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Multi-system Boot on Beige G3?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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I'm trying to consolidate some of my systems. I've got an AIO Beige G3 that looks to be the perfect candidate for mult-system boot. The original 20GB IDE drive is starting to show its age and making funny noises. So, I'm going to replace it with a 120GB SSD.
Now, here's the tricky part and I need to lean on those who have done this before. I want to multi-boot MacOS 7.5.5, MacOS 9.2 and then OSX 10.4 (using Xpostfacto). I've done the OSX thing before, so I know that it will work off of 9.2.
Before I start tearing my hair out, what do I need to use and do to get it all working?
 
System 7.5.5 won't run on a beige G3. Lowest system that is compatible with that machine is MacOS 8.0. What do you need System 7.5.5 for? Most everything that will run on a PowerPC Mac will run under 9.2.2. 7.5.5 was much more significant on 68k machines as it was the last version that supported 24-bit addressing mode.
 
So, I've got two choices, it seems to me. I can grab a Power Macintosh 7300 and get something that doesn't disintegrate when I look at it--or I can write a Linux MFS extraction utility that works with images. Any other suggestions? I don't know much longer that 6100/60 of mine will hold together.

I'm open to other suggestions.
 
You could also just make a tabletop board and mount the guts of the 6100 onto that. Or buy an open frame EATX case and mod it.
 
On the other hand, the G3 with the SuperDrive can image both 800 and 400K MFS floppies just fine. I've got MFSlives and will probably just port it to Linux. MFS isn't particularly difficult; just a little quirky; but then it's Apple we're talking about.

I know that some use the sampling gear (e.g. Kyroflux or Greaseweazle) to read the old Mac floppies, but the SuperDrive really does the best job.

I've got some thinking to do...
 
Its weird, Disk Copy can image and even write MFS disks no problem even though the OS itself can't mount them. Later versions of classic MacOS also kneecapped ProDOS disk support in an odd way. You have to disable personal file sharing to mount those disks! In my case, I just reacquired a 68k Mac to test and tinker with a few things I can't do on PPC machines (I also have a 6100 and a Beige G3). The LC series and the Quadra 605 (which I just got) are perfect for limited space situations. They all natively run System 7.1. The original LC and LC II can even run System 6.0.8L.
 
I'll keep that in mind. I'd like to have a solid backup. I hate to ship the things if I buy through eBay. Apple plastic is a terrible thing. My own systems were bought years ago at the local e-recycler. In the meantime, it looks like I can bend MFSLives to handle images on Linux. A lot of my floppy image handling starts with sucking the whole image into memory. A meg or two of memory space is nothing on a mutli-gig system.
 
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