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SheepSaver & USB Floppy Drive (macOS Sierra)

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 12:17 am
by Jona
Hello all!

I'm new to vintage Mac stuff and just purchased an awesome Mac Classic II on eBay. I have a current-gen iMac and loads of downloads from the many awesome software repositories/archives and I'm trying to get them to the Mac Classic II. Here's what I have going on so far:

- SheepShaver running of an OS 9.0 installer disk image (works well, I have access to a shared folder from Sierra and can copy over some applications).

- USB Floppy with a floppy formatted on the Mac Classic currently mounted on my Sierra desktop (I can read, but not write to it)

- Mac Classic II running 7.5.5 (which is weird, I thought it could only run 7.5.3 max?)

Is there any way to get the USB Floppy drive/disk to show up in SheepShaver? It's dev/disk3/ in Sierra. Any other ideas on how to get software to the Mac Classic without buying any hardware?

Thanks for your help!

Re: SheepSaver & USB Floppy Drive (macOS Sierra)

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 4:28 am
by adespoton
best bet is probably to create some 1.44MB images, mount them in SheepShaver, copy the software to them, and then in Sierra, write the images out to floppies in the USB drive via disk utility or dd from the command line.

You'd probably do better to use Basilisk II though, as it sometimes has the ability to access disk drives (SCSI only?) and it can run Mac OS 7.5.3 (Finder 7.5.5) so you can create your entire setup there, and then move it over.

Re: SheepSaver & USB Floppy Drive (macOS Sierra)

Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2016 2:51 pm
by 24bit
You may point the shared folder in the SS GUI to any place you wish, including your USB floppy.
Writing HFS floppies from user land was disabled with OSX 10.6. A virtual machine running Leopard does the trick, but its a rather long shot, probably.

Basilisk II Build 142 on an old Windows rig with W2k or better is the way to go for most people when moving files via HFS HD floppies.
Build 142 has full SCSI support, given you have a working SCSI HBA added in your PC.
Build 142 also writes to PC floppies internal or USB after adding the FDD in the BII GUI.

Weird to see Windows/Basilisk II feeding the old Macs with floppies still.
I saw a HP D530 going for EUR 2,51 on fleabay the other day. Was tempted to bid, but didn´t, as I do have a few PC oldies kicking around already.

Without buying anything, its possible to prepare your files for transfer in MiniVMac running in Sierra and write it to floppy with dd.
I posted a how to some time ago, but my picts are gone as sharebin.net isn´t online any more.
I could post the procedure at Macintoshgarden again, if need should be.

Re: SheepSaver & USB Floppy Drive (macOS Sierra)

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 4:59 pm
by Jona
I'd love to see that how to, thanks!

Re: SheepSaver & USB Floppy Drive (macOS Sierra)

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:58 pm
by 24bit
I´ll see whether the procedure is working with Sierra just the same.
Can´t see a reason why not, but some time has passed.

Rearranged things a bit due to permissions changing with Sierra and placed it here:
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/write-h ... a-or-lower