Easiest Way to Transfer Files to Macintosh Classic?

[Goftrey]

Today I picked up a near mint condition Macintosh Classic for a pretty decent price. I've always had a little soft spot for them

Anyway, I want to run some games on it & am struggling to find an easy way to get the files to the Classic w/o the use of a floppy drive equipped computer.

Any suggestions? This is my first System x Mac & I'm a bit lost.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

There are four readily available methods to transfer a file to a Macintosh Classic. It is likely that all of them require you to purchase something.

1. LocalTalk networking - this is the old-fashioned serial port based networking that was the standard on classic Macs. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in any version of OS X. So you would need a more modern Mac, but still old enough to run OS 9 and have a serial port. This would be something like a beige Power Mac that has both Ethernet and serial.

2. Ethernet - as the Macintosh Classic has no Ethernet, and no internal expansion slot, you would need a SCSI Ethernet adapter. You would also need to make sure it came with a driver disk, because if you don't have that, you can't get the drivers on to the system! That would allow you to use AppleTalk-over-Ethernet, which works just fine between old and new Macs.

3. Floppy disk - any USB floppy drive will work on a modern Mac just fine, and the Classic can read 1.4 MB disks just fine.

4. Direct serial connection - using a terminal application to transfer files via serial. Would require a serial cable for the Classic, a USB-to-serial adapter for the modern computer, a null modem adapter, and likely a plug adapter to get the old-Macintosh-8-pin serial into a PC-standard 9-pin. You would then need some form of terminal software on the Classic. (Note: I have used this method to have my original Macintosh act as a serial terminal for my UNIX machine.)

 

[David Schmidt]

Anyway, I want to run some games on it & am struggling to find an easy way to get the files to the Classic w/o the use of a floppy drive equipped computer.

And you will continue to struggle. it is not easy, as AnonymousFreak pointed out to you. There is a place to short-circuit much of this if the game you are looking for is here...
http://rescuemyclassicmac.com/buyadisk/buyadisk.html

 

[Goftrey]

Thanks for the help guys. Only a few months ago I got rid of my 9500 which is a shame as it would've been ideal for this sort of thing. Looks like I'll buy myself a USB floppy & use the blank disks I've got lying around.

 

[ekiro]

Today I picked up a near mint condition Macintosh Classic for a pretty decent price. I've always had a little soft spot for them

Anyway, I want to run some games on it & am struggling to find an easy way to get the files to the Classic w/o the use of a floppy drive equipped computer.

Any suggestions? This is my first System x Mac & I'm a bit lost.

FireWire?

Why would you be doing this anyway? Do you really have anything you wish to move towards obsolete hardware that's really a must...?

 

[havokalien]

FireWire?

He means a macintosh classic. There is no FireWire on that unit. FireWire didn't appear until the G3 B&W's.

Could find an external scsi drive and it will allow direct connect to either Mac to load files, you have to shut machines down to transfer but lots of storage and no floppy drive issues.

 

[ElectronGuru]

Another option is Zip drive. I believe they had SCSI and USB models.

 

[havokalien]

Yes

Zip is a great option. PC recyclers usually have the drives and disks for pretty cheap and the zip extension for the classic is really small.