Classic mac fun (and some questions)

[Liam Proven]

2009/6/5 Brian Lanning <brianlanning at gmail.com>:
> So I got around to hooking some things up and seeing what works.  I
> have a quadra 700 with system 7.6 on it.  I also had a 7 bay scsi
> enclosure lying around, a couple scsi hard drives, and a slot loading
> dvd drive.
>
> My goal here is first to get the quadra on the network so I can share
> files with it.  Also, I'd like to be able to read CDs or DVDs from the
> quadra.  Once one of those is successful, I plan to use ADT to
> transfer a prodos or apple 3.3 dos disk image to an apple 2gs over a
> serial cable, then create a bootable floppy for my 2e.  :-P   lol.
> It's looking like a fun project.
>
> I should note that I have zero floppy disks for the mac or apple
> 2e/2gs.  So this is sort of a fun boot-strapping project to see if I
> can get there from here.
>
> Much to my surprise, the quadra 700 detected the two scsi hard drives
> and dvd drive.  The quadra already had some scsi utilities and each of
> the drives show up.  One of them has a mount button, but it refuses to
> mount a CD in the DVD drive.  No surprise there I guess.  Any idea how
> I can get the machine to mount a CD or DVD?  I might have a
> termination problem.  I have this black centronics thingy with the
> apple logo on it.  It sort of looks like a terminator, but you can
> plug another centronics cable into the back of it, so I'm doubting
> it's a terminator.
>
> Networking doesn't seem to work.  I get a light on the hub, but it
> doesn't seem interested in letting me get to the network.  The machine
> has Timbuktu installed, but the open menu option is ghosted out.  The
> info menu option works, but nothing is listed on the networking tab.
> I found this link:  http://www.atpm.com/network/files/file_sharing.htm
>  The menu options they talk about are missing.  I have some
> applescript menu options somewhere else that talk about turning on
> file sharing, but they don't work either.  I'm thinking I might need
> to reinstall the system software at some point.  Any tips on how I can
> get this machine on the network?
>
> I suspect the floppy drive is bad.  I put a new HD floppy in the
> drive.  It detects it as a 1.4meg floppy disk, but formatting doesn't
> work.  It claims the disk is bad.  I have another drive in the IIfx
> that I might try swapping in to see if I can get the floppy drive
> working.  I copied a dos file to the floppy as a test to see if I
> could get the mac to read it.  No luck.  It wants to format the disk.
> Any ideas on how I can be able to share floppies between the PC and
> mac?  I know the mac drives are a little odd.
>
> fun stuff.

Quadra 700 - so it's a 25MHz 68040. How much RAM has it got?

http://lowendmac.com/quadra/quadra-700.html

I'd strongly suggest, as others have observed, wiping it & installing
MacOS 8.1. It's got much better TCP/IP handling and also better
handling of alien disk formats. You might even have a chance of
recognising and handling a DVD, though I wouldn't put money on it.

A bit more info as to why:
http://lowendmac.com/sable/06/0911.html

8.1 boot CDs are rare. It's easier to get a copy of 8.0 and download
and install the free 8.1 update, which Apple still offers.

If you're really stuck, I might be able to find a spare CD of 8.0
somewhere for you.

It'll still require 3rd party tools to talk to a Windows network,
though. If you have NT Server, though, it has a Mac file-sharing mode,
even back in NT3. That will work fine.

To access a non-Apple optical drive, you either need a 3rd party
driver or a hacked version of the Apple driver.There's a guide here:
http://www.kan.org/6100/cd.html
& a little more here:
http://macfaq.org/hardware/media.shtml

For 3rd party hard disks, you also need a 3rd party tool, although
it's not a driver as such - it's just a partitioner/formatter.
(Technically, it embeds the driver into the partition structure of the
drive, so the MacOS automatically loads it the 1st time that it sees
the drive. This is transparent - you can even boot off such a drive.)
I use SilverLining but there's also a LaCie tool and various others -
most vendors of 3rd party SCSI hard disks offered them.

In my experience, reading non-Mac CDs on Classic MacOS is very iffy,
especially if they're home-burned ones. I've never found an adequate
way around this. It's /supposed/ to work but often won't.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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