Seems like a question that would be more suited for the 68kMLA forum https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php
I have one, though I never had to make a bootdisk for it, and last time I checked the hard drive still worked. So here i am keeping my fingers crossed and knocking on wood, hoping that next time I try the machine it'll still boot 😀

Thank you for the suggestion. I was not aware of 68kmla.org. I will search around over there as well.

I think you will have a tough time without a second Mac with a 1.4MB drive that can also do 800K disks, asking someone else to make the minimum set of disks for you so that you can do some kind of serial transfer program to get further software for the machine, or a floppy emulator. It is Group Code Recording (GCR) that breaks compatibility with PCs. With high-density disks they dropped that and you can just write disk images using a PC and they will work fine. But this machine is too early.

800k disks can only be made on a mac, or by something like a greaseweasel or kyroflux.

PC floppy controller cannot read or write those sectors, but the above devices can.

Getting the disk images themselves is easy. Back in the days of yore, apple had them freely available on their support ftp site, so archive.org's captures have them.

Failing that, you can get them from mac garden and pals.

If your classic has the coveted 1.44mb disk drive, you can use a modern emulator, pass it your real floppy drive in its config, then use the native mac software to write the disk(s). (7.5.1 was freely available as a disk set, as was the 6.x series. For an old classic, the 6.x series is better, usually.)

A possible 'back door' method would be attaching a bootable scsi external drive that has been properly prepared.

Older versions of the windows port of basilisk ii support raw scsi subsystem passthrough, so a scsi device (iomega zip drive counts!) That has a suitable universal disk driver with it (silver lining, et al) and a blessed system partition would work.

For instance, this auction.

A suitable scsi cable, and pointing basilisk II at the usb one for scsi passthrough, and you have a nice '100mb boot disk' solution. Drive for each side of the equation.

See also:
https://www.jagshouse.com/zipMacPlus.html

After getting the foot in the door, consider getting a phone-net adapter and an asante appletalk bridge, and pairing it with a win2k machine running services for macintosh.

😀

I'd be inclined to try this, although I don't know for sure that it would work, and it's a lot more difficult (but that equates to fun, right?):

1. Purchase SCSI2SD or similar. I can't say how good any of those sorts of devices are as I don't have any. It'd probably be good to look around for advice on this part.
2. Use BasiliskII SCSI passthrough to install onto a disk image (see below).
3. Write disk image to SD card.
4. Attach SD card to Mac using SCSI2SD or similar.

I don't know for sure that the SD card would end up being bootable as I haven't tried steps 3 and 4. If it doesn't work, the SCSI2SD could still be useful for something, and I think it's cheaper than a couple of Zip drives and will never get click-of-death 😁

Using SCSI passthrough to a disk image isn't trivial though. You have to jump through some hoops to make a SCSI device backed by a file under Linux. Here are my notes from when I did it on CentOS 7. I'm not sure if there is any equivalent on Windows.

Create a SCSI device backed by a file on CentOS 7: […]
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Create a SCSI device backed by a file on CentOS 7:

$ sudo targetcli
/backstores/fileio create name=test_fileio file_or_dev=/PATH/TO/FILE.img size=1G
cd /backstores/fileio/test_fileio/
/loopback create
cd /loopback/naa.SOME-HEX-STRING/luns
create storage_object=/backstores/fileio/test_fileio
<EOF>
$ lsscsi -g
[...]
[7:0:1:0] disk LIO-ORG test_fileio 4.0 /dev/sdc /dev/sg3
$ sudo chown MY-USERNAME.MY-GROUP /dev/sg3 # so BasiliskII doesn't have to be run as root

Basilisk II will then accept /dev/sg3 in its list of SCSI devices.

Apple HD SC Setup won't recognize the emulated SCSI disk even after
patching (per http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/patch.html), when
running under System 7.5.3 on an emulated Quadra 900 or System 7.1 on
an emulated IIci.

SCSIProbe (from PD-ROM F95) is able to see the disk.

Drive Setup 1.5 after patching
(http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/drvsetup.html) is also able to
see it. It reported failure to initialize it, but it did successfully
create partitions. After a reboot, it was possible to format the
partitions as DOS, but when trying to format as Mac, errors were
received. However, from the host I can use hfs-utils 'hformat' to
format, e.g. 'hformat -l SCSI-p2 /dev/sdc 2' (note that this equates
to /dev/sdc6, but you tell it the physical drive and the HFS partition
number, not the absolute partition number). Could maybe use hfdisk
for partitioning?

