PowerBook 520 System 7.5.3 install - how to?

[BigLynx]

As I spent significant amount of time trying to solve my problems without success let me ask you for help.

I have PowerBook 520 with working HDD but broken installation of System. In other words 520 is not able to boot from HDD. FDD is working fine. I also have Apple SCSI External CD with connector allowing it to connect to 520. I may boot 520 from FDD (Disk Utils) or CD (System 8). I may examine contents of HDD after boot from CD or FDD.

Using PowerBook 1400 and 1.44MB floppies I transferred System 7.5.3 installtion to 520 HDD. I am able to mount it and run installtion procedure but installation fails after some time reporting HD error. In my opinion (but I am not sure about this of course) there is no way to install System 7 on HD when installation image exist on the same HD. For the moment I was wondering if problem is not related to 520 enabler but 7.5.3 contains universal enabler.

Therefore, I was trying to boot 520 from FDD and then mount System 7.5.3 installtion on CD. I burned out CD with System 7.5.3 installtion. I am able to read it on any CD including PowerBook 1400 CD but it is not readable on SCSI external CD what I have. I do not have idea why as in general this drive reads CDs what I have (e.g. System 8, Games, WorldMac, etc).

Qusetions:

1. how to transfer System 7.5.3 installtion to floppy based installation?

2. How to make readable CD with System 7 installation on external SCSI CD what I have? More - how to make such a CD boot-able?

3. Any other ideas how to install System 7 on my 520 and make it working?

Best Regards,
Tomek

 

[David Schmidt]

Qusetions:

1. how to transfer System 7.5.3 installtion to floppy based installation?

I just did this recently after I fried my IDE-hosted Compact Flash card that was holding the OS on my Performa 636CD (long story). The thing to do is to get the 7.5 "network boot" or whatever they called it floppy disk, which has a minimal Mac OS7 system with a CD driver on it. Then, you burn a CD with the .SMI version of the 7.5.3 install media (it has a bunch of parts... 13-20 or so, can't remember now). Booting the floppy, it sees the CD, which you can then click on the installer media .SMI... which mounts a virtual disk of the install volume. Still with me? Then you can finally run the installer (essentially from CD) and have it write to your HDD.

Alternatively - if you have a working Mac OS8 system, you can unpack/mount that .SMI-packed installer volume and copy it over to a CD. That saves a step when you do the 7.5 network boot floppy dance.

How do you burn a CD, you ask? Well, if you can't do it from OS8, I did it on an older (OSX 10.5) G5 mac by building a .DMG of CD-size that was formatted with Mac OS Standard file system and copied the expanded 7.5.3 media to it. (Edit: then I burned that to a new CD.) The Perofrma was able to read that CD using the network boot floppy. One day I want to figure out how to burn a bootable OS7 CD...

2. How to make readable CD with System 7 installation on external SCSI CD what I have? More - how to make such a CD boot-able?

(See above... still no idea how to make a bootable CD, though that may be a Google search away)

This all gets easier when you have a few machines that can work together - I have a chain of Macs networked that can stretch back to OS6. It takes a few hops sometimes to reach that far into the past.

 

[MacTech68]

I just did this recently after I fried my IDE-hosted Compact Flash card that was holding the OS on my Performa 636CD (long story). The thing to do is to get the 7.5 "network boot" or whatever they called it floppy disk, which has a minimal Mac OS7 system with a CD driver on it. Then, you burn a CD with the .SMI version of the 7.5.3 install media (it has a bunch of parts... 13-20 or so, can't remember now). Booting the floppy, it sees the CD, which you can then click on the installer media .SMI... which mounts a virtual disk of the install volume. Still with me? Then you can finally run the installer (essentially from CD) and have it write to your HDD.

Alternatively - if you have a working Mac OS8 system, you can unpack/mount that .SMI-packed installer volume and copy it over to a CD. That saves a step when you do the 7.5 network boot floppy dance.

How do you burn a CD, you ask? Well, if you can't do it from OS8, I did it on an older (OSX 10.5) G5 mac by building a .DMG of CD-size that was formatted with Mac OS Standard file system and copied the expanded 7.5.3 media to it. The Perofrma was able to read that from the network boot floppy. One day I want to figure out how to burn a bootable OS7 CD...


(See above... still no idea how to make a bootable CD, though that may be a Google search away)

This all gets easier when you have a few machines that can work together - I have a chain of Macs networked that can stretch back to OS6. It takes a few hops sometimes to reach that far into the past.

Yup, MacOS Standard is the key for anything earlier than MacOS 8.1 to read the CD.

Regarding making bootables, Toast (when Adaptec made it) had a "Make Bootable" checkbox when creating a "Mac Volume" CD in version 3, 4 & 5 IIRC. Supposedly it used cd driver code contained in the system extension of the OS you had booted from. Only available in the full retail version, not the bundled OEM version.

