", ".zip" format or split chunks, they are safe to transfer via DOS formatted disks. You should have on the PB 180 by now, the necessary software to deal with those archive formats directly. E.g; Stuffit Expander 5.5 (with the DropStuff 5.5 "Stuffit Engine" extension) and MacZip. Also Disk Copy 4.2 & Disk Copy 6.3.3. and probably ShrinkWrap 2.1 and DiskDup+ too, for handling the more obscure less common disk image formats.

There's no harm in upgrading 7.5.3 to 7.5.5 as that was a very stable revision and may bring some improvements to the stability of your PB, but if things are running quite smoothly now there may not be the need to either. You should look at running RamDoubler on this PB, it offers better virtual RAM on earlier Macs with limited available RAM. - If I had this Mac, I'd be going backwards with the OS and installing Mac OS 7 Pro (SSW 7.1.1) instead, as that OS, when cut-down & tweaked is very light on RAM use OS and speedy, and I'd also install RAMDoubler 1.6.1 or newer, but thats just IMHO.

Apps: I would have a copy of ClarisWorks 2.1 to 4.0 - most likely 3.0 but no newer than 4.x for its lite weight RAM use and good productive options.
Games: try to seek out games that are able to run in 4-bit color (e.g; Falcon MC, & Spectre Supreme) as they will possibly run in 4-bit greyscale too and would look the best on the 180's main screen. Likely Games from the same era as the 180 would be a starting point.

Edit: Replaced 'xxx 7' with 'Mac OS 7' - IIGS User

2012, April 10 - 5:43am

#12

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

I think the easiest answer has been posted a few times, but without having endured the pain and frustration of using other methods many are unwilling to part with money to take the easy option: A SCSI / parallel / USB Zip drive, I believe that the parallel Zip and USB Zip are the same unit, my USB Zip 250 came with a parallel port also.
For the price these would now cost you on eBay or equivalent, just how much is your time, using floppy disks, worth ?

A more expensive and even more elegant solution would be to source a LocalTalk to Ethernet adapter, there were a few models, all from around 1998 and the original iMac release. To allow new iMac users to continue to use their (expensive) Apple LocalTalk printers. Cost then was about UK£100, about US$100, alas they're not much cheaper now, but you'll end up with the old Mac on your Ethernet network. I had and still have one of them, a Farallon iPrint Adapter. Works perfectly connecting my 8MHz SE to my 2x2.5GHz G5. Hardest part in this solution is sourcing one of these adapters - one caveat, be under no illusion, even with Gb Ethernet on one end, all traffic slows to 230kb/s to the Mac SE, only slightly faster than floppy disks.

2012, April 12 - 6:33am

#13

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

Well, part with the cash I did.

I've got a SCSI ZIP drive and an HDI-30 to DB25 cable en route to my location...in a week or two -_-. All in all ended up costing me more than the computer did! And sadly the guy selling it didn't know if it was one of the cool ones that could switch between SCSI and Parallel usage.The people who did know wanted 50$+ for their bare drives, nothing else T_T. So 40$ later and I've got what I need being delivered to my house.

I've been trying and trying to do this via floppy, and at long last, I've got the things I need to my PowerBook...at least the one thing I need/want for it right now: Word. I'll get Claris in a bit, but a version of Word would be nice. I used the excellent Split & Join to get the DiskCopy archive over...then I realize...its in a disk image...WHY. Why is the program I'm being told to use to mount disk images sealed inside a disk image!??!?! Unless I completely missed something.

Oh, and I grabbed Stuffit Expander 5.5 off the site and got it working, but I don't think it installed the Stuffit extension (which ShrinkWrap wants to mount my Word 5.1 image files, and the DiskCopy image...and all that).

Where might I find this Extension? After that I might have enough of the puzzle solved to make working with this thing a little more nice (till my Zip Drive gets in).

One last thing on this Zip drive...I've got a few disks that I salvaged from an old shop, but to my knowledge they all had problems, possibly with formatting or something. They would literally freeze my PowerMac G4 GigE when I tried to read the files they contained (PC format, of course). If the drive is gone bad inside the Mac, I've got an old, loose PC drive I can stick in my desktop and hope it all works, or is there some way to clean/reformat the Disks (and probably clean the drive)? Zip is a technology I barely missed when coming up, so some help on its care would be helpful.

