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Best Classic Mac for Downloading?

R

RedElectro

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 26, 2010
140
0
United Kingdom
Hi...
As you might have read from other posts I've got quite a few Classic Macs now and was wondering what's the best way of getting software (disk images online) on to the machines with no internet access?

I thought of looking for a machine with both an ethernet connection and a floppy drive and wondered if that is the best possibility? Can anyone suggest a good machine for this purpose? It would need to be able to write to DD and HD diskettes (I think the later macs with floppy drives could do this, but do they also have ethernet?)

Just how difficult is this to do?

Cheers :)
 
I'd suggest the Powerbook G3 Wallstreet if you are looking for a machine to talk with them. They are the last laptops to come with a serial/geoport and SCSI port. You can get it with a removable floppy drive or buy one separately. If you connect it to another mac with a serial cable, you can talk to it and transfer files using AppleTalk. I used one to successfully transfer files off a Performa that didn't have ethernet.
 
Use any old Windows XP machine. As long as the files are .SIT & HQX 'stuffed' files you will be ok. If they are under 1.4MB in size just put them on an MS-DOS floppy and take them over to the Mac using PC Exchange. You need a 1.4MB Mac floppy to do this.

But what if the archive is over 1.4mb in size? I use MS-DOS formatted Zip Disks. Just have a Zip drive on the Mac and PC Exchange will read the files.

I have yet to find a Mac download that is larger than 100 MB. Zip drives are very cheap these days. On the Windows side get an internal IDE version or the parallel port model. On the Mac side get a SCSI version and you are in business.
 
Get a grey (read yellow!) G3 tower. They are often free to get as they are buttugly (many more produced than older macs) and it has a floppy drive. An LC is nice too, but remember that the ethernet card with UTP can be more expensive than the mac itself. You can also connect it with Apple-Talk and do the things without floppies.
 
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I second the beige/gray/(likely now yellow) G3. Runs OS 8-9 just fine, has a built-in floppy drive, Ethernet, and a LocalTalk-compatible serial port. Can run up to OS X 10.4 with the help of XPostFacto.
 
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