- OLD READER FOR MAC MAC OS X
- OLD READER FOR MAC SOFTWARE
- OLD READER FOR MAC TRIAL
- OLD READER FOR MAC PC
Or perhaps a good translational format (such as RTF – I know, I rant about In an emulator, you may be able to “leapfrog” the document from an obsoleteįormat to a more modern one (something like MacWrite 2 -> MacWrite 5 -> Word).
OLD READER FOR MAC SOFTWARE
But if you can get an old version of the software running Many old programs can be found online, or you might be able to restore themįrom an old floppy. The other problem one might run into is file formats that are no longer supported (e.g. II/III I found are not compatible with my save game files. I found elsewhere was compatible with my save games, but the versions of Zork To use the save games I had on the floppies (for no real reason, I just like aĬhallenge sometime.) I was able to get Zork I to work, a version of Moonmist In the case of my games, the short version is that I wanted to try and be able Most classic abandonware games can be downloaded somewhere.
OLD READER FOR MAC MAC OS X
Zork II and Zork III, however, request that you insert the master copy (which I can’t do on a Mac OS X machine, of course.) Zork I, for example, limits your ability to copy the application from the disk, but imaging the entire disk worked. After telling it to allow a few sector errors, it was able to read the remaining disks (except for two) and convert them to DC 4.2 format After much digging around, I found reference to a program called DiskDup from “back in the day”.
I could access the files and folders on most of my disks.Ī few disks failed to copy. I then used Mini vMac (running either OS 7.5.5 or 6.0.8) to read the disk images. I copied the DC 4.2 image to my Mac OS X desktop. (I could theoretically get the G3 up on my LAN and find a way to share files, but that seemed like to much trouble at the moment.) I then put the images on a 1.4 MB floppy that could then be read on both the G3 and my modern desktop with a USB floppy drive I saved the images in the Disk Copy 4.2 format I used Apple’s Disk Copy program to image my floppy disks I would have been using a 520 model and a Mac clone at this time, so it wasn’t a computer I owned before.Īfter getting the machine to boot (more frustration), I found that the floppy drive did in fact work, and I was off.
OLD READER FOR MAC TRIAL
My ApproachĪfter some trial and error (eBay can be frustrating) I ended up with a working G3 “Wallstreet” Powerbook. So I figured all I really needed was a machine with an internal floppy drive, and some software that would allow me to image a disk, even if that computer couldn’t understand it. But I did read that a newer machine, despite not being able to read 400k MFS disks was able to write a disk image to one, and that disk could then be read on an older machine. Working machines with MacOS 7 would allow me to read MFS disks, but newer systems would not There are still powerbooks to be had on eBay that have internal floppy drives.
OLD READER FOR MAC PC
I realized that I could restore my old Mac Plus from the dead as a virtual machine, and run the old software from my childhood.Įxcept I didn’t have those disks in a readable format… I bought a USB floppy drive that reads PC disks and 1.4 MB disks fine, but would not read my old 400k/800k for the reasons described elsewhere. Mini vMac, QEMU, and of course, VirtualBox). Until I discovered the rabbit hole that is emulation (e.g. No big deal, the data wasn’t that important…. So there was no longer any way to read those disks. Then Mac computers stopped coming with internal floppy drives, and then I realized that I no longer had any working computers with floppy drives. A while back I tried to copy as many of my important documents to my hard drives. Many of them have disappeared over the years, but a few survived. I still have a few of my old floppy disks sitting around. HFS disks can still be read, but cannot be written after 10.5.8 MFS disks could no longer be read after OS 7 So I won’t go into the details, but the short version is:Ĥ00k floppy disks were formatted using the Macintosh File System ( MFS)Ĩ00k disks were formatted using Hierarchical File System ( HFS)ġ.4 MB disks were formatted with HFS+, and can be read on “any” 3.5 inch floppy drive, not just Apple drives. There are other sites that do a great job describing the technical aspects of the early Mac floppy drives ( here and here). … until you need to try and access read those disks years later. Anything that allowed one to put an extra document on the disk was great! Which was great back then because swapping floppy disks back and forth was terrible. And a floppy drive that managed to squeeze 400k onto a disk that normally holds 360k. My family’s first computer was the original 128k Mac.
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