- How To Use A Floppy Disk Drive
- Floppy Disk Reader Software
- What Do You Use A Floppy Disk For
- How To Use A Floppy Disk
- How To Use A Floppy Disk On A Windows
- How To Use A Floppy Disk Reader For Mac
2007: One of the biggest hassles of the vintage Macintosh hobby is loading software onto your first older Mac. To get that vintage Mac up-and-running, you need to be able to write downloaded software onto disks that an older Mac can read. And that’s what we’ll talk about: Free tools for writing Mac floppy disks and HFS CD-ROMs using modern Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.
Floppy Disk Images
Installing System 6 or System 7.0.1 onto an older Mac is only possible using floppy disks, and the first step to installing System 7.5 is usually “boot from a floppy”. These floppies are distilled into disk images you can download from the Web. When written to a floppy, these images create exact copies of the master disks.
Due to physical differences between Mac and PC floppy drives, 800K double density Mac floppies can only be written by other vintage Macs. This means that boot disks for a Mac 128K, 512K, 512Ke, Plus, pre-FDHD SE, or un-upgraded Mac II cannot be made on a Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows machine. (All other vintage Macs have a 1.4 MB SuperDrive or FDHD [Floppy Disk, High Density] floppy drive, which is compatible with modern computers.)
StuffIt Expander
Many sources of Mac floppy disk images distribute them in StuffIt (.sit) format. Before these disk images can be written onto real floppy disks, they must be decompressed with StuffIt Expander. This free program is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux/i386.
I have two mac floppy disk from when I was in high school. I remember I have some files on the floppies that could come in hand now for my college paper that I am writing. I was wondering if I could use Knoppix 3.6 to view and get these files to a windows floppy. Windows cannot write to a Mac formatted floppy disk (without help), but Mac can read a Windows formatted floppy disk if it's formatted in FAT and not NTFS. While Macs and PCs use the size floppy disks, the file system format is different.
How To Use A Floppy Disk Drive
- In the Finder, right-click on the created floppy image and select Get Info. 9 In Name & Extension, change the file extension from.dmg to.flp and close the Get Info window.
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If StuffIt Expander isn’t available, attempt to find the necessary disk image in uncompressed Disk Copy 4.2 format. These will be immediately useful without any decompression.
I’m currently cooking up some Mac boot floppies that will make installing System software a breeze. I hope to make them available soon using Disk Copy 4.2 format for maximum cross-platform convenience.
Writing a Floppy Disk from an Image
Floppy Disk Reader Software
Classic Mac OS
With Mac OS 9 and earlier, just use Disk Copy 6.3.3, which you can freely download from Apple. From the Utilities menu, choose Make a Floppy… and follow the directions onscreen.
Windows
The Windows utility Rawrite can be used to write image files to a floppy using a PC. Put the disk image file and Rawrite into drive C, open a DOS window, type C:Rawrite, and follow the directions. For more information, read this FreeDOS page.
What Do You Use A Floppy Disk For
Linux
Linux users can use the “dd” command to write floppies from image files. If the image file is a raw image, a simple “dd if=path_to_image_file of=path_to_floppy_drive” will do the trick. For a DiskCopy image, “dd if=path_to_image_file of=path_to_floppy_drive bs=84 skip=1” is the right way, according to The pickle’s Low-End Mac FAQ.
Mac OS X
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At this time, I am not aware of a good, user-friendly way to write floppies from disk images using Mac OS X. Highly advanced users will probably be able to connect a USB floppy drive, determine its device node, and use the method outlined above for Unix-like systems.
Readers with further information are encouraged to email their stories or techniques so we can update this article.
The Mac’s HFS File System
Before we talk about how to burn CDs for older Macs, it’s important to understand why it’s sometimes difficult. It has to do with the way the Mac stores its files using the HFS file system.
A Macintosh file has two “forks” inside it, the Data Fork and the Resource Fork. The Data Fork is like a file on any other computer system, and it’s where universal data (like MP3 songs, JPEG pictures, and plain text) reside. The Resource Fork is a special part that other computers lack. It stores various objects (such as icons, window and menu definitions, and sounds) and helps to make the Mac a Mac.
With the right software, it’s possible to teach other computer systems about the Mac’s resource fork; I don’t consider it to be worth the effort.
We’ll focus on how to burn HFS CDs containing data-only files, such as Internet downloads. It’s much more sensible to let the older Mac decode them itself than to try to do it on a modern computer.
Burning HFS CD-ROMs
Classic Mac OS
The Classic Mac OS makes this easy – every CD burning application has an obvious “HFS” format option. It’s usually the default choice. Even the built-in Disc Burner that comes with Mac OS 9 can make HFS CDs that work with System 7 Macs.
Mac OS X
Mac OS X speaks HFS, though it has mostly abandoned it for the newer HFS+ format. To burn a System 7-compatible HFS CD in OS X, first create a new disk image using Disk Utility. Select it in the left-side list and click on the Erase tab. Choose Mac OS Standard from the Volume Format dropdown and click the Erase button.
