I just bought a Macintosh SE superdrive, I have a few questions.

Hello again everyone, The only other time I posted here was when I was looking for help with my Tano Dragon, so I am still new here. I was able to acquire a Macintosh SE superdrive from a local thrift store for $9.99 and as far as I can tell it is in immaculate condition. It currently runs Mac OS 3.3.2 and has a single 3.5 floppy drive and I believe a 20 MB HDD. This was one of the very same models our computer lab at my elementary school had in the very early 90's so I am a little nostalgic about the whole thing. I do have a few questions though. When I stick a blank diskette into the floppy drive i receive the message, "the disk is unreadable do you want to initialize?" and I select yes, then I hit the format button and the process starts. About 2 minutes into the process, I get the error, "initialization failed", and the computer spits out the disk. What is wrong? Is it because I am using standard 1.44 MB IBM formatted diskettes? My next question is, I read that I could download for free Mac OS 7 and install it onto the computer, I cannot seem to find a link to it though. Anybody know a good site for the OSes and possibly games or software to make it useful? My last question is If I am using an floppy formatted to PC then when I do download programs to the diskettes would I not be able to install them onto the mac because of the format type?

I have you beat. as luck would have it I picked up an immaculate Macintosh SE FDHD for $7 last month at a flea market. As for your questions. I have no idea. any 1.44mb floppy should be able to be formatted and "initialized" as far as I know but I'm not much of a Mac guy so I'm sure someone here can tell you better.

I think system 7 used to be available for DL at apples site but the links apparently no longer function. what I hate is whenever you ask any question about any older apple OS in a search engine all you get back is links to crap about OS X, or maybe I suck at searching.

Maybe you do http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-71 Good luck, Took less than a minute to find.

Thanks for the link. I guess like oblivion, I am no good at searching. Anyway, I still do not know whether or not I can use a PC to download onto the diskette then stick it in the mac without any formatting issues. Anyone know if this is going to be an issue?

hmm, apparently I do suck at googleing. but you motivated me and I did find system 7.5.3 finally which I need to upgrade my se/30. so....thanks for the motivation?

I think what governs if a mac can read a 1.44mb disk that was written on a PC has more to do with the OS. but I don't really know, or don't remember. what I did was burn all the mac files I wanted onto a CD on my PC then I used that CD in a mac 7600 running OS 8.6 and then from there transferred them to mac formatted floppies but that was kinda a long convoluted process...so id actually like to know the answer to those same questions

I think what governs if a mac can read a 1.44mb disk that was written on a PC has more to do with the OS.

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That's true for PC formatted disks. I forget when the 'PC exchange' feature was added to the OS, but it was sometime in the System 7 era. Prior to that, you needed a utility/extension to read a PC floppy disk.

But if you're making Mac formatted HD disks from a PC, any Mac with a Superdrive should have no trouble with them as long as you start with an IMG file (i.e., raw disk image) and write it with a floppy image tool like Rawrite or Winimage. The only tricky bit is that most downloadable disk images are in .sit archives, so you'll have to find a way to get them out of the archives on your PC. There is a PC version of Stuffit, which really really really sucks, but it'll do the job.

Note that the above only applies to HD disks. The old 400/800K disks can't be written from a PC, at least not without a Kryoflux or something of the sort.

As for the OS to use on OP's new toy, I recommend System 6.0.8. It kinda falls into the sweet spot on 68000 machines... it has (or can be extended with) a lot more modern-ish features than the earlier OS versions, but it's still lightweight enough that it will get along OK with a 20MB hard drive and 1MB RAM.

Macs are stupid picky about floppies. If it finds even the most questionable of sectors on a floppy while initializing it rejects the disk. If you have the ability I recommend you open the machine and clean the heads on the floppy drive, then try another floppy disk and see if it works. Also, slide open the metal door on the floppy you inserted and see if you have a line scraped in the disk surface. Several times I've found macs with either wrecked or extremely dirty drives that would eat any floppy you gave it.

