Macintosh SE 1MB (1986)

Twiggy

Had this in the closet, then on the floor until yesterday, now it is finally setup on a tall table I built to go over top of my gaint flat screen CRT TV from 2004.

It's a Macintosh SE 1MB from 1986, has a 24mb hard disk, and an 800k floppy drive.




It works perfectly, seems like it was used in a school due to the programs and files on it, there's even a grading program that was used.

It's running system 7 on it right now, and it runs not bad.

I do however want to format the hard-drive and install a period appropriate version of Mac OS.. from that year.

However, I don't know how to do this on old macs, so I will have to learn how to do that.

calvinb

They're pretty simple machines to use. The 800K drive will make it a bit of a PITA, because you can't use a PC drive to spit out Mac floppies, you need another Mac capable of spitting out 400/800K disks. The capacitors on these machines aren't usually the type to catastrophically fail, so you're good there.

I recommend for a Mac community, 68kMLA. It's a good place.

Twiggy

ampharos wrote:

They're pretty simple machines to use. The 800K drive will make it a bit of a PITA, because you can't use a PC drive to spit out Mac floppies, you need another Mac capable of spitting out 400/800K disks. The capacitors on these machines aren't usually the type to catastrophically fail, so you're good there.

I recommend for a Mac community, 68kMLA. It's a good place.

Can't I just use win image, and sell tell it to format the floppies to 800k?

SomeGuy

popeyewinter wrote:

Can't I just use win image, and sell tell it to format the floppies to 800k?

Hell no. The Apple low density 3.5" 400k/800k low-level formats are completely and totally unlike anything used by any non-Apple computer. The low-level formats use CGR encoding and sector organization similar to the Apple II 5.25" disks, whereas IBM PCs use MFM low-level encoding. But on top of all of that, the Apple low density 3.5" format uses variable bitrates. The drive motor actually spins at different speeds depending on which tack it is on, in a half-assed effort to squeeze a few more bytes out of each disk.

And of course, the Mac can't read IBM PC 720k low density disks.

Traditionally, Macintosh users would download images files directly on to a network connected "tweener" Macintosh with a "SuperDrive" that can write 400k/800k and 1.44mb disks. But such Macs are now getting hard to find, and are increasingly difficult to get connected to the "modern" internet.

Some of the later model SEs actually came with 1.44mb SuperDrives. If you had one of those, you could indeed simply write a 1.44mb Macintosh disk from a PC using Winimage. The SuperDrives adopted the same low-level format as the IBM PC, but only have different file systems.

The only way that I know of to write 400k/800k floppy disks with "modern" systems is to use a Kryoflux. And even that is kind of tricky: https://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?t=1090

Twiggy

Ah I see,

But as my packard bell has a 3.5 inch 1.44mb not just a 5.25 1.2mb drive, I should have no problem making floppies for it?

SomeGuy

Not unless your Mac SE happens to have a 1.44mb SuperDrive, which I rather doubt. But go ahead and try a 1.44mb and see what happens.

Twiggy

sorry I was talking about the packard bell I just bought off of ebay, I should have no problems making disks for it off any late 90's PC?

calvinb

No, you shouldn't have trouble making floppies for other PCs. Macs without a 1.44 MB drive are the problem.