Operating Systems > macOS
I've got a Mac!
Orethrius:
Just contributing what I know from experience:
(A) You're probably going to want to format the floppies HFS (hfsutils should help with that).
(B) MacBinary files are stored with a .bin extension (invisible to MacOS 9 and earlier by default). Opening those files on an alien system will likely just yield raw data, the contents of which will be useless on your current system. You appear to have multiple parts to a single self-extracting archive - that requires no additional software, but will only unpack on a Mac system. You can find a UNIX port of StuffIt directly from Allume, but I've no idea whether that will work with Self-Extracting Archives or not. If not, they have an SDK on that same page, and a quick journey through the APT repos should turn up something (though I doubt it'll say "StuffIt-compatible replacement" right there in the description).
(C) Take anything I may say with a grain of salt. I've upgraded 6.5 to 7, 7 to 7.1, and 7.5.3 to 8.5 (each on separate systems) but I've yet to undertake what you're doing here.
Calum:
--- Quote from: bedouin ---.sea files are "self extracting archives" and probably need opened on a Mac, or maybe StuffIt Expander for Windows can deal with it (do they make products for Linux?)
--- End quote ---
well, i wonder if i could stick them on floppies, copy them to the mac and then extract them there and make the floppies using it. the original .sea files will have to fit on floppies in their current form though, which they look like they would.
--- Quote ---If they ended up as .bin files, I probably used OS X's disk utility to write them to floppy disk.
--- End quote ---
cool, this suggests to me that .bin images are byte for byte disk images of the floppies, and so i can use dd to make the disks with those files. i will try all these things till one works though.
--- Quote ---The easiest thing to do, obviously, is find a SCSI CD-ROM and use an install CD when possible . . .
--- End quote ---
nah! where's the fun? :-D
--- Quote ---For editing text, I don't really see what's not modern about rich text files; I use them all the time for taking notes and what not (firing up TextEdit is easier than Word -- and needs less screen real estate).
--- End quote ---
cool! the only reason i asked is because i *really* don't know what's available, and which programs work, and i know that with macintoshes back in the day, most software did cost, so i have no idea which ones might be free now. your (plural) comments on this have helped though, you're right about the html too.
--- Quote ---System 7 will probably mean saying bye-bye to your 5-second start up times as well.
--- End quote ---
well, as i say it currently has 7.5.3 and this is the startup time it has, however the disk size is one thing i am a little concerned about, which is why i was seriously thinking of trying to use 6 instead of 7, except i don't know what sort of features i would be missing, because the internet says alternatively very good or very bad things about system 6.
--- Quote from: Orethrius ---Just contributing what I know from experience:
(A) You're probably going to want to format the floppies HFS (hfsutils should help with that).
--- End quote ---
i will use hfsutils for this, because i should install it if i plan to network the mac, but if push comes to shove, the mac is working so i could format the disks using it, before i start. many of my old disks are in HFS format already i think, i got them from a university department that were throwing them out, they have always used only macintoshes in that department. i'll probably format them anyway to see if they have any bad sectors etc
--- Quote ---(B) MacBinary files are stored with a .bin extension (invisible to MacOS 9 and earlier by default). Opening those files on an alien system will likely just yield raw data, the contents of which will be useless on your current system. You appear to have multiple parts to a single self-extracting archive - that requires no additional software, but will only unpack on a Mac system. You can find a UNIX port of StuffIt directly from Allume, but I've no idea whether that will work with Self-Extracting Archives or not. If not, they have an SDK on that same page, and a quick journey through the APT repos should turn up something (though I doubt it'll say "StuffIt-compatible replacement" right there in the description).
--- End quote ---
you never know actually, i find most of the apt descriptions to be quite helpful. anyway, that information is quite a help to me to understand what's going on with these new (to me) file types, so thanks for that. the best thing would be to copy the stuff to the mac and go from there, except it occurs to me that if there are 19 disk images, at 1206656 bytes each, and i currently only have 7MB free then i might be stuffed, unless i delete virtually the whole contents of the hard drive. i wonder how one is supposed to actually do this? what i might try is copy a couple of the .sea parts at a time, make the floppies and then delete the files (if you see what i mean) so i will gradually make all 19 on the mac, but there will only be a couple of files taking up space at any one time on its hard drive. sorry, was thinking out loud (well, onto the keyboard)
--- Quote ---(C) Take anything I may say with a grain of salt. I've upgraded 6.5 to 7, 7 to 7.1, and 7.5.3 to 8.5 (each on separate systems) but I've yet to undertake what you're doing here.
