Software for my 1984 Macintosk 512

[marcampion]

I have a 512k 1984 Macintosh. I am trying to burn some software off of here on to floppy disks so I can use it:
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_mac

But I am failing!

This is a macintosh 128k body that has been upgraded at some point in the late 1980s to a 512ke. The macintosh has an 800k drive installed internally as it has the 512ke upgrade.


I have a few 800k PC formatted floppys. When I format them on my Macintosh, it reads them but then my 2019 Imac won’t read them (I’m running High Sierra 10.13.6 I think, I am not in front of it right now).
I am using an external Memorex USB Floppy Drive External Floppy 1.44 MB Double Sided/720KB Single Side for Mac/PC.

Can anyone tell me what the proper workflow is to burn software on to floppys that I can use on my Macintosh?

 

[DFinnigan]

You won't be able to write disks for the Mac 512Ke with any PC or USB floppy drive. You need an older Macintosh with a floppy drive to make Mac 512Ke floppy disks.

The easiest solution for you is to have someone send you some disks in the mail.

The are many other longer, more complicated procedures, which will no doubt be suggested to you by others, but this is the simplest.

 

[Wayne Stewart]

The reason you're having trouble is that PC and USB floppy drives can only do and use 1.44mb and 720k formatting while your Mac 512ke can only do or use 400k or 800k disks.
I'd go with DFinnigans advice

 

[SomeGuy]

The early macintosh computers used an oddball low-density GCR variable bit rate format. Aside from the Lisa 2 and Apple II 3.5" drives, nothing else used this format.

What you need to know:
- IBM PC computers do not support reading or writing this format
- USB floppy drives do not support reading or writing this format
- Any later Macintosh with a built in floppy drive technically should be able to read or write this format, but later MacOS may not recognize them.

There are basically have two options:
1: Get a "tweener" Macintosh with a built in floppy that you can move files to.
2: Get a Kryoflux and a Teac floppy drive.

The Kryoflux is quite bit more complicated, and writing Mac floppy disks works, although it is not officially supported. This requires preparing an 800k floppy disk image file, then converting it to a Kryoflux stream file, and then writing that stream file to a floppy disk.

Since you say you are using a "modern" Mac, be aware that Apple broke part of their USB support in MacOS later than 10.11, and are giving the Kryoflux folks a big hearty "f--- you". Which means you have to run Windows 10 or Linux via Bootcamp or a VM instead in order to use a Kryoflux.

 

[marcampion]

Thanks for the answers everyone. That seems like so much work! For anyone struggling with this, I found this little emulator that I might check out
https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

I had originally discarded this option because I wanted the original floppy experience—part of notalgia and whatnot, but at $10 a disk, it might be better to just get it all on the emu...

Thanks again