Is it possible that partitioning issues could be due to udev scanning
the partition table?

I think that the SOME-HEX-STRING part of the path in targetcli was generated automatically, and either it appeared in the output of the "/loopback create" command or else it could be found via tab completion.

hfsutils isn't packaged on CentOS 7, I had to build it myself. Same for hfdisk, but it's not so important to use that, and in fact it might be best not to - I don't know how compatible it is with various MacOS versions.

FYI, zuluscsi seems better & cheaper than the more known scsi2sd

I was searching online for information about Basilisk II SCSI passthrough and ran across a link to Cockatrice III which is a fork of an old version of Basilisk II by neozeed. Apparently it (like some old versions of Basilisk II) SCSI emulation, so you can just attach a disk image to it directly rather than having to have a physical or virtual SCSI device outside of Basilisk II.

It occurred to me after I made my last post that maybe on Windows you could set up iSCSI Initiator to connect to an iSCSI target on another system to get a virtual SCSI device. I don't know if the ASPI driver would consider it to be a suitable SCSI device though.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-08-24, 14:59:

FYI, zuluscsi seems better & cheaper than the more known scsi2sd

Nice, I just remembered I'd read about RaSCSI previously and was interested in that, and ZuluSCSI appears to be based on both that and SCSI2SD.

doshea wrote on 2023-08-25, 12:04:

I was searching online for information about Basilisk II SCSI passthrough and ran across a link to Cockatrice III which is a for […]
Show full quote

I was searching online for information about Basilisk II SCSI passthrough and ran across a link to Cockatrice III which is a fork of an old version of Basilisk II by neozeed. Apparently it (like some old versions of Basilisk II) SCSI emulation, so you can just attach a disk image to it directly rather than having to have a physical or virtual SCSI device outside of Basilisk II.

It occurred to me after I made my last post that maybe on Windows you could set up iSCSI Initiator to connect to an iSCSI target on another system to get a virtual SCSI device. I don't know if the ASPI driver would consider it to be a suitable SCSI device though.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-08-24, 14:59:

FYI, zuluscsi seems better & cheaper than the more known scsi2sd

Nice, I just remembered I'd read about RaSCSI previously and was interested in that, and ZuluSCSI appears to be based on both that and SCSI2SD.

neither rascsi nor scsi2sd (aside from the scsi2sd v6) do Fast-SCSI. The zuluscsi in 2"5 format is definitely on my to buy list to replace the harddrive in my digital multia UDB.

Mac Plus is 800K floppy era. And they don't have internal hard drive either. That what Mac SE and SE/30 was except both use 1.44MB super drive. The 400K/800K format is variable rpm GCR means you cannot "bootstrap from newer PC", not directly. Best way is: get a later Macs like Mac II cx, ci etc will allow you to boot strap Mac Plus via 1.44MB floppy disks by transferring the Mac OS for Mac Plus to the newer Mac via Mac emulator on PC on those disks. Then use the newer Mac to create the 800K boot and data disks.

Or contact someone who have these and send you the boot disks and 800K goodies. But this only does not address the issue of transferring games and programs on those 800K disks.

Second, you can use a converter adapter from Mac 15pin video to VGA plug to set a 640x480 resolution using a PC LCD monitor using a least expensive Nubus video card in the cx or ci for example. This gets around the expensive Mac monitors.

Not to mention expensive to do to support the Mac Plus. You are better off using a Mac ci instead of Plus.

Cheers,

Seriously.

Zip 100 external (scsi variety) + silver lining

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/addin … -classic.15947/

It will be fully bootable.

You can use the disk in a usb driven zip100, with an emulator, to create the bootable media.

The disk images for the whole system 6 (or 7, but not advised for a classic) will fit handily, allowing the op to make the disks right on his classic.

Once he has them, he can do whatever he intended with them.

That okay, but zip 100 is COD prone. I would use prepared external scsi hard drive using a Mac emulator on a PC with SCSI controller?

Cheers,

The scsi subsystem on an antique mac is going to need daisy-chained adapters to slap anything even remotely new on.

Also, the external enclosures for SCSI disks are $$$ these days.

Zip100 *IS* indeed failure-prone, but you can still get NOS disks cheaply from amazon. I would not recommend using the zip100 as a primary drive, no-- but it will work fine as secondary storage, and as a "Foot in the door" boot device that is not going to break the bank.

