Making an Autorun CD for MacOS 8.x

[bloodline]

pkillo wrote:
does this system have a floppy drive? it's a long shot, but assuming the model in question is wired to be able to boot from a floppy at all, you could likely mod an old netbsd install disk to boot, load the scsi driver, and start a tftp server. the server should be small enough that if you lose the actual installer there'd be room for it. i don't remember ever having to hold down any keys to boot from a floppy on any mac capable of doing so.

It does have a floppy drive... but I have no idea how to go about creating a NetBSD disk... or even how write to a floppy disk any more... let alone in Mac format...

if you have a linux/unix system, just issue the command "dd if= of=/dev/fd0" assuming your floppy drive is device fd0 (usually it is for the a drive), and you will have the image on the disk. the disks, as i recall, are not in the mac fs format; any bsd system (live boot from cd on a pc?) should be able to mount the disk after the write the image. here's a link to the floppy image:

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.4.3/macppc/installation/floppy/boot.fs.gz

that's the one from a very old version (circa 2000), I'm guessing it might have more room than a later revision. i would try to boot the unmodified disk first to see if it will load at all.

[bloodline]

pkillo wrote:
if you have a linux/unix system, just issue the command "dd if= of=/dev/fd0" assuming your floppy drive is device fd0 (usually it is for the a drive), and you will have the image on the disk.

Ok, I didn't make myself clear... I don't have any machines with Floppy drives :-)

 the disks, as i recall, are not in the mac fs format; any bsd system (live boot from cd on a pc?) should be able to mount the disk after the write the image.

Can the PowerMac boot disks in the 1.44MB PC-FDC format?

here's a link to the floppy image:

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.4.3/macppc/installation/floppy/boot.fs.gz

that's the one from a very old version (circa 2000), I'm guessing it might have more room than a later revision. i would try to boot the unmodified disk first to see if it will load at all.

In for a penny... many thanks for the link!

Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

[niklasni1]

motorollin wrote:
Bloody non-standard connectors... why not just use PS/2 and VGA ports?

Because they didn't exist when the Mac connectors were introduced?

bloodline wrote:
Buring boot the PowerMAc issues a few beeps that I'm not expecting... I suspect that the machine is halting on error... ie no keyboard....

Macs don't care that there's no keyboard. It's probably complaining that the computer was improperly shut down last time and is informing you that just pulling the plug might cause data loss and damage to the hardware..

bloodline wrote:
Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

Are you sure that your W-30 (great taste in keyboards, BTW) floppy drive is PC-compatible? To be honest I'd be surprised if it was.

The Mac will eject the floppy when the system shuts down... if it's shut down properly...

[bloodline]

niklasni1 wrote:

motorollin wrote:
Bloody non-standard connectors... why not just use PS/2 and VGA ports?

Because they didn't exist when the Mac connectors were introduced?

True, also the ADB is more like USB (a single serial bus for all low speed devices to plug onto) and thus better than PS/2... but I digress... without a keyboard/mouse or a monitor I am stuck...

bloodline wrote:
Buring boot the PowerMAc issues a few beeps that I'm not expecting... I suspect that the machine is halting on error... ie no keyboard....

Macs don't care that there's no keyboard. It's probably complaining that the computer was improperly shut down last time and is informing you that just pulling the plug might cause data loss and damage to the hardware..

When I press the powerbutton to power down, it spends a bit of time writing to disk before it powers off... so I assume it's following a shutdown procedure...

bloodline wrote:
Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

Are you sure that your W-30 (great taste in keyboards, BTW) floppy drive is PC-compatible?

Yeah :-) I've done it before... actually a quick look through my junk box, I;ve found an old Chinon FZ-357 so I can use that rather than pull my beloved 12bit sampling keyboard to bits :-)

I love the sound of the W-30...  for Moto: the main industrial sounding riff on Under Moonlight ;-)

To be honest I'd be surprised if it was.

