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SuperMew98's picture
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Help Transferring Files off of my Old Mac

Hi,
I had some games I wanted to upload that are on my old Mac. I was able to compress them with DropStuff, but I can't get them off my Mac! I own a Macintosh Performa 6300CD running Mac OS 7.5. It has a floppy drive and a CD drive (which only reads CD-Rs, it can't write anything). I've tried copying the files to a PC formatted floppy disk and putting them onto a PC of mine that has a floppy drive, but I think they might have lost some data forks in the process, being that their names and extensions are totally off. Any ideas? Thanks,

SuperMew98

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sfp1954's picture
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Joined: 2013 Dec 29

I would suggest putting them on Mac Formatted Floppies and finding somebody with a G3 Wallstreet or Beige G3 desktop. The only other option would be to pull the hard drive and put it in an external SCSI case (and then use a Wallstreet, Lombard or Beige G3) or duplicate it onto an external SCSI drive (I have a few lying around). External SCSI zip would also be an option but those can be pricey ($50) as they are still used by musicians with 1990s vintage gear.

If you have any Classic Mac with USB and internet you could pick up an Imation USB floppy very cheap.

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Back in the day HQX was "invented" for sending Mac files over non HFS file systems.
You may need a full version of Stuffit to get all features including segmenting and or hqx-ing.
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/stuffit-deluxe

For really small files and an emulator as target, you might also create a new folder, copy in your stuff and select "Make image from Folder" in DiskCopy. The resulting NDFIF image may travel on a DOS floppy and can be mounted easily with emulators or Macs.

For taking out the 6300`s HDD, you may also read write it with a PC equipped with a SCSI HBA.
BasiliskII Build 142 could handle Mac SCSI devices very well.
HBAs like this go for little money here: http://kleinanzeigen.ebay.de/anzeigen/s-anzeige/adaptec-scsi-card-2904cd-originalverpackt-!!/20193561-225-999

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Well, I don't know anybody with a G3 Wallstreet, Lombard, or a Beige G3. In fact, I don't know anybody who even owns a Mac from the past, only ones from nowadays. But it's funny, though, that sfp1954 said about musicians with 90s gear, because my dad used my Performa back in the 90s for music stuff. He doesn't use it anymore, so it's been given to me Smile, and I have about 6 or 7 Zip disks with a drive.

As for pulling out the HDD, I'm not too keen on doing that. Would it work if I took a USB Floppy Drive, like this one: http://www.amazon.com/VST-USB-Floppy-Drive-FDUSB/dp/B001J8HDS4/ref=sr_1_... and put a Performa formatted floppy into a new Mac? My new one is running 10.8.5.

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Almost every USB floppy should do.
OSX uses Class Device Drivers natively, anything with a USB2 plug did work with 10.8 here.
Reading HFS floppies is still possible.

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Awesome. Ok, well I'll fill you guys in when I get one. May be awhile, though.

MikeTomTom's picture
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I've tried copying the files to a PC formatted floppy disk and putting them onto a PC of mine that has a floppy drive, but I think they might have lost some data forks in the process, being that their names and extensions are totally off. Any ideas?

Creating ".sit" files with DropStuff and placing them onto PC formatted floppies for transferring is OK, with just a couple of things to consider...

When you drag/copy a file to a DOS formatted floppy on your Mac, hidden "underneath the hood", the Mac uses "PC Exchange" to handle the transfer.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think that earlier (than Mac OS 8.x) versions of the Mac OS with "PC Exchange" use DOS filenaming conventions, i.e; up to eight alphanumeric characters without spaces followed by a period "." plus a 3 letter suffix ending. PC Exchange on these systems may truncate file names if too long

When using DropStuff to create an archive you might end up with a compressed file that has a longer than an 8x3 file name, for example: "System_7.1_800k_version.sit".

- So before you drag/copy it over to the floppy on an old Mac OS 7.x, rename the file to something that won't get mangled by your system's "PC Exchange" software, for example "SSW7x800.sit".

Also, the .sit files may lose their file & creator types during the transfer, but they will still expand OK by dragging their icons over onto Stuffit Expander's icon (make sure you copy the .sit's from the DOS floppy, to destination Mac's hard drive 1st).

