Just acquired 2 Mac Plusses, and I'm (almost) a complete n00b

[BlackFalcon448]

Hi, I just picked up 2 Mac Plusses from craigslist for $35. I have NO experience with macs any older than the original iMac, so I don't really know to approach these machines.

Both machines power on and seem to work, but I get the ? disk icon, I'm assuming because I don't have a boot disk inserted. One of the macs came with an external 20 mb hdd, which doesn't seem to work. I hear the drive spin up and then it immediately shuts off, so I think i may be dead (wouldn't doubt it lol).

Anyway, I found a system disk image to put onto a floppy, but to my understanding, I need special 800KB mac formatted floppies, which I don't have. I will also need a usb floppy drive to burn these floppies, which I also don't have. The floppies were easy enough to find on amazon, but the floppy drive seems to be harder to find. I also have a couple iMac G3's, so if there is a drive available for OS 9, I could get that.

Can anyone please point me in the right direction, as I really want to get these things running again.

 

[KurtangleTN]

Congrats on the score!

800k disks are tough. From what I've read Apple removed the ability to write 800k disks with Mac OS 8, which means you basically have to get a Mac that can run some kind of System 7, has an internal floppy, and it would be very helpful if it had ethernet so you can download things more easily.

I know a lot of Pre G3 Power Macintosh models are good bets, you might want to check Craigslist or eBay for local listings, since shipping would be expensive. If you can find them locally (make a want ad?) it will probably be very cheap.

Another option is to buy software on eBay, but that will add up quite a bit...

 

[NZed]

This thread should be posted/moved to Apple Collectors. These are Macintoshs and their processor is not PowerPC. They're just 68k macs.

 

[zen.state]

NZed is right. This is in the wrong part of the forum. These are not PowerPC Macs at all.