The other thing to do is to pick up a bulk eraser from Radio Shack. Forget the part number, but it was mentioned on one of the Mac or Apple II FB groups. It's the one for audio tapes, not video tapes. Completely wipes the disk clean. If your SE still doesn't initialize the disk, then the disk is truly dead.

-J

Like NEXT said, Macs are bitchy about questionable media, only the best condition disks will format out right. Though I have found that SOMETIMES if you attempt to format them SEVERAL times in a row (I give up at about 4 or 5), they MIGHT eventually work.

I have OS 7.0.1 available in self extracting WinImage format ready for a PC to write out on my website. These images can be written with a Windows PC and 1.44 floppy drive (internal or USB, both have been tested to work).

Well, I have a new problem. It seems after turning the computer on and going through the old files that were saved on there and then shutting down, I now get that gray screen with the question mark floppy. I hope this is not a sign of a hard drive problem. I am going to open it up and inspect everything and clean the dust out of the floppy drive. If my OS is now messed up, for what ever reason, how am I supposed to format the floppy drive for a mac? I am not too sure about the whole process of what I need to do. Can someone do like a step by step, simple, dummy style explanation please? My mind seems to only work off of to do lists and I don't want to risk messing up the disks I have because I am broke for a while and cannot get more.

Laestrygon said:

Well, I have a new problem. It seems after turning the computer on and going through the old files that were saved on there and then shutting down, I now get that gray screen with the question mark floppy. I hope this is not a sign of a hard drive problem. I am going to open it up and inspect everything and clean the dust out of the floppy drive. If my OS is now messed up, for what ever reason, how am I supposed to format the floppy drive for a mac? I am not too sure about the whole process of what I need to do. Can someone do like a step by step, simple, dummy style explanation please? My mind seems to only work off of to do lists and I don't want to risk messing up the disks I have because I am broke for a while and cannot get more.

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Could be failed HD, or just messed up OS, have you been messing with system files at all?

As to loading MacOS, see my quote, the winimage OS 7.0.1 disk images I have should get your Mac booting and reinstall an OS, so long as your HD is still good...

RWallmow said:

I have OS 7.0.1 available in self extracting WinImage format ready for a PC to write out on my website. These images can be written with a Windows PC and 1.44 floppy drive (internal or USB, both have been tested to work).

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FYI, the image writing process formats the disk as Mac, there is no need to pre-format the disks before writing the image.

Old Thrashbarg said:

Note that the above only applies to HD disks. The old 400/800K disks can't be written from a PC, at least not without a Kryoflux or something of the sort.

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Note that Kryoflux does not write 400/800k GCR.

The way I get software onto older 800k macs is that I put the software that I usually get from MacGui. (Brilliant resource for older mac software!) onto a USB drive, then onto a PowerMac G4 Digital Audio with a SCSI card, then from there onto an external SCSI drive. The SCSI drive is an Apple 40SC case from 1988 retrofitted with a 2GB Quantum fireball. (Don't worry, the original 40MB was long dead!) Then I hook that drive up to my LC II, and transfer it onto 1.44Meg floppies formatted as 800k with tape on the corner. Of course, the software in question has to actually fit on the 800k.

Mac said:

1.44Meg floppies formatted as 800k with tape on the corner

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Don't trust data to disks like that, I've done it in a pinch, but data wont last.

Its not that hard to find DSDD 3.5" media, even NOS, for not tons of money, if you want long term data storage (like backup copies to use down the road), use the right media.

RWallmow said:

Don't trust data to disks like that, I've done it in a pinch, but data wont last.

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I disagree. I worked for IBM in 1986 and 1987 on the launch of the PS/2 line and had access to "HD" floppies before they popular in the the field. I formatted and used many of them (no tape needed on the sensor hole because mac 800K drives at the time did not have the switch to check for a HD disk) as Mac 800K disks at the time. I can tell you they all are still working fine today, not just 1 or 2 but at least 100 or more.
Rick

Mac said:

Note that Kryoflux does not write 400/800k GCR

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On the other hand, if you've got a CopyIIPC Deluxe Option Board, there are utilities that were included with it for reading/writing/formatting 400K and 800K Mac floppies. In fact, that was a big selling point back in the day.

