800k Flopies can they be made?

[Melonking]

Hi,
Well I have a few old macs all working apart from my SE, I took it into my local mac store and they recommended getting some system 6.0.8 disks for it, but they had to be 800k floppy's.

They also mentioned that with a non X mac you are able to make 800k floppy's out of normal ones? Is this true and if so how do I do it?
Thanks

 

[David Schmidt]

Hi,
Well I have a few old macs all working apart from my SE, I took it into my local mac store and they recommended getting some system 6.0.8 disks for it, but they had to be 800k floppy's.

Sage advice. They cannot be HD (1.4M), they must be DD (800k/720k). DD diskettes can be found easily via eBay. There is a site that sells System diskettes:
http://www.rescuemyclassicmac.com

They also mentioned that with a non X mac you are able to make 800k floppy's out of normal ones? Is this true and if so how do I do it?

It's not just non-OSX, but you need a beige G3 mac or older in order to create/read/write 800k floppies. You cannot use a USB floppy drive to deal with 800k disks.

 

[SuperJudge]

It's not just non-OSX, but you need a beige G3 mac or older in order to create/read/write 800k floppies. You cannot use a USB floppy drive to deal with 800k disks.

Bingo! I learned this recently when rehabilitating a Mac Plus and an SE.

 

[Sun Baked]

Short term, data OK, long term data degrades quicker than the proper disks. Especially if they've been used once as 1.44MB disks.

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Also if you format the 1.44MB as 800k, due to the hole there if you stick them in a 1.44MB drive that machine will ask if you want to format it -- risking data loss. Hence the use of opaque tape to protect the data.

Going in the other direction people used a hole punch.

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Yep, found it, slight difference in the magnetic media, and the way the data is stored, works in a pinch for short term ... but creates self destructing media.

http://macfaq.org/hardware/media.shtml

However, it is also within the realm of variation, just depended on your luck with media.

 

[Melonking]

Thanks I''l look into getting some of them.