What I would suggest instead, for "Primary storage" (since that mac plus is going to be slow as molasses in january anway), is setting up a win2k box with services for macintosh, a small phone-net segment with an asante appletalk bridge, and using appleshare.

Files can be safely stored on something with reliable storage, and the zip100 can just be used to boot macos 6, and create the media installation set with that mac's floppy diskette drive for safe keeping.

If he ever gets another (newer) mac, he can just plunk it right on that phone-net network, and it will see the same shared data.

MacSD is also an option to consider. https://macsd.com/

I highly recommend getting a floppy emu and one of the dedicated scsi HDD emulators. These require power (generally standard 5w micro usb) because the scsi connector on the plus doesn't supply power. I have a scsi HDD emulator thing on my mac plus, works great. I also recommend upgrading to 4mb of ram. You can get the ram on ebay dirt cheap. The Mac Plus is actually the standard speed of macs from that era, so as long as you run software from that era, you should be fine. Most software for black and white macs runs great on the plus.

Even if you just get a scsi hard drive emulator, there are preloaded hard drive images you can get, and with some work you can even add stuff to them. So the floppy emu isn't required, but they are really, really nice to have.

wierd_w wrote on 2023-08-27, 00:52:

Also, the external enclosures for SCSI disks are $$$ these days.

I got one fairly recently for $50 but I think I was pretty lucky, and that had a card reader in it rather than a disk. I imagine it would have cost a lot more if it contained a working hard drive and/or was the type that looks nice sitting under a Mac Plus 😁

What I would suggest instead, for "Primary storage" (since that mac plus is going to be slow as molasses in january anway), is setting up a win2k box with services for macintosh, a small phone-net segment with an asante appletalk bridge, and using appleshare.

That sounds like a nice and convenient solution, but Wikipedia says the maximum speed is 230 kbit/s! As you say though, maybe not such a big deal for a slow machine. Maybe faster than a floppy? 😁

How about LocalTalk? When I looked recently I could get LocalTalk devices a bit cheaper than PhoneNET. I'm not sure about the price of the bridge though. It looks like either type of bridge is pretty expensive 🙁

PhoneNET/LocalTalk use the serial port, so I was wondering if you could just connect that directly to a PC and run AppleTalk over that, because one serial cable seems like a much cheaper purchase than an adapter, cable and bridge. It sounds like you can't exactly do that, but you can do this remote access thing: https://www.savagetaylor.com/2020/12/15/apple … ll-modem-cable/ I must try this sometime!

The phone-net adapters basically ARE localtalk. Phone-net is electrically the same 2wire serial with resistor terminator interface, just with real cheap phone cords used instead of difficult to obtain localtalk cables.

Localtalk is just super duper slow.

Thankfully, you only need one bridge. Any number of old macs can sit behind the thing, and talk through it with the share, just try not to do it at once. The segment's bandwidth is... limited.

Thank you everyone for the wealth of information you've provided me here.

I highly recommend getting a floppy emu and one of the dedicated scsi HDD emulators.

I ended up getting a BMOW floppy emulator. This has allowed me to boot the machine, at least partially. Right now, I'm stuck at the "Happy Mac" screen. The best I can ascertain is that this is because the Mac Plus 1MB requires a boot floppy containing the HD20 init files in order to boot from the hard disk image. However, even trying to boot from an OS 1 through OS 6 system disk fails in the same way and I'm not sure what my next steps should be. Someone on the 68kMLA forums recommended that I reach out on the BMOW forums and see if I can get some assistance there which is my next step if I can't make any further progress on my own.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

I found a thread on Reddit that showed a photo of the "Happy Mac" another user having a similar issue was seeing. It looked exactly like what I was seeing but apparently it's not a "real" happy mac but is in fact a happy mac with a sad mac background. The thread concluded with the discovery of a bad RAM module. With this knowledge in hand I started poking around at the board in closer detail, pulling out each RAM module and inspecting it for physical damage and making sure the pins were not bent, corroded or otherwise damaged on the board. Nothing... then I decided to physically touch R8 to see if it was actually unclipped... it was clipped... this was one of the first things I checked when I got the machine and it wouldn't boot but I only did a visual inspection and whoever had the machine before me must have run 4MB in the machine at some point but re-installed the 256k modules before selling it and did not re-solder R8 but instead just pushed the legs close enough together that it looked like it was unclipped...

So, anyway, it works perfectly fine now. Thank you again everyone for your input and assistance!