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Macintosh Plus Disk Question
Posted by: Ecto Aircooler on 2017-12-03 22:48:15 So awhile ago I picked up a dead Macintosh Plus that ended up being alive after a cleaning and actually plugging in the CRT and other cables. After a full cleaning and such I got to the point where I wanted to run an OS on it. I am running into the problem of knowing if the drive is good or not now. In the video I put in a disk with a blessed system folder and finder from my SE as its the only bootable mac I have at the moment, and it shows a happy mac face before trying to eject it (I let it cycle a few times with its broken eject motor verring, as it made a weird noise at first off camera on my first try with that disk) After that I load a junk ibm formatted 720k disk and the mac does not even try to read it and right away shows a X disk error and trys to eject it After that I place in a disk from a make a boot disk on an external drive or HD set and it does the same happy mac face and then ejects. After recording this I make the pink 720k disk into a Macintosh format 800k disk and it did not show the happy mac as the grey formatted one with the blessed files on it Im not sure at this point if the drive is busted as it can detect disks that SHOULD boot and ignore non bootable ones, just it fails to boot still. The grey disk is a copy of the OS on the SE so it might be too high for it to use? im not sure how these older compact macs work as I was brought into macs with the Imac's. Would love some insight into this puzzle
Posted by: bibilit on 2017-12-04 00:25:16 probably not suitable SSW.. Or your dirve is dirty.
Posted by: chu-oh on 2017-12-04 01:26:39 Can the SE boot from the disk you've made?
Posted by: Ecto Aircooler on 2017-12-04 08:00:04 I cleaned the Macintosh plus's drive and greased it all up I haven't with the SE it was actually for a mac so I just cracked it open to remove the battery and see if it boots and reconnect everything... As for the SE when I leave the newly made disk inside of it, it boots with the floppy drive above the HD icon, so is that booted from disk?
Posted by: bibilit on 2017-12-04 08:28:20 As for the SE when I leave the newly made disk inside of it, it boots with the floppy drive above the HD icon, so is that booted from disk? Yes, bootable. What kind of SE have you got ? If you have the 800 k drive, just swap both drives for a test
Posted by: nvdeynde on 2017-12-04 09:15:53 It's maybe a bit unconventional but even a Superdrive will work in a Mac Plus but only with 800K disks. Give it a go. An 800K system disk that boots in an SE up to OS 7 .5.5 will boot in the Plus as well if it has enough Ram. Anyway the FDD looks rough, dirty head if it's not cleaned or the head can be out of adjustment as well. It can be the capacitors as well, there are several one's in the FDD, small radial one's but yes they leak or are dried out and can also cause this behavior. Given the eject gears are probably broken too, unless you have spare parts to fix the drive, it's probably best to look for a working one. It can also be as simple as a bad system disk or damaged floppy since it boots partially.
Posted by: Ecto Aircooler on 2017-12-04 09:19:38 Yes, bootable. What kind of SE have you got ? If you have the 800 k drive, just swap both drives for a test Its just a platinum SE not the 30 though it has all banks of ram filled, I probably should try to swap the drives, just I was asking first to see if this is like a common problem if the system is like not able to run on the plus, before ripping out things It's maybe a bit unconventional but even a Superdrive will work in a Mac Plus but only with 800K disks. Give it a go. An 800K system disk that boots in an SE up to OS 7 .5.5 will boot in the Plus as well if it has enough Ram. Anyway the FDD looks rough, dirty head if it's not cleaned or the head can be out of adjustment as well. It can be the capacitors as well, there are several one's in the FDD, small radial one's but yes they leak or are dried out and can also cause this behavior. Given the eject gears are probably broken too, unless you have spare parts to fix the drive, it's probably best to look for a working one. It can also be as simple as a bad system disk or damaged floppy since it boots partially. Well im half assuming its the disks not being right for it, thats why it sees them then just stops. IM just not 100% sure on how these portables act up when they act up
Posted by: nvdeynde on 2017-12-04 10:16:15 Its just a platinum SE not the 30 though it has all banks of ram filled, I probably should try to swap the drives, just I was asking first to see if this is like a common problem if the system is like not able to run on the plus, before ripping out things Well im half assuming its the disks not being right for it, thats why it sees them then just stops. IM just not 100% sure on how these portables act up when they act up If it's an 800K floppy disk and it's booting on your SE then it should work in the Mac Plus as well. Just don't use High Density disks in 800K drives, most Macs don't handle them well, especially the older one's like the 128K/512K/Plus.
Posted by: Ecto Aircooler on 2017-12-04 11:37:39 Yeah im not using 1.44mb disks just the of age double sided 720k disks
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