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Apple Page with old OSs and other Software

bunnspecial

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 3, 2014
8,391
6,565
Kentucky
I've spent the past half hour searching in vain for the page on Apple's website with virtually all of their pre-7.6 system software available for download from it.

As typical, the links are constantly getting re-arranged. A Google search leads me to a dead end, and I've tried various search terms within Apple's website to try and locate the page.

Does anyone have a current link to where this can be found? I'm trying to find System 6 to install on my SE and don't have a set of System 6 install disks.
 
yes well the apple site as far as I know was removed, they can be freely distributed, other than 7.1p or something to that effect but Apple posted something about removing the downloads like last year.

Most of us found anthology set cds and use bridge macs to make disks and such. Other than that I think the garden or knowing someone is your only hope.
 
Thanks guys!

Just to make sure-can I write 800K floppies with my 8600 or 9600?

Both are currently running OS 9(9.1 on the 8600, 9.2.2 on the 9600) which I understand has issues with MFS for really old stuff. If I wanted to-say-write System 6 onto 800K floppies for use with the 512ke that I'm in the processes of buying-I should be able to do that-correct?

I do have a 7200 with ZIP drive. I'm planning on installing 7.5 on it for writing MFS disks, but am hoping that in the mean time I can make do with the 8600/9600. I do have enough 68K stuff with ZIP drives so that I can easily download files from newer computers and then transfer them to older ones to write the disks.
 
bunnspecial said:
Thanks guys!

Just to make sure-can I write 800K floppies with my 8600 or 9600?

Both are currently running OS 9(9.1 on the 8600, 9.2.2 on the 9600) which I understand has issues with MFS for really old stuff. If I wanted to-say-write System 6 onto 800K floppies for use with the 512ke that I'm in the processes of buying-I should be able to do that-correct?

I do have a 7200 with ZIP drive. I'm planning on installing 7.5 on it for writing MFS disks, but am hoping that in the mean time I can make do with the 8600/9600. I do have enough 68K stuff with ZIP drives so that I can easily download files from newer computers and then transfer them to older ones to write the disks.
Click to expand...
If you use Disk Copy 6.3.3 you can create the old 400k MFS floppies from a disk image - but that's it.

I can't remember when 800K support was dropped - 400K was dropped in MacOS 8.0

You need MacOS 7.6.1 or EARLIER to be fully compatible. Your 8600 or 9600 will need a minimum Special Build of 7.5.5 to run.

7.5.5 for Power Mac 7300/8600/9600 Series = 691-1231-A
7.6.1 for Power Mac 9600 8600 Series = 691-1623-A
 
I found this:
"As far as file system handling, there are limitations when dealing with 400K disks (which are MFS file system rather than HFS) depending on the version of MacOS. IIRC, Mac OS 8 was the dividing line there, System 7.x or lower can deal with 400K disks natively. "
As I remember, System 7.1 was available on 800K and 1.44MB Disks.
 
MacTech68 said:
If you use Disk Copy 6.3.3 you can create the old 400k MFS floppies from a disk image - but that's it.

I can't remember when 800K support was dropped - 400K was dropped in MacOS 8.0

You need MacOS 7.6.1 or EARLIER to be fully compatible. Your 8600 or 9600 will need a minimum Special Build of 7.5.5 to run.

7.5.5 for Power Mac 7300/8600/9600 Series = 691-1231-A
7.6.1 for Power Mac 9600 8600 Series = 691-1623-A
Click to expand...

Thanks.

If I can get my 7200 running, I should be able to install(standard) 7.5.5 on it from the set of disks I have. If not that, I do have a couple of 7100s kicking around.

I should probably hunt down the 7.5.5 and 7.6.1 builds for the 7300/8600/9600(I have all of these machines). I have a bootable ATA PCI card that I've been using recently for OS X experiments with the 8600 and 9600(my 8600 has a G4 upgrade so should run Leopard, and a friend recently re-compiled Tiger to run on a 60x series CPU). In any case, I recently picked up a couple of Sonnet ATA cards, so hopefully will be able to do stuff like this without having to track down SCSI drives.
 
bunnspecial said:
...I have a bootable ATA PCI card that I've been using recently for OS X experiments with the 8600 and 9600(my 8600 has a G4 upgrade so should run Leopard, and a friend recently re-compiled Tiger to run on a 60x series CPU). In any case, I recently picked up a couple of Sonnet ATA cards, so hopefully will be able to do stuff like this without having to track down SCSI drives.
Click to expand...

What a seriously "tricked out" 8600 that will be! I don't think I ever came across a client willing to spend the $ to import a G4 uprade for a beige PCI 604e Mac.

My 7500 with G3 CPU sits languishing in the old server cupboard with it's SCSI tower partner and it's 5 x 2GB SCSI drives unused for about 9 years.
 
MacTech68 said:
What a seriously "tricked out" 8600 that will be! I don't think I ever came across a client willing to spend the $ to import a G4 uprade for a beige PCI 604e Mac.

My 7500 with G3 CPU sits languishing in the old server cupboard with it's SCSI tower partner and it's 5 x 2GB SCSI drives unused for about 9 years.
Click to expand...

Amazingly enough, the G4 was given to me by a fellow MacRumors member to whom I've given some other parts in the past(I was and remain extremely grateful). It's a Sonnet 700mhz/1mb L3, so has a lot of potential as a hot processor.

I still have some lingering bad RAM in the system that's still giving me issues under OS X, so I've sort of shelved running OS X for now until I have the money to blow at OWC to max it out to 1gb.

I'm using a G3 minitower at work now that was given to me for the cost of shipping-the person responded in response to my request on the LEM Swap about a G3 Minitower(btw, I ended up with three-I bought two that I went and picked up, and was given a third).

In any case, this particular G3 has a Sonnet 1ghz/1mb L3 G4 upgrade(arguably the fastest available for ZIF socketed Macs, although someone did make a 1.1ghz G3). It also has a pair of 15K 68 pin SCSI drives in RAID 0 on a factory "Jackhammer" card, a Radeon 7000, and a combo USB/FW card. It runs Tiger at least as well(if not better than) most low-spec supported G4s.
 
I found this buried back in my closet...hopefully this will get me going with the 512Ke.

BTW, the person who gave me this box has promised me a computer that belonged to her husband. Seeing some of the stuff in here-and the fact that much of it is simply branded "Macintosh" with no model number-makes me wonder if the computer she is going to give me is a 128K. I know there's a Plus sitting in her office that I've also been promised.



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