:-)

[motorollin]

niklasni1 wrote:

motorollin wrote:
Bloody non-standard connectors... why not just use PS/2 and VGA ports?

Because they didn't exist when the Mac connectors were introduced?

Meh, I suppose I'll let them off then :roll: ;-)

motorollin wrote:
I love the sound of the W-30...  for Moto: the main industrial sounding riff on Under Moonlight ;-)

I *love* that sound! :-)

--
moto

[bloodline]

motorollin wrote:

niklasni1 wrote:

motorollin wrote:
Bloody non-standard connectors... why not just use PS/2 and VGA ports?

Because they didn't exist when the Mac connectors were introduced?

Meh, I suppose I'll let them off then :roll: ;-)

I'll let them off for the ADB... they had no excuse with not using a VGA port... :-)

motorollin wrote:
I love the sound of the W-30...  for Moto: the main industrial sounding riff on Under Moonlight ;-)

I *love* that sound! :-)

I wish I could remember the original sound source... suffice to say it had a slow birthing process :-) Only for it to be mostly covered up by the guitar in the final mix  :-x

[motorollin]

bloodline wrote:
I wish I could remember the original sound source... suffice to say it had a slow birthing process :-) Only for it to be mostly covered up by the guitar in the final mix  :-x

Well, you can hear it. I really like that song :-)

--
moto

Can the PowerMac boot disks in the 1.44MB PC-FDC format?

The hardware can read and write those disks. It definitely won't boot from a FAT fs disk, though. But it'll be completely happy with a disk made from an image using a PC.

In for a penny... many thanks for the link!

Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

np. There _should_ be a hole for a paperclip to be inserted, just like a CD-ROM drive. this is not to say that Apple having decided to cheap out on their floppies at some point in the 90s won't have eliminated this feature. I know at some point they switched to using cheap PC floppy drives, so YMMV.

[bloodline]

pkillo wrote:

Can the PowerMac boot disks in the 1.44MB PC-FDC format?

The hardware can read and write those disks. It definitely won't boot from a FAT fs disk, though. But it'll be completely happy with a disk made from an image using a PC.

In for a penny... many thanks for the link!

Ok... before I rip the Floppy drive from my W-30 and pop on to an old PC mobo I have lying around here... once the floppy disk is in Mac... how do I get it out again :-?

np. There _should_ be a hole for a paperclip to be inserted, just like a CD-ROM drive. this is not to say that Apple having decided to cheap out on their floppies at some point in the 90s won't have eliminated this feature. I know at some point they switched to using cheap PC floppy drives, so YMMV.

No go... It didn't seem to recognize I had a floppy disk in the drive...

[niklasni1]

Hm.

Are you sure everything's connected to the motherboard?

[bloodline]

niklasni1 wrote:
Hm.

Are you sure everything's connected to the motherboard?

Yup... it all look good in there!

[niklasni1]

And it doesn't even spit the floppy out when you start the computer? Just nothing at all?

[bloodline]

niklasni1 wrote:
And it doesn't even spit the floppy out when you start the computer? Just nothing at all?

Seems to ignore it...

[bloodline]

No wait , it does eject it if you boot with the disk in the drive!!!

bah. it sounds to me like the floppy drive in the mac isn't good anymore. I have tossed a few mac systems because of the drive going (without a cd-rom drive a floppy-less mac is kind of worthless). Does the drive make any sound at all after the disk clicks into place?

[edit] I just posted on top of you. If it's ejecting it that's a good sign, at least you know it works. Now all we have to do is figure out what needs to be on the floppy...

Hmm... this might help:
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Macintosh/Utilities/Network_Access_Disk_7.5.sea.bin

I don't know if it will work on your model, but that is the most recent boot floppy Apple has made freely available. You're going to need Mac tools to write the image to disk, so this:
http://www.emulators.com/docs/StpByStp.htm
and a copy of a Mac ROM should get you started.

[edit2] You might need this, too:
http://welovemacs.com/adb1button.html