Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

hbsoftware

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 22, 2024
16
2
Hi
i recently saved 5 mac g3's and 3 imacs from being recycled...unfortunately the recycling company took the hard drives out of them to destroy because of "data privacy"...

i have lots of ide hard drives but from PCs ...40gb 80gb 120gb etc etc and the scsi drives i have are on a hard drive rack, probably formatted to fat32 i guess, i have lots of them...

the only mac i have that works and boots is an SE/30 so its useless to burn cds

i have downloaded mac os9 my PC from macinstallers.tech
how can i correctly burn the image? so that i can boot the macs with it , format the drives and install the os..
i have a pc with windows 10 and other with XP, both have internet acess and cdrw drive

best regards
Hugo
 
Last edited:
i have downloaded mac os9 my PC from macinstallers.tech
If you downloaded an ISO file then use your CD writing software to create CD-ROM of ISO. Those old Mac CD-ROM drives can be finicky regarding discs. Make sure you use compatible media and burn the disc at slow speed.
 
how can i correctly burn the image? so that i can boot the macs with it , format the drives and install the os..

I'd recommend CDBurnerXP. It's free and is compatible with Windows versions from 2000 through to 10. When I used Windows and PCs predominantly, this was my default program for burning CD/DVDs. As @Bigwaff has advised, to be on the safe side, you should use 2x or 4x for burning discs that are going to be used with optical drives that old.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Raging Dufus
.toast images are just raw images that you can burn using whatever (rename to .iso if needed); for DMGs use poweriso which can burn them, or use dmg2img to convert them to raw image which you can rename to .iso and burn.
 
Thanks for all the help. I was surprised with how easy it was...i never had formatted a mac before, only pcs... the g3's are all done, i cleaned them and installed ide drives , because the scsi ones i had have way more pins (maybe more modern)... now i have to make 2 good imacs out of those broken 3 and format them too and i also bought a quadra 700 also without hdd..i think that one is going to be s challenge to install an os...what do you guys think?
 

Attachments

  • 20240320_105919.jpg
    20240320_105919.jpg
    480.3 KB · Views: 68
  • 20240320_105923.jpg
    20240320_105923.jpg
    504.8 KB · Views: 54
  • Love
Reactions: TheShortTimer
Another question i have... what do i need to do to install the zip drive? Some of these macs have a zip drive but it doesnt appear anywhere on the operating system...do i have to install drivers or it only appears when i insert a zip disk?
 
do i have to install drivers or it only appears when i insert a zip disk?
If memory serves, the ZIP disk will appear on the desktop when inserted. There might be a System Extension which loads. You would see an icon on startup in the list of extension icons that appear.
 
  • Like
Reactions: hbsoftware
Another question i have... what do i need to do to install the zip drive?
The Zip drive is connected to the ATA bus (like the CD-ROM) and should thus appear in “Apple System Profiler” even when it’s empty. Apart from that, just insert a disk, format (“initialise”) if necessary and have fun with a whopping 100 megs of storage. ;)
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: TheShortTimer
The Zip drive is connected to the ATA bus (like the CD-ROM) and should thus appear in “Apple System Profiler” even when it’s empty. Apart from that, just insert a disk, format (“initialise”) if necessary and have fun with a whopping 100 megs of storage. ;)
Yes if i go to the place were you initialize the drives i see the zip drive but it says unsupported or something like that... i will dig up a bag of zip diskettes that i have and see if it works.. thank you very much to you and all ppl in the forum for being helpfull and sorry for being a total applle noob.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.