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Transferring files from MBA to MAC SE/30

taeclee99

taeclee99

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 4, 2002
832
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Anywhere but here
I recently bought a MAC SE/30 in great condition off Ebay. Trouble is that I can't seem to find a way to transfer some legacy 68K programs stored on my MBA over to the SE/30. My MBA is running El Capitan so USB floppy drives are no longer supported. The SE/30 does not have ethernet so networking is not an option.
I thought about using ZIP drives but OS X no longer supports that format either. I am thinking that buying an old apple CD 300e plus off of eBay may be my best shot of getting files over to the SE/30. Anyone have any other suggestions on how I can make this transfer work?
[doublepost=1456642516][/doublepost]Sorry I posted this in the wrong category. Can one of the mods please move this to Mac Hardware?
 

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If you cannot do it though networking, or a hardware device, then there may not be a way.

Is there any way to get the Macintosh SE on the internet? If so, then use dropbox (the web interface not the app). That might work. Otherwise I don't think there will be a way.
 
Best bet is get 2 zip drives (one scsi one usb) then put programs on zip then transfer disk to the SE/30, you could also get a usb floppy drive and use 1.44 floppies if the programs are small enough.

Its normally at this point someone mentions a "bridge" mac to get on the internet that has zip, cd writer and floppy able to write to any mac format with OS9 so as not to mess with resource forks and having to use stuffit expander to fix the forks.
 
I'd have thought cheapest option might be a crappy old Win98/2000/XP desktop or laptop with a floppy drive? It would mean small apps only or software to span disks. Other factors are the disk formatting - I'm pretty sure it's possible though - I used to do the same many years ago moving programs from a PC to an Amiga.
 
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I'd go with the Zip disk option mentioned above. I still make heavy use of Zip disks since they are a good way to transfer "legacy" files between any Macintosh from the Mac Plus up to the most current models.

The caveat in that is that you will need a "bridge" computer running something between OS 8.1 and OS X 10.5.8. As of 10.6, Macs can not write to HFS standard and I don't think that any system software that will run on a Macintosh SE will read HFS+ volumes. To me, Powermac G4s make ideal computers for this, since many of them have built-in ZIP drives and will allow you to transfer files via USB flash drives from your MBA to directly to them(8.6 or later is require for mass storage devices).

Floppy drives are a decent alternative since your SE/30 should have a SuperDrive and thus can use a USB floppy with your MBA, but you will still run into the HFS/HFS+ compatibility problem.

Getting files from an SE/30 to a modern Mac is a lot easier since even El Capitan can read HFS formatted volumes.

As hinted at above, I'd suggest transferring Stuffit files if at all possible since it will keep the resource and data fork intact and in their proper place through transfers. A side effect is that this will reduce the size of the files, making transfers over SCSI and USB 1.1 faster.

Networking was also mentioned. Unless you have an ethernet card in your SE/30, you will still need a bridge computer to connect the serial local talk network to ethernet.

I'm not seeing a way to do this without using a bridge computer of some sort. Any PowerPC Mac could theoretically fill this roll, as could a 68K mac running OS 8.1.
 
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The easiest option (fewest number of steps and easily scalable to more Macs without massively rearranging everthing), if you have either VMware/virtualbox or another computer, is going to be to use Netatalk. You can use a pre-built stack or script such as A2SERVER (which works for Mac stuff as well.) Get an Ethernet to Localtalk adapter such as the Farallon iPrint from eBay and then hook it all together.

The short version:
on a debian system, run apt-get install netatalk
Plug in the iPrint to both Ethernet and to the SE/30. Give it power.

On the SE/30, open up the AppleTalk control panel, tell it to use whatever serial port you plugged the iPrint into.
Then, go to the Chooser and select the Netatalk server.

On the MacBook Air, in the Finder go to Go -> Connect to Server and use afp://ip-address-of-linux-server and hit connect.
 
bunnspecial said:
I'm not seeing a way to do this without using a bridge computer of some sort. Any PowerPC Mac could theoretically fill this roll, as could a 68K mac running OS 8.1.
Click to expand...

You could Setup a Virtual machine running 10.4 or 10.5 and then pass through a USB Floppy disk/Zip disk drive and read and write HFS standard
 
Huu, this machine had been the one I always stopped for at the sellers window pane.
At that time I didn't owe a computer nor did I want to owe one.
Later and until 2009 Windows had been my daily business. Now I'm happy with Macs and making up history about old Apple Computers.
Looks like resurrecting this little old chap (the object of my desire) needs a lot of effort.
Good luck!
 
Cory5412 said:
The easiest option (fewest number of steps and easily scalable to more Macs without massively rearranging everthing), if you have either VMware/virtualbox or another computer, is going to be to use Netatalk. You can use a pre-built stack or script such as A2SERVER (which works for Mac stuff as well.) Get an Ethernet to Localtalk adapter such as the Farallon iPrint from eBay and then hook it all together.

The short version:
on a debian system, run apt-get install netatalk
Plug in the iPrint to both Ethernet and to the SE/30. Give it power.

On the SE/30, open up the AppleTalk control panel, tell it to use whatever serial port you plugged the iPrint into.
Then, go to the Chooser and select the Netatalk server.

On the MacBook Air, in the Finder go to Go -> Connect to Server and use afp://ip-address-of-linux-server and hit connect.
Click to expand...
I have an iPrint, I'd love to see a formal write up of this.
 