MikeTomTom's picture
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"I'm not 100% certain, but I think that earlier (than Mac OS 8.x) versions of the Mac OS with "PC Exchange" use DOS filenaming conventions, i.e; up to eight alphanumeric characters without spaces followed by a period "." plus a 3 letter suffix ending. PC Exchange on these systems may truncate file names if too long"

According to this Wikipedia entry, An updated PC Exchange introduced with Mac OS 8.1 saw the introduction of long file-name support (up to 255 characters) when exchanging files on DOS formatted media - tho' I think even here, it required a 3rd party extension to fully realize this.

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Actually, I forgot to say that I didn't ".sit" most of them, so I think I lost data on the ones that weren't compressed. I haven't checked on any yet, but is there a big chance that I did lose data on the ones not compressed?

And thanks for that tip! Smile

MikeTomTom's picture
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I forgot to say that I didn't ".sit" most of them

Oh yeah. That makes a big difference Wink

It pays to archive (as ".sit". ".zip", ".bin", etc), before transferring, otherwise as you now know, the files lose whats important for running when transferring to another Mac.

While its especially important to transfer Mac applications in some kind of protective wrapper, its not so important for files that don't depend on data in a Mac Resource fork, such as .jpg, .txt, etc.

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Great Sad, then I just lost A LOT of files. I didn't even know about Macintosh Garden back then!

Oh, and really quick, what is this "checksum.md5" file I'm finding in some of the MG downloads? Is this mandatory, or can I just delete it?

MikeTomTom's picture
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checksum.md5 is just a plain text file containing an MD5 checksum of the enclosed file. It can be used to check the files validity. - If the file's MD5 checksum matches the sum that's recorded in the text file "checksum.md5", then its a good chance the file hasn't been damaged or changed since it was uploaded.

Requires an MD5 checksumming tool (included with some OS's, e.g; Mac OS X).

Discarding this text file won't hurt if you don't want to check its MD5 sum for a matching number.

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Ok, thanks Mike!

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Wrote a whole page on networking, with many other subjects.

www.applefool.com/se30

SuperMew98's picture
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So I'm finally getting my floppy drive from Amazon (it's going to ship soon), and this came to my mind. How can I create .img files from the floppy disks I insert? The computer I'd be using to make the images is a MacBook running 10.8.5. What program should I use? I have Toast 11 Titanium, would that work? Thanks,
SuperMew98

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With 10.8.5 only dd may work, somehow.
I wrote a how to over at Emaculation for writing to floppy with dd. Should work the other way round too.
http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8208

My best bet would be a Leopard Server 10.5.X instance running in VMWare to handle the floppies.

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Thanks for the link, 24bit. I'll be sure to use it when backing up my data Smile

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You can make proper Disk Copy 4.2 or NDIF (.img) disk images using Disk Utility in OS X. To do this, you must enable advanced image options, which includes these legacy formats, by entering the Terminal command

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility advanced-image-options 1

(To undo this command, change the 1 to 0.)

So to make a read-only .img file, insert the floppy into your USB floppy drive, then in Disk Utility, select the volume (which is indented under the floppy drive device, do not select the device itself), click New Image, and select "NDIF read-only" for the image format.

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You might want to lock the floppy disk first to stop Mac OS X from adding any of its invisible files, which would then appear in the disk image.

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Thanks for the tip, NucAR! I totally missed the hidden DiskCopy features.
I wondered why the were enabled in SL Server though. Smile

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Normal 10.8.5 should be able to read and write floppies with DD, i do it all the time (i use sheepshaver to make the images).

10.8.5 seems to mount HFS floppies fine (no writing though). it shouldn't as there is not HFS support but oddly it dose

SuperMew98's picture
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Thanks for all the replies, guys! So is it the same process if I do it with Windows/MS-DOS formatted floppies as well?

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FAT32 formatted volumes are natively supported on Intel Macs until today.
Apple merely dropped support for its proprietary HFS file system - Thank you Apple!

FAT HD floppies should work without issues, 2DD floppy support will depend on your USB floppy drive.