--- End quote ---
well, i would imagine an upgrade would be more complicated than a clean install, and the only extra step i am doing is trying to make my own install floppies, with a linux machine and the mac as my tools, so it shouldn't be too hard.
not like that time i tried to force 16 bit windows to install natively on a non-MSDOS machine!
by the way, i would be really interested to know what you have to say about 6.5 compared with 7.5 because like i say if i can get away with 6.5 with no obvious issues, then i would do that to save disk space, however if you (from experience) know of some issues with 6.5 that might irritate a modern computer user, then please mention them.
edit: i wonder how come the boxed edition of macOS 7.5 came as only seven floppies?!?!?!
edit 2: this is so confusing! i got as far as formatting a floppy on the mac, copying the first of the 19 files to it on the PC, then sticking the floppy in the mac again. copy the file to the desktop (hey, that should get it off the floppy and onto the hard drive, right?) wrong! it's still on the floppy! when i run it it complains that the other 18 parts are missing, so presumably they all have to be in the same place, but i don't have the HDD space for this! surely apple must have anticipated this issue since they were the ones who released the mac with this size hard drive in the first place!
so i still don't know how to literally put the file from the floppy to the hard drive, and i certainly can't think of a way to have all 19 files in the same place at once, and i am *certain* i shouldn't have to either. i think i should be able to make 19 disks and install straight from them. oh shit, you know what? i bet i have to get all the parts in one place to open the archive and then the content of this archive will be the disk images! well, i'm scunnered in that case, i have no access to a mac to do this.
i don't suppose anybody knows where i can download whatever is in this 19 part archive as straight disk images? if not, does anybody volunteer to open the archives on a mac for me and upload the contents somewhere (maybe inside a proper tar.gz file perhaps? or else you could PM me to get my gmail address and email it to me...
thanks for any answers you might have guys!
and i still don't know how to simply copy a file from a floppy to the hard drive, you see how clueless i am at using macintoshes?
edit 3: this is ridiculous! i have installed the hfsutils, macutils and stuffit for linux, but nothing is helping me to get the contents of these 19 files into some workable format! macunpack doesn't do anything to the files at all despite claiming to extract macbinary files. i have a feeling that ark from the kdeutils package *may* help, but i do not want to install kde (i don't have it installed) because it's enormous, simply to *try* this and see if it works or not. i even used cat to create one big archive (well, that's what i was hoping anyway, i just concatenated file 2 on the end of a copy of file 1, then file 3 on the end of that etc) but macunpack still leaves the file unchanged.
the lack of output in these programs doesn't help either, but that's another issue. at least they have man pages. the linux version of stuffit is an insult by today's standards too, it requires a manual installation! this literally means copying the contents of the man, doc and bin directories to your local man doc and bin folders (wherever they are in your $PATH) - this method of installation is about 20 years out of date! and for a nagware product that's not good enough. it doesn't even have a GUI!
so i'm back to square 1, anybody got any helpful suggestions? the internet doesn't seem to know anything that might help me (but then i didn't actually read the whole internet)
Orethrius:
My only other thought is that if you can get the primary self-extracting archive (the one with a .sea extension) onto the hard drive, it should ask you to "Insert the next disk " when one part completes. It's been a while since I did this, though, so it should prove interesting - also, the OS 7.5 disks have none of the r1 or r3 packs, so OS 7.5 could quite possibly fit on seven disks.
Calum:
well, you're seeing what i've got above, the update 3 disk set is sea files but unfortunately the 19 part set (downloaded from apple.com) is not in that format, it is smi.bin (apparently this is macbinary II format). i expected it to do what you describe when i put disk one in, but all it did was complain that the other parts weren't there, and then exit.
i suppose i could pay 12 quid (inc postage costs) (about 19 bucks you know!) to get the box set but why should i when it is officially abandonware?
i wonder if there is a .sea archive of this out there, in floppy sized bits that i could get instead...
bedouin:
It would probably be easier for you to do all of the manipulation of archives in a Mac emulator like Basilisk II on your PC then take the floppies to the Classic when finished.
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