EDIT: aha - https://web.archive.org/web/20000622183723/http://www.adaptec.com/support/faqs/toastbootable.html

 

[David Schmidt]

Regarding making bootables, Toast (when Adaptec made it) had a "Make Bootable" checkbox when creating a "Mac Volume" CD in version 3, 4 & 5 IIRC.

Ok, I bought myself a copy of Toast 4.1.2 on eBay a week or two ago, and spent the better part of today getting a workflow down to create bootable System 7 CDs (my personal goal). I also burned half of a spindle's worth of coasters in the process. So that I don't have to go through that again, here's what I arrived at that worked for me.

First off, my problem: I have a Performa 636CD, running 7.5.5. It can run Toast just fine, but it doesn't have a CD _writer_. I can plug in an external SCSI writer that Toast is happy with... but I can't "mount" a full-CD ISO with the Performa because it locks up when I try. So... I also have a G5 running OSX 10.5 which, incidentally, can dual boot OS9. That turns out to be important. It also turns out Toast 4 can't see the writable CD from Classic... it has to be running OS9. So far so good. I may actually be able to do all of this from the Performa assuming 1) I keep the image small, and 2) I hook up that 2x SCSI writer... but man, is it slow.

Here are the basic steps I went through:

1. On OS7, run DiskCopy and create a new volume. Maybe call it Booter.img. 160MB is gracious plenty. DC will then mount and format that volume.
2. Copy over whatever files are useful - all of the installer packages, OpenTransport, The TCP/IP chooser updates, etc.
3. Copy over a minimal system - the System folder from a Network Boot floppy is a good, very conservative option. I might experiment with copying over more facilities to make life a little easier in that CD-booted environment. My system folder also includes the CD extension and CD file formats for good measure.
4. Make sure the System folder is blessed from within System 7. This is one of the three most important steps of all. Double-click on it within your image to make sure the Mac OS icon appears on the folder. If not - no boot.
5. Make your windows as pretty and organized as you like - their positions will be saved that way on the image and ultimately on the CD.
6. Eject your disk image - you will be left with Booter.img wherever you told DC to save it.
7. Copy Booter.img over to the G5 running OS9.
8. Start up Toast 4 (I found pirated copies of Toast 5.0.x and 5.2.x online - they were not successful in a crucial step ahead; only 4 was (I have the coasters to prove it))
9. Have Toast mount Booter.img
10. Drag the mounted volume to the "Mac Volume" option for writing
11. Click the "Data..." button, and select "Don't copy free space" and (VERY important) select "Bootable"
12. Hit "Record" - a dialog comes up; tick (VERY IMPORTANT) "Create disc image first" (Toast 5 does not offer this) and "Buffer underrun prevention", then Write Disc (not session); save this intermediate image as "Booter*Image" (they pick the name for you).

Et voilà. The CD you create will then be bootable to OS7. Further, you can use that "Booter*Image" file to create more copies of that CD even with the later versions of Toast - the bootable goo is already baked in.

The Performa would then boot the CD when holding down the "c" key. I found in testing that the very first boot of the CD (after the Performa had been running off of a hard drive happily) it would give a sad mac; rebooting again with the "c" pressed (sometimes shift-C/extensions off helped... don't know if that was coincidence, the fact that it was the second boot, or maybe I don't need the CD extension after all - didn't investigate that) it would come up just fine, able to access the resources of the system. Very satisfying after a long day of coaster creation...

 

[MacTech68]

I used to use a blank HD and create a "Universal System" - I think that is doable by holding the Option key when clicking Customize in the MacOS System Installer.

The one thing I did learn was to make sure that Virtual Memory is OFF before burning the system using the method David used.

Other than that, I can't recall much else to add.

 

[BigLynx]

OK - let me summarize how I finally installed 7.5.3 on PB 520.

The major problem what I had was the following: the only working CDRW device I have with may MacBook Air or iMac - both running OS X 10.9. MAC OS Standard format is supported by 10.9 but only in read only mode and additionally - using standard Disk Utility - you may not create image of Standard type.

Therefore, on my PowerBook G3 with 10.2 I created empty disk image file using standard Disk Copy tool. It was possible to define format (including Standard) and size. I created 100MB file. After mounting image I copied to it unpacked System 7 installation and some extra tools (e.g. Drive Setup - still available on Apple Web). Then I transferred image to my Air with 10.9 and using standard Disk Utility I burned CD with image contents.

The rest was easy. I booted PD 520 from Network Boot Floppy (still available on Apple Web) and was able to read CD on my external CD drive connected to PB. The only strange thing was that installation on HD was not possible without running Drive Setup first. Why strange? Because contents of HD was visible and accessible without any errors.

Stil do not have idea how to create boot-able CD using my environment.

 

[tdiaz]

Is the footprint of the basic install able to physically fit on a CD?

If so, just burn the volume using Toast, to make a bootable CD.

Even if you don't have a writer on there, you save the image to a network or external drive and move it to where you've got a writer.