Thanks!

2012, April 13 - 12:26am

(Reply to #13) #14

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

Oh, and I grabbed Stuffit Expander 5.5 off the site and got it working, but I don't think it installed the Stuffit extension (which ShrinkWrap wants to mount my Word 5.1 image files, and the DiskCopy image...and all that).

Where might I find this Extension? After that I might have enough of the puzzle solved to make working with this thing a little more nice (till my Zip Drive gets in).

The Expander doesn't install the Stuffit Extension. - DropStuff installs it as its a part of that software. Once its in place, the Expander will also use the extension, making itself into a more useful application.

One place to DL this is from the E-Maculation archives, scroll down page to subheading "Utilities", its link is in the 1st paragraph (along with Stuffit Expander 5.5 & HFVExplorer). I don't include a direct DL for this as there are other utilities and apps on this page that may be of interest to you some day. DropStuff 5.5 is a 1.8 MB DL.

Alternatively, you can install Stuffit Deluxe 5.5 - its the 5th Download link at top of the page (7.53 MB). This installs "the works" - Expander, DropStuff, Deluxe plus other apps. However, as you may still be doing the "floppy shuffle" in getting your software onto the 180, I recommend the smaller DropStuff install in the meantime

[Edit]: Here's an even better link for the E-Maculation archives. Ignore that its pages are written for Mac Emulators in mind, all of the software will work on your actual Mac, too.

Scroll down the page to the Utilities section for DropStuff 5.5

If you scroll down further, check the games section, especially the "Mini vMac Disk Images" section. I would think that many of these would run well on your 180.

2012, April 16 - 11:37pm

#15

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

Ah, I've finally got it in. I also worked a bit on my PowerMac G4 and got it running OS 9.2.2 and found that of the 4 ZIP Disks I have...only one doesn't click of death on me T_T.

But its consistently reading and working correctly in my PowerMac Drive, so I'm hoping it'll be good in my newly gotten SCSI ZIP drive (coming from California all the way to South Carolina in just a few days...I was expecting longer, honestly). So I'm in the process of grabbing as many images and files that I need. I can't wait to get this mess working. The only thing I think I'll need to get is ZIP drivers for OS 7.5...which I think are somewhere on the site. I found em earlier, shouldn't be too hard.

So here we go...
EDIT: So I'm possibly out of luck, unless you can think of something to help the disks...

So the drive I ordered works fine. The cable from the PowerBook to the drive works fine. As far as I can tell, my Powermac G4's drive is fine. But I've only got one singular disk that doesn't absolutely fail...and its got a bad sector or something. I can only copy about 2MB to it before it complains of a disk error, and then won't copy anymore. I've tried 'erasing it' a few times in OS 9, but that didn't do a thing, so I noticed that a few places have Windows utilities for zip repair/recovery. But I have only found one zip drive for my PC, and afaik its a bad drive. I've seen a few reports from older sites that claim Norton Utilities 3 can fix the disks, but IDK...I won't have access to the G4 for another day or so. Any ideas?

2012, April 17 - 6:42am

#16

SwedeBear

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Joined: 2009 Apr 18

I´d have a go at cleaning the head of the reading mechanism of the Zip. Else try to format Zip disk in a variety of formats, mount and try to read/write them and lastly back to Mac format.

As it´s mentioned you can also have Norton 'Wipe' the disk. IIRC you *might* be able to use SCSI utils, 'SCSI Director' etc, on the Zip if it can be mounted at startup. Shut down the Mac, insert Zip disk in powered up Zip unit and startup Mac.

HTH!

2012, April 22 - 2:15am

#17

atariangamer

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Joined: 2012 Feb 8

After I finally got OS 9 running better on my PowerMac (needed weird graphics drivers), I set on fixing the zip disks.

As I suspected, I've only got ONE that actually works. It was the first I found, and was at least in a case, the rest were loose in a dusty box, and they just freeze the Mac.

The one that does work has 3 bad sectors, and Norton Utilities was able to fix that. Amazing! Now when I get back to school I'll have a ZIP disk full of good software, and a transfer format for the future! Thanks for all the help, guys!