Now copy the files of your choice onto the disk image. When you’re done, unmount the disk image by selecting it and choosing Eject. Enter Disk Utility again and use the Burn Image command to create an HFS-formatted CD readable by all old Macs.
Update: This article was written before OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. It and later versions of OS X cannot create disk images compatible with vintage Macs, although they can burn CDs from existing compatible disk images. OS X 10.5 Leopard and earlier can create compatible disk images.
Windows
Windows can create HFS CDs using free software called HFVExplorer. Although the program’s homepage seems to have gone offline, you can find it on archive.org. Once you’ve unpacked the software, choose New Image from the File menu. Name your image file and choose an appropriate size.
HFVExplorer’s user interface is modeled after Windows Explorer, so it’s easy to copy the files of your choice onto the CD image. Once you’ve copied the files, quit HFVExplorer. Change the .DSK filename extension to .ISO and write it to CD using your favorite CD burning application.
Linux
The Linux utility mkisofs (from the cdrtools package) has options to create HFS CDs. The easiest way to master your CD begins with putting all the files into a directory. The command “mkisofs -hfs -magic -o mac_cd.iso directory” will create an HFS CD image in mac_cd.iso. Then you can burn the .iso file in the standard way. Read “man mkisofs” for more information on the many advanced options.
Conclusion
With this information, nearly any modern computer can be used to write floppy disks and burn HFS CDs for use with a vintage Mac. Internet downloads can open a new vista of usefulness for these older Macs. Mobi file reader for mac.
Buy some floppy disks or warm up your CD burner and get ready to put those old machines to good use.
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In August 1984, my parents bought an Apple IIe for about $2,500, making them one of the first on the block to own a personal computer. Like me, Mom is also a writer, so she spent many an hour typing (at warp speed) on the IIe's clickety-clackety keyboard as I busied myself with Crystal Barbie and her kingdom.
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Eventually, the Apple IIe and its green screen were traded in for a Windows-based PC and the magic of solitaire and flying toaster screensavers. Mom's Apple IIe disks were relegated to a box in the corner of an attic and largely forgotten, until recently. 'Is it possible to find out what I had on these disks?' she asked me last month.
These days, optical drives are almost a thing of the past, let alone a floppy drive, so it can be difficult to extract content from ancient disks without the right equipment. Perhaps in the dark recesses of the PCMag Labs, we have equipment capable of performing such tasks, but I was not about to go digging.
Classic FTP Plus for Mac is an easy to use ftp client to view, manage, edit, upload, download and delete files from a remote server or network. As the name suggests, Classic FTP has been specifically designed to look and feel like a typical ftp software client.While offering all the same features as other ftp clients, Classic FTP is perfect for both advanced and novice website administrators. APPLE SUPPORT START PAGE (ALL Mac related pages within MilitaryCAC). IPhone and iPad users can use their CAC and access CAC enabled websites using several different software apps and CAC readers (including accessing DTS on your iPad).
Right click the SCRx31 USB Reader, select Update Driver software. Browse my computer. Select Browse, then desktop (or wherever you made the folder). Go to the IOGear website and download the driver for GSR 202 CAC Reader to your desktop. Does not read your CAC when using your Mac.
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Fortunately, there are services that will extract your files from old disks for a relatively affordable fee. In Mom's case, we shipped her two, 5.25-inch diskettes to RetroFloppy, who put her files on a CD and emailed a digital download within a few days for about $20 total.
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RetroFloppy's David Schmidt started his site in 2006 after a woman in an online forum requested help getting files off a Commodore 128. This woman's brother had passed away, and she could not access some pieces he had written. 'I thought, 'I can do that, and I bet others have that need as well..' and those remain my most valued clients,' Schmidt said in an email to PCMag. 'Ones wanting to make those intangible memories from lost loved ones a little more real.'
Schmidt's client base is a mix of law firms, college, and libraries that can 'clock in at hundreds of disks at once' to those like my Mom, who just need one or two items recovered.
'Many of the requests are for almost-modern, one-or-two disks - people looking to rescue their resumes, college papers, or Great American Novels from disks they just don't have drives for any more,' Schmidt said. 'The tricky element there is converting their files to readable formats - there were a LOT of word processors in use over the years, and making them all accessible today is no mean feat.'
How To Use A Floppy Disk
On any given day, Schmidt might be working on a 'college thesis that needs to be extracted from TRS-80 floppies, a famous rock band [that] needs video footage from an obscure magneto-optical disc, or an industry luminary .. looking to pull files from a rare version of CP/M that could write to 3-1/2 disks. We can handle pretty much anything that comes our way on rotating media.'
How To Use A Floppy Disk On A Windows
For now, RetroFloppy is a part-time gig, Schmidt said, primarily because specialized hardware and software makes the actual conversion a breeze. 'Maybe it will be 'full time' when retirement comes - or maybe it will become irrelevant, because no one will need information from old disks any more,' he said. 'Even CD drives are becoming extinct. External, personal storage is moving to hard drives - or to the cloud. Hardly even tangible.'
How To Use A Floppy Disk Reader For Mac
So how can you get your disks converted? Read on to find out how you submit your ancient hardware to a service like RetroFloppy, or do a little handiwork yourself.