Read Mac SE disks

[Gentile]

I have some old disks formatted using a Mac SE.

Is there a way to read these disks on my pc or a current Mac?

The disks are labeled Macintosh 2SHD 1.4 MB disks and have old AppleWorks files on them.

I tried the software Macdisk, but it could not read the disk and said it needed to be formatted. I read on the Macdisk site that "MacDisk cannot read Apple Macintosh DD (400 KB or 800 KB) floppy disks. Apple chose to implement the GCR coding (Group Coded Recording) with a variable spindle speed to squeeze more data on the outer tracks of the medium. There are no software solutions to mimic that on the PC..." Is this the case here?

Thanks for any help.

 

[David Schmidt]

I tried the software Macdisk, but it could not read the disk and said it needed to be formatted. I read on the Macdisk site that "MacDisk cannot read Apple Macintosh DD (400 KB or 800 KB) floppy disks. Apple chose to implement the GCR coding (Group Coded Recording) with a variable spindle speed to squeeze more data on the outer tracks of the medium. There are no software solutions to mimic that on the PC..." Is this the case here?

You do indeed need a variable speed 3.5" drive mechanism. The last Macs that shipped with those were in the G3 era. You cannot use a USB plug-in 3.5" drive; that suffers from the same ailment as the PC you described above. You will need to read the disk on older hardware with a variable-speed drive attached.

See: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=36900 for a related discussion and options.

 

[Gentile]

Thanks for the thread link. It helped me learn some background on the problem.

I wonder if I can pick up an old PowerBook (i.e. 1400cs) with a floppy SuperDrive (that is HD) would I be able to read the floppy disks from my old Mac SE? I could then email the files to my current computer.

Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[Gentile]

I ended up purchasing a PowerBook 1400cs with a floppy SuperDrive running OS 7.5.3. However, I still can't read the disks. The computer says that they need to be formatted.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Prayer. The floppies themselves may be corrupt.

All you can do is to try them on other vintage Macs. Ask around schools, universities, your local Mac users group.

 

[David Schmidt]

However, I still can't read the disks. The computer says that they need to be formatted.

I had a disk in the same situation recently. I knew most of the data was still there. DiskDup+, set to "tolerate errors," told me that the disk had (only!) 4 bad sectors when copying. None of my old macs would mount it, though. Then I tried the trial version of Prosoft's Data Rescue II:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_info.php
It was able to mount the disk such that I could get at it from the finder and resurrect what I was after. Their page talks about hard drives, but it worked fine on my floppy disk.

 

[Gentile]

Some good news. I read on an Apple support page that sometimes older Macs formatted a 1.4 mb disk to 800 k. However, modern Macs would see the disk as 1.4 mb and try to open it as such and fail. The solution was to tape over the left hole at the top of the disk.

Now I can read all the disks.

The only problem I have is that 2 files give me an error when I try to copy it to the hard drive saying it can't be written because of "error of type 1,309."

Does anyone know how to work around this?