lisa2 said:

I disagree. I worked for IBM in 1986 and 1987 on the launch of the PS/2 line and had access to "HD" floppies before they popular in the the field. I formatted and used many of them (no tape needed on the sensor hole because mac 800K drives at the time did not have the switch to check for a HD disk) as Mac 800K disks at the time. I can tell you they all are still working fine today, not just 1 or 2 but at least 100 or more.
Rick

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If you bulk erased them (or they were not pre-formatted) you MIGHT be ok, most folks don't do that (myself included) and I have never had one last more than a week before its completely unreadable by the mac.

Anyway price difference for DSHD versus DSDD media isn't all that big, why not just buy the right media for the job? Its like using a hammer to pound in a screw, sure you can do it, but why do it when you can just get a screw driver, lol

Never had any major problems writing 800k format to 1.44 meg disks. Every disk that has had problems I've fixed with a hard disk magnet. Other than that, I have several disks that I've written four years ago when I got my first vintage Mac that still work perfectly. Certainly though it's a good idea to use the right media but that's not available here. Luckily I now have my external 2GB drive I store backups on. All my vintage data is on several different hard disks and diskettes.

lisa2 said:

I disagree. I worked for IBM in 1986 and 1987 on the launch of the PS/2 line and had access to "HD" floppies before they popular in the the field. I formatted and used many of them (no tape needed on the sensor hole because mac 800K drives at the time did not have the switch to check for a HD disk) as Mac 800K disks at the time. I can tell you they all are still working fine today, not just 1 or 2 but at least 100 or more.
Rick

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High density 3.5" disks do have a slightly higher coercivity than double density disks -- that is to say, they are designed to be written with a stronger magnetic field. (See the chart below.) Therefore if you format and write to a HD disk using the slightly weaker magnetic field strength of a double-density drive (or a HD drive in double-density mode), then there is no guarantee that the weaker DD format will remain readable over time.

If you're lucky, it will remain readable on all drives; or it might be readable on HD drives operating in DD mode but give you errors on true DD drives -- or vice versa; or it end up with errors on all drives due to the gradual self-erasure of the weaker DD format.

Coercivity of various floppy disk formats:

8" all formats: 300 oersteds

5.25" double density (360K): 300 oersteds
5.25" quad density (720K): 300 oersteds
5.25" high density (1.2MB): 600 oersteds

3.5" double density (720K): 665 oersteds
3.5" high density (1.44MB): 720 oersteds
3.5" extra-high density (2.88MB): 900 oersteds (unconfirmed)

Hello, I have not been able to update due to my schedule, but I have a Sabrent USB floppy drive on my win7 machine and I followed rwallmow's link and downloaded the OS7 files. When I try to burn them to my diskettes, it either says, the current image format cannot support this type of floppy , or after it formats it constantly tells me "disk error n 1181, on track 35 head 1. the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" and if I hit retry same thing, but if I hit ignore I get windows error 1117, the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. These are pretty new disks that have never been used before and there is no scratches on the actual disk portion. I have no Idea what the problem is except for bad floppy disks. Any advice will be helpful. I have ordered a new pack of floppy disks but until they get here I want to try with these.

Laestrygon said:

Hello, I have not been able to update due to my schedule, but I have a Sabrent USB floppy drive on my win7 machine and I followed rwallmow's link and downloaded the OS7 files. When I try to burn them to my diskettes, it either says, the current image format cannot support this type of floppy , or after it formats it constantly tells me "disk error n 1181, on track 35 head 1. the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" and if I hit retry same thing, but if I hit ignore I get windows error 1117, the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. These are pretty new disks that have never been used before and there is no scratches on the actual disk portion. I have no Idea what the problem is except for bad floppy disks. Any advice will be helpful. I have ordered a new pack of floppy disks but until they get here I want to try with these.

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If you are getting disk errors, my bet is bad media, I went through quite a few recycled disks before I found enough that worked well enough to take the image, it seems to me USB floppy drives tend to have weaker write than older internal drives, so they seem to be more picky about media.