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Is this just me then? i swear HFS floppies read fine on OSX Mountain lion

SuperMew98's picture
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Well, my floppy drive just arrived at the door, and Max, it's not just you. Mine read in Mountain Lion perfectly too.

https://mega.co.nz/#!t1EyBQQb!D7YbxtYg15-SounvLcJKWBB1BMAhSFIFV5RUSzXpF1M

I haven't tried other formats of floppy disks yet, though. But I will soon. Maybe it doesn't work for 24bit because he has a different floppy drive. Mine is a Sabrent USB Floppy Disk Drive (ignore the Amazon link I put above.)

EDIT: MS-DOS/Windows floppy disks verified reading.

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Bad news, everyone. I don't think my USB floppy drive is working correctly. I tried copying an image, and it worked without any errors, but when I try to write data to a floppy disk, it won't let me. If you take a close look at the image I posted, it says that the disk is not writable. The safety switch is in the "unlock" position, and when I put it in the "lock" position, I get a read/write error when making images.

I also can't use the dd command because the diskette is always claims to be locked, so I can't make an image or copy one to the disk.

Should I just return my floppy drive and get the one from the Amazon link from post #4, or is there any other drive that someone recommends I should get? Thanks,
SuperMew98

WhosIt.There's picture
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I doubt there's anything wrong with the floppy drive nor the disk.

Some floppy disk formats are read-only in Mac OS X (some like Amiga disks can't even be read), but creating the disk image should be saving to your hard drive, so doesn't involve writing to the floppy drive anyway.

On a side note, my USB floppy drive is continually polled by Mac OS X, which is annoying when there's no disk in it. Sad

SuperMew98's picture
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Well, I wanted to also copy my files back to the disk, so I don't have to keep wasting CDs on a handful of Mac games I want to test out (and my older Macintosh can't read CD-RWs). And I'm afraid that the images that I'm making aren't good copies. If I upload an image of an Install Me First disk [to an external server], can someone check it for errors?

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did you unmount the floppy before writing? (sudo umount /dev/diskx will do it) if you don't you will get a message saying the disk is locked

SuperMew98's picture
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When I unmount the floppy, it unmounts the drive as well.

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Yes that is what it should be doing.

Run umount (or unmount from diskutil, do not press eject though) and the volume should disappear (but the device should still be in the disk util list, but grayed out) then dd will be able to write to it

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I just found out I can write to the disk, but only if the files are in a .img format. I can't just drag and drop files into the disk. Is the only way to copy files to a disk is to place them in a Macintosh emulator shared folder, copy them to a .img file mounted within the emulator, and then "burn" the .img to the physical diskette?

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Max is of course right, that HFS floppies can be read by 10.8.X.
Creating a disk image with the hidden DiskCopy options does work too (as pointed out above).
Writing data to a HFS floppy is not possible from userland, thats why I posted the link to emaculation. Smile

If HFS floppies shall be used frequently in OSX, I would recommend setting up 10.4 Tiger Server or 10.5 Leopard Server in virtual machine. Both 10.4 and 10.5 handle HFS floppies in USB devices like a charm.

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Ok, I'll probably do that, but really quick can you, or someone, still check out this disk image for any errors? It was one I just made.

Here's the link: https://mega.co.nz/#!0kUgxbLT!lE8ZsLTpDmVFb38avx-UJODD_xNYM88OrEMaxxIQEDo

I compressed the disk image into a .sit file for safety.

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bump

Can somebody please test this image out? I want to know if I copied it correctly so I can add more stuff to here.

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Looks good to me, I´ll write your file to floppy and report back soon. Smile

Bildschirmfoto 2014-11-15

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Nice! Thanks for testing, 24bit.

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No problem, comrade!

However, there seems to be an issue with the .img, as Leopard does not seem to like it:
(My guess is a missing partition table.)

Picture 1.png

The files can be copied to floppy of course, manually.
This is the floppy on my Quadra700 (FusionPC / PentiumIII):

InstallMe.png

SuperMew98's picture
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Hmmm… That's weird, I'm running Mountain Lion and I never got that message.