Back in old days, we used modems and kermit to transmit files. You could do the following using a null modem possible and connect the two together. I have never done this with a Mac just a suggestion. Here are some ideas found on the internet.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-transfer-files-when-your-older-mac-doesnt-h.html

Using modems to transfer files

If your older Mac has a modem and you purchased the Apple Modem for your new Mac, you may be able to transfer files by connecting the two modems with a telephone cable. The Kermit project at Columbia University distributes a tool for exchanging files over serial communications lines. It even has a version of Kermit for OS X, as well as for older Macs (MacKermit), not to mention nearly every computer in existence.


http://www.jagshouse.com/macterminal.html

Transfer using Z-Term.
 
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There is a way to turn a Mac SE into a server somehow. I'm not sure of the steps, but I did see the end result (it was an actual website hosted by a Mac SE). If you can find how they did that, you might be in business?
 
I own a Mac SE/30 and about 30 working PowerBooks from 1993 to 2000.
I would buy an old low cost "man in the middle" PowerBook with PMCIA-Slots and built-in floppy drive. And additionally buy an USB CF-Card reader for the MBA and a CF-Card Adapter for PMCIA with a low cost CF-Card (1 to 8 GB) to transfer files from MBA to the PowerBook. Then copy files to a 1.44MB floppy disk for use in the SE/30.
That's the way I do it very often.
And this is one of "hundreds" of possibilities, but none of them at zero costs. :)
 
I've read that users operating Windows via Parallels in El Capitan can access USB floppy drives - even if the Mac OS can't.
In the UK, a USB Floppy can be had for around £6 - that coupled with Windows in Virtual Box has got to be the cheapest option.
 
128keaton said:
I have an iPrint, I'd love to see a formal write up of this.
Click to expand...

I don't know how up-to-date this is: https://wiki.68kmla.org/index.php/Netatalk

I literally just make a Debian VM and then type in "apt-get install netatalk" and it has typically worked with system 7.6 and opentransport, which you can get here: http://main.system7today.com/updates.html -- the rest of that guide is really focused on making plain AppleTalk/LocalTalk work for systems without Ethernet and TCP/IP.

7.6.1 will run well on an SE/30 with enough memory, I'm using it on a 180 with 14 megs of RAM, for example.

It's just the easiest way.

Another thing to consider is the Floppy Emu. You can store disk images on an SD card. I haven't specifically heard, but there's no reason that HFV Explorer wouldn't be able to dump items on the floppy disk images.

There's so many easier ways to do this stuff than having like five transition Macs. You pretty much never need more than one hop unless you're going all the way back to a 512ke/512k/128k. Even a Plus will be able to get on a Netatalk server.

Also, iPrint is just one example of a LocalTalk bridge. LEM has a few more examples on their site: http://lowendmac.com/network/bridge.shtml
 
Transfer via Windows must always be done carefully, not to destroy the resource fork of old Macintosh files!
(compressed only)
 
MikeatOSX said:
Transfer via Windows must always be done carefully, not to destroy the resource fork of old Macintosh files!
(compressed only)
Click to expand...

That's a pretty complicated topic. Or it was fifteen years ago, at least. I've found at this point working with data for both classic Macs and Apple IIGS systems on my Windows systems, if you use NTFS on the PC side, or as havokalien says, it's a compressed file format, then you should have no trouble.

In particular,if you're using something like Windows NT4, 2000, or 2003 Server with Services for Macintosh, Windows will respect the resource forks.

Fat32 used to be pretty problematic, but I do happen to use a FAT32 formatted Compact Flash card with my PowerBook 1400 and I haven't had any problems with resource forks moving data between my Windows 10 computer and my Mac.

If you have an intermediary running Mac OS 8 or newer, you can format such a media as HFS+ and use it on both your vintage Mac and your modern Mac, but using Windows NT4/2000/2003 Server with SFM or Linux + Netatalk avoids that, as those systems are designed specifically with handling resource forks in mind. This is one of the reasons I specifically favor the use of a file server above bothering with physical media, especially since I have a moderately large number of 68k and early PowerPC Macs, a IIgs, and some NeXT stuff I eventually hope to integrate.
 
MagicBoy said:
I wasn't aware USB floppy support had been stripped out. Another reason for keeping a Leopard install on my Mac mini.
Click to expand...
(Off Topic) It's good fun to have old stuff at hand with virtualization or emulators to resurrect old hardware:
10.11/VMware Fusion with (Snow)Leopard-Server: PageSender-GroupFax with the Apple-USB-Modem
10.5 PPC/VirtualPC7 with Win2K: old scanner, etc
Unfortunately there's not support for Tiger-Server with Fusion. Would be great to run Tiger/Classic within El Capitan.
 
bobesch said:
(Off Topic) It's good fun to have old stuff at hand with virtualization or emulators to resurrect old hardware:
10.11/VMware Fusion with (Snow)Leopard-Server: PageSender-GroupFax with the Apple-USB-Modem
10.5 PPC/VirtualPC7 with Win2K: old scanner, etc
Unfortunately there's not support for Tiger-Server with Fusion. Would be great to run Tiger/Classic within El Capitan.
Click to expand...

Im Just going to leave this here :) (Tiger server also runs)
upload_2016-3-1_11-45-35.png
 
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. So far I haven't had any luck transferring files from the mba to the se/30.
I bought a $10 usb floppy and connected it to my friends g3 imac. I formatted a disk as HFS on that imac to see if the se/30 would recognize the disk which it would not.
I think the next thing I'm going to do is try to get an old powerbook g3 with built in floppy and attempt to transfer files from that.
 
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