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Macintosh Plus Boot Disk Needed

T

thecynic

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 9, 2010
5
0
Victoria, BC
Hey Guys,

I bought a Macintosh Plus with an external HD for $5 at a garage sale a few years ago. It never came with a boot disk so it's quite useless except for showing people. I tried making them by going from PC to an LC 575 running 8.1 to the mac, but that didn't work. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas or if anyone has one that they could mail to me.

Thanks!
thecynic:apple:
 
If you're using High Density Disks (HD) then that is part of the problem. The MacPlus will only recognize 800K Double Density (DD) floppy disks. (edit: and 400K formatted floppy disks)

You can sometimes get away with covering the HD detect hole with opaque tape top and bottom. That's the hole WITHOUT the sliding lock on the underside.

The next problem is that many modern floppy drives (and systems) can't write Mac formatted 800K disks. Your best bet is to have an older "beige" Mac running any system up to 7.6.1 You can then write 800K disks with DD disks or by covering the hole on a HD disk.

As for the OS, try http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/index.html not all links may work. There are certainly resources that are FREE if you can get the disk images.
________
Ford ATX transmission specifications
 
Last edited:
MacTech68 said:
If you're using High Density Disks (HD) then that is part of the problem. The MacPlus will only recognize 800K Double Density (DD) floppy disks.

You can sometimes get away with covering the HD detect hole with opaque tape top and bottom. That's the hole WITHOUT the sliding lock on the underside.

The next problem is that many modern floppy drives (and systems) can't write Mac formatted 800K disks. Your best bet is to have an older "beige" Mac running any system up to 7.6.1 You can then rite 800K disks with DD disks or by covering the hole on a HD disk.

As for the OS, try http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/index.html not all links may work. There are certainly resources that are FREE if you can get the disk images.
Click to expand...

You're a stud MacTech... I've said it before and I'll say it again... :cool:

To the O.P., I may have the disks you need, I'll take inventory tonight and let you know.
 
MacTech68 said:
If you're using High Density Disks (HD) then that is part of the problem. The MacPlus will only recognize 800K Double Density (DD) floppy disks. (edit: and 400K formatted floppy disks)

You can sometimes get away with covering the HD detect hole with opaque tape top and bottom. That's the hole WITHOUT the sliding lock on the underside.

The next problem is that many modern floppy drives (and systems) can't write Mac formatted 800K disks. Your best bet is to have an older "beige" Mac running any system up to 7.6.1 You can then write 800K disks with DD disks or by covering the hole on a HD disk.

As for the OS, try http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/index.html not all links may work. There are certainly resources that are FREE if you can get the disk images.
Click to expand...

would electrical tape work? i tried using scotch, but it didn't work
 
Two warnings:

1. Using an HD floppy as a DD floppy is unreliable.

2. Using an HD floppy as a DD floppy can be irreversible.

This is because HD floppies use a lower-power magnetic field than DD. Some HD floppy disks are manufactured such that they can barely hold a strong enough signal to work as DD, making them unreliable. In addition, once you have blasted a disk with the higher-power DD signal, that stronger field remains even after reformatting, possibly making it impossible to get a reliable HD signal back on the disk.

This can be mitigated by degaussing the disk, which completely wipes out the existing magnetic field, so you can reformat with the lower-power HD field.

(Note, this is a layman's explanation, see here for a more detailed explanation.)
 
Anonymous Freak said:
Two warnings:

1. Using an HD floppy as a DD floppy is unreliable.

2. Using an HD floppy as a DD floppy can be irreversible.

This is because HD floppies use a lower-power magnetic field than DD. Some HD floppy disks are manufactured such that they can barely hold a strong enough signal to work as DD, making them unreliable. In addition, once you have blasted a disk with the higher-power DD signal, that stronger field remains even after reformatting, possibly making it impossible to get a reliable HD signal back on the disk.

This can be mitigated by degaussing the disk, which completely wipes out the existing magnetic field, so you can reformat with the lower-power HD field.

(Note, this is a layman's explanation, see here for a more detailed explanation.)
Click to expand...

it didn't work, could someone possibly send me a disk that they've made or have lying around? thanks
 
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