Macintosh File System - Macintosh Garden

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2014, June 16 - 3:55pm

24bit

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Joined: 2010 Nov 19

Macintosh File System

aka MFS.
It was superseded by HFS with System 3.3 methinks.

Does anybody know how to create a bootable 400k MFS floppy today?
I thought every Mac capable of running DC4.2 or DiskDup+ should do the trick, given a valid image as source and a 2DD flopppy as target is available.
From correspondance with a member in the US, this does not seem to be entirely right.
The MacSE can not seem to create a 400k MFS boot disk for Mac512.
Maybe someone can throw some light on the issue?

On a side note, Im aware of Steve Chamberlin´s floppy emu and think its the way to go.

(Double post, as the first one never showed up.)

http://www.bigmessowires.com/macintosh-floppy-emu/

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2014, June 23 - 11:02pm

Belethor

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Joined: 2013 Oct 24

I live near Atlanta and have been helping a guy in Florida. I have a restored SE with 6.0.8, SuperDrive and internal and external HD's. He has a 512K Fat Mac. He loves the game MacVegas but his dad formatted his only copy. This poor guy has been looking for almost two years for help to get a replacement. He found this site and 24bit got him in touch with me.

Between me and 24bit we created a disk image I placed on a thumb drive, put it on my Sony VAIO laptop, ran BII, ran the image and saved it to a 1.4 floppy. Then I transferred it to my SE. Then I ran DiskDup+ (I think that was it) and made a copy onto HIS 400K floppies that he sent me.

He recieved them and out of three disks one was dead, one let him run the game for about two minutes then he got an error 26, and the other he ran for half an hour. He shut down the Mac and went back to it later and it too crashed his system.

Now, what I'd like to know is why is this happening? First, we know it runs fine under his MiniVMac and 24bit's so the image is good, I got it to boot my SE and ran all the games on it before I sent them to him. Yet his messes up.

Could it be the disks are getting demagged in the postal system? Could it be the difference between the SE's drive and the 512's drive?

He's sending them back to me so we can try it again. If I cannot boot them then I would guess they're getting demagged. If they do run then there's something else going on here.

It's odd that he got that one disk to run for half an hour then he quit and now it won't boot the Mac.

I do not come here often so 24bit, if there's a reply please direct it to me? I have no idea why this forum doesn't send instant email notifications and that makes me kind of forgetful about checking for a response to my questions.

Thanks a lot for any help.

2014, June 24 - 1:29am

(Reply to #2) #3

Daxeria

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Joined: 2009 Apr 8

Going by Ramon's post, I'm worried he might have physically damaged his floppy drive in the original incident:

it was working fine until my father accidentaly pressed the reformat button (instead of the eject button) on the computer. When I saw this, I immidettely ejected the disk but I think the computer started to do the formating and now I cannot get the disk to work again.

Will a Mac even let you eject a disk during the formatting process, or did he force it out with a paperclip?

2014, June 24 - 3:22am

(Reply to #3) #4

Belethor

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Joined: 2013 Oct 24

Ah, thank you. This I did not know. This would have a major bearing on the issue. Sounds to me like he damaged the floppy. Thank you for the reply.

2014, June 24 - 3:32am

(Reply to #3) #5

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

Good point. For me the answer is no. There is only an option not to proceed with formatting, but once formatting begins, there is no option to halt the process. At least this is the case for my earliest working hardware, a Centris 660av, SSW 7.1.1 (it was a good excuse to boot it up again).

2014, June 24 - 6:40pm

24bit

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Joined: 2010 Nov 19

Sure a hardware issue could always strike a Mac 512.
If the floppy drive would have been killed somehow, the Mac would be defunct, as it seems to be the one and only drive at Ramon´s Mac - from what I gathered.
As Ramon said all other software is still working.

If someone with a MacII (or else with another original 800k drive) would volunteer to make an additional floppy for Ramon, it can´t harm either.

2014, June 25 - 3:11am

(Reply to #6) #7

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

If Ramon's Fat Mac is original, it will have a 400K drive, not an 800K drive (did he say?). Although it is perfectly acceptable to use 800K DD media as 400K SD media.

Concerning the Garden's image file for Mac Vegas; Written to 800K media (as 400K SD disk), it should report itself as 384K in disk, 7K available.

The "Get Info" on mounted disk:
384K on disk (393,216 bytes used), for 27 items
Created: Sun, Oct 07, 1984, 08:49 PM
Modified: Sun, Oct 19, 1986, 12:25 PM

Visible in the mounted disk's window are 4 items "Finder" (the game launcher), "NotePad File", "Scrapbook File" & "System".

The remaining 20+ items, Craps, Baccarat, Roulette, Black Jack, Resources, etc, are hidden (invisible).

I could send Ramon the copies I have made, but I do have "SuperDrive" model floppy drives only, and these may carry the same issues as what he's already received.

2014, June 24 - 5:23pm

24bit

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Joined: 2010 Nov 19

A little search came up with this discussion about DiskDup+ from 2007:

Mac128:

Also, something just occurred to me about your SE/30 images. Even though System 6 will read & write 400K MFS disks, you SE/30's doing it with a SuperDrive SWIM chip, which in my experience does an awful job reading and writing from a 400K MFS disk. System software in particular often will not boot when copied with a 1.4MB drive. Either way, I was using 6.0.5 on my Mac Plus, which is why I asked what the minimal system requirement was for disk images (just in case 6.0 won't work).

JDW:

I've been using this SE/30 to make 400k and 800k disks for a very long time. I've never had a problem. However, it won't work if I boot into any flavor of System 7 and try to make 400k disks. You have to use System 6 to make 400k disks. And yes, my floppy drive is a 1.4MB type, and my SE/30 has the SWIM chip too.

Mac128:

Glad to hear you have not had a problem with the SE/30. Most likely the problem lies with the 400K drives as they are even inconsistent between themselves since they rely on their rotation speed control from the Mac. Generally the 1.4MB SWIM drives only contribute to the problem.

Worth a try with the WIM controller and/or another 800k drive maybe?

2014, June 24 - 8:38pm

Belethor

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Joined: 2013 Oct 24

Yes, worth a try if someone is willing to help...