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| Giant box of BMUG (and a few Educomp) floppies! | |
| So while visiting family over the holidays, I managed to rescue a box full of floppies from a giant box of soon-to-be-thrown-out stuff in my mom's basement. Here's what we've got: BMUG Business 1.2 BMUG Business 2 BMUG Business 3.1 BMUG Business 6 BMUG Desk Accessories 1 BMUG Education 3 BMUG Education 5 BMUG FKeys 1 BMUG Font 1 BMUG Font 2 BMUG Font 12 BMUG Games 3 BMUG Games 14 BMUG Games 17 BMUG Games 18 BMUG Games 25 BMUG Games 27 BMUG Graphics 3 BMUG Graphics 7 BMUG Hyper Games 6 BMUG Hyper Graphics 1 BMUG Hyper Sound 2 BMUG Hyper Sound 6 BMUG Hyper Utility 13 BMUG Hyper Utility 17 BMUG Paris 8 BMUG Paris 10 BMUG Paris 11 BMUG Pictures 6 BMUG Pictures 7 BMUG Pictures 13 BMUG Pictures 14 BMUG Pictures 15 BMUG Programming 3 BMUG Sound 8 BMUG Sound 10 Diskworld Sampler 1 Diskworld Sampler 2 EDUCOMP D.A. Pak 2 EDUCOMP D.A. Pak 3 EDUCOMP D.A. Pak 4 MacUser MiniFinders On Disk In addition there are three unlabeled floppies which, once imaged, all contain a "Copyright©1988 EDUCOMP" directory at the root level, so they're probably backups of some original EDUCOMP disks that were made back in the day. Unfortunately, the disk names on all three are either blank or, in one case, "ggg", so I have no idea what actual catalog numbers these disks correspond to (they do appear to all contain games though). I've imaged all the disks to .flux format with a Greaseweazle, and while I haven't looked at the contents of all of these yet, the great majority of them imaged all-green in FluxEngine.app (although some took more than one attempt), and all of the ones I've tried converting to regular disk images have seemed to mount great in Mini vMac. A few questions for the group: 1. Are any of these disks still uncatalogued / desired by the community? 2. Does Internet Archive or Macintosh Garden care about the full information in the .flux format for archival purposes, or would it be preferable just to convert them to a DC42 image or something for the purposes of uploading? 3. Do any of the EDUCOMP/EDUCORP catalogs that I've seen reference to list the file contents of the disks in a way that could help identify the three mystery disks I've got? Does anyone have access to said catalogs?  Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-08 15:36:44 | |
| 1. Are any of these disks still uncatalogued / desired by the community? - I believe a number of them are! 2. Does Internet Archive or Macintosh Garden care about the full information in the .flux format for archival purposes, or would it be preferable just to convert them to a DC42 image or something for the purposes of uploading? - MooF format would be really useful; that would capture the majority of the .flux info, be bootable in MAME and other fine emulators, and still be convertable to DC42 for those who can't use the source files. Do the EDUCOMP disks have that pesky hardware-based copy protection? I vaguely remember them doing something like that. 3. Do any of the EDUCOMP/EDUCORP catalogs that I've seen reference to list the file contents of the disks in a way that could help identify the three mystery disks I've got? Does anyone have access to said catalogs? - I don't have any info here, but you could run a disk indexer over some DC42 copies to get a catalog of the contents... from that we may be able to look up what these were originally a part of. Posted by: adespoton on 2025-12-09 16:52:06 | |
| Posted by: luRaichu on 2025-12-09 16:55:19 | |
| None of them seem to be HyperCard, so I don't think it's any of those. I could convert these to HFS+ or something so I could do a proper file list in the Terminal, but since that's a pain in the ass, I'm just going to do screenshots of as much as will fit in my Mini vMac window. Mystery Educomp Disk #1:  Mystery Educomp Disk 2:  Mystery Educomp Disk 3:  Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-09 17:33:39 | |
