Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

About BasiliskII, a 68k Mac emulator for Windows, MacOSX, and Linux that can run System 7.x through MacOS 8.1.

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gdsanso
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Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

Post by gdsanso »

As my very old LCII has finally just died I thought I'd give an emulator a try instead. Thank you to all those here who have contributed to the code base for Basilisk II !

Unfortunately, all my Windows machines use USB floppy disk drives (isn't progress a wonderful thing !) and when I try to boot the Mac window from a System 7 floppy after going through the GUI set up process (tried with the A drive - which should be the floppy drive - included in the mapping list and not and with the autodetect for new removable media on and off just in case) the emulator doesn't appear to find the USB floppy drive to boot from.

The underlying Windows machine (an AMD A8 dual core box running Windows 7 Home - 64bit) recognises the USB floppy drive and can access it, but obviously can't read the Mac disk, so it doesn't look like a hardware issue.

Is this just a configuration issue that I've failed to deal with, an issue that Basilisk II just can't handle (yet :lol: ) or something else I've completely failed to think of ? And does anyone have any idea of how to get round the problem ? (Even if I could get the System 7 installed by some other means I'd still want to install other floppy based Mac software I have via the USB floppy drive anyway so to anyone who was thinking of just sending me appropriate CD images thank you but I'd still need to sort this if possible).

I understand that there is the HFVExplorer tool which might help (I believe that all my Mac disks are HD so should be readable in that) but it wasn't clear how to do an installation via that into whatever the emulator is using as its primary disk drive (or do I need to set that up as well ?), particularly for the initial System - if HFVE is the right route I would be very grateful for guidance suitable for an idiot. :oops:

Any help gratefully received as RTFM didn't get me very far :shock: !

Regards,

Guy
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Cat_7
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Re: Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

Wow, where to begin when "Read The meticulously written Manual" isn't your thing.
The current version of Basilisk cannot read Mac floppies directly. You indeed need HFVExplorer for that. HFVExplorer can create floppy disk images in your hard disk which you can add to the volumes list in the BasiliskGUI. It can also add files from Mac floppies directly to larger hard disk image files from which you can boot MacOS in Basilisk.

I'm not sure whether HFVExplorer can read from USB floppy drives. But you can try.
You should have a copy of HFVExplorer if you downloaded the suggested Basilisk version. If not, download http://www.open.ou.nl/hsp/downloads/Bas ... 1_2010.zip . Take only HFVExplorer from this download and put it in your Basilisk folder. No further installation is needed.
Insert a Mac floppy and double-click HFVExplorer. At first run It might ask you to update something. You can answer yes to that question. Can you hear HFVExplorer trying to access the floppy drive? It should show a list of drives in the left-side pane. If your floppy disk name doesn't show up as the first entry in that list, you are out of luck.

But if it does, make an floppy image file from it:
1. In the menu choose File/Read Volume from floppy.
2. Select the appropriate drive letter.
3. Click the button with the small arrows
4. Select the location where you want to save the floppy disk image file. Your Basilisk folder would do.
5. Name the file. Use .HFV as extensions.
6. Click Save.
7. Close HFVExplorer.

Start the BasiliskGUI and on the volumes tab click add to navigate to your floppy disk image file. Select it and click OK. The floppy disk image file should show up on the volumes list.
Boot Basilisk. The floppy disk image file should show up as a Mac floppy disk on the desktop.

Best,
Cat_7
gdsanso
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Re: Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

Post by gdsanso »

Hartelijk bedankt !

I know I should be able to get what I need from help files and manuals but I always find such things very difficult to use (it is all about learning styles - http://xmostrata.com/wp-content/uploads ... styles.jpg - manuals work very well for Reflectors, Activists will just go ahead and play with a tool without caring about any documentation or what the result is anyway, Theorists need an explanation of how things work before getting started and Pragmatists just want to work through specific problems. As you might imagine, I'm very poor at Reflective learning and do much better in learning as a Theorist-Pragmatist). So I very much appreciate your help.

Everything appears to be up and running now though so thank you again.

Regards,

Guy
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Cat_7
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Re: Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

Post by Cat_7 »

Now you've done it! You hit upon a big no-no in our education community: Please let me reply to your "learning style" explanation (or is it an excuse? ;-) )

http://www.researched2013.co.uk/why-are ... ng-styles/
http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2009/06/01/ ... -nonsense/
http://www.skeptic.com/insight/the-myth ... ng-styles/
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/need-know- ... o-minutes/
And from our very own researchers:
http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/3 ... 20Best.pdf

Best,
Cat_7
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TheBalishChannel
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Re: Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

Post by TheBalishChannel »

Hello, I've been a lurker for a while if you were to consider all the times I've visited the forums just to get some information while troubleshooting. Lately though I've come across a problem similar to this one; I'm trying to rip the Macintosh version of Mario's Game Gallery (freeware) off of four floppy disks via a USB floppy disk drive and HFV Explorer on Windows 7. The installation files, along with the Read Me file are all visible when viewing the disks through HFV:

Image

but I cannot seem to extract them through the steps provided above. Originally, I was able to copy the files to my local C: drive by simply dragging and dropping them in HFV, which would in-turn spit out a .bin file, however it appears that I can't even do that any more. Now I'm greeted with this error:

Image

Trying to do it the way that you described above gives me a similar error. Is there anything I'm doing wrong? I apologize if I'm being too upfront about it but it's a shame to see that there is data on these disks that I just can't access.
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Cat_7
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Re: Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

I understand you tried both reading from the Mario floppies directly to you hard disk and by creating images of the floppy content to use in your emulator?
Can you still access other Mac floppies? If so, then perhaps your copies are getting corrupt.

If you are not particularly tied to your floppies, you can get the Mario-games from the macintoshgarden site.

Best,
Cat_7
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TheBalishChannel
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Re: Accessing Mac floppy disks via a USB drive

Post by TheBalishChannel »

Unfortunately I don't have any other Mac floppies to try out. I downloaded the one off of the macintoshgarden website but that one seems to be a rip of the CD version, which is a slightly later build of the game that touched up some of the graphics to be more on-model to the original designs:

Image

Is there any chance that it won't let me copy them due to some form of copy-protection?
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