| If you were on Linux you could mount the plain old HFS disk images natively and list the files. In my opinion I would publish the magnetic flux copies of the diskettes along with Disk Copy images so everyone has everything they would ever need Posted by: luRaichu on 2025-12-09 17:40:37 | |
2. Does Internet Archive or Macintosh Garden care about the full information in the .flux format for archival purposes, or would it be preferable just to convert them to a DC42 image or something for the purposes of uploading?Are there any tools out there that can convert .flux (or a2r, scp, kryoflux, etc.) to MooF? FluxEngine doesn't seem to be capable of it, although it can convert to a few other flux formats. I don't think the EDUCOMP disks have any copy protection on them, although I suppose I would need to try copying one on an old Mac (which I don't have handy) to find out for sure. It doesn't seem that it would make sense for them to do so, at least, since the contents are all freeware/shareware/public domain stuff. Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-09 17:41:05 | |
If you were on Linux you could mount the plain old HFS disk images natively and list the files.Yeah, I could also do that on macOS if I were to install FUSE, but I'm feeling lazy tonight ;-) Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-09 17:42:39 | |
| I had no problems imaging my EDUCOMP diskettes with Disk Copy. Posted by: luRaichu on 2025-12-09 17:43:52 | |
None of them seem to be HyperCard, so I don't think it's any of those.I'm no expert at words n stuff, but this seems like 3 matching disks with A-F, G-R, and S-Z, and they can spell about as well as me so a few ones that are on the wrong disk. To list disks without FUSE you can install hfsutils from homebrew, run hmount <img file> from the terminal, then hls.Posted by: eharmon on 2025-12-09 18:13:10 | |
I'm no expert at words n stuff, but this seems like 3 matching disks with A-F, G-R, and S-Z, and they can spell about as well as me so a few ones that are on the wrong disk.The A-F disk has a bunch of higher letters near the bottom that you can't see in the screenshots, though. And of course BMX and HumpBack don't fit the scheme either. Perhaps they had to shuffle a few things around to get everything to fit cleanly on three floppies, who knows. To list disks without FUSE you can install hfsutils from homebrew, runOkay, here goes: Mystery EDUCOMP Disk 1 (yes, I now realize that this should be 2 alphabetically, but this is the order I ripped these unlabeled disks in, so that's the order 😛) $ hls -l 'Copyright?1988 EDUCOMP' f APPL/NEIL 49994 0 Sep 8 1986 Googly Scroogie f APPL/GunS 46466 0 Jan 2 1904 GunShy 1.0 f APPL/HEAD 22202 0 Sep 1 1986 HeadBounce f APPL/*x>F 41364 0 Feb 19 1987 Hearts 1.6 d 2 items Aug 14 1988 HexPuzzle Backpack d 2 items Aug 14 1988 High Roller f APPL/DAVY 23552 0 Oct 3 1984 IAGO f APPL/ 14098 0 Feb 5 1986 IconBounce f APPL/IGGY 39399 0 Jul 21 1987 Iggy Iggopolis 1.2 f APPL/???? 2304 0 Apr 27 1986 Inverse f APPL/JUGG 18599 26764 Feb 9 1986 Juggler f APPL/MMCC 33146 0 Dec 11 1985 Killer Kalah f APPL/TANK 53422 0 Mar 14 1945 Lets Get Tanked! f APPL/GANl 8406 0 Apr 18 1985 Lines f APPL/MIKE 3034 0 Apr 16 1986 Living Art f APPL/BMBR 3795 0 Aug 5 1985 LodeRunner f APPL/TVLO 39857 0 Jan 2 1904 Lotto 6/49 f APPL/LOON 7657 0 Jan 2 1904 Lunar Lander f APPL/BUGS 18519 0 Jun 10 1988 Mac Bugs! f APPL/RICO 11264 0 Mar 1 1985 MacAttack f APPL/mhDR 4709 0 Feb 28 1987 MacHuh d 3 items Aug 14 1988 MacLanding! f APPL/LufF 31726 0 Dec 10 1985 MacLuff d 4 items Aug 14 1988 MacMatch ? f APPL/62rX 10895 0 Dec 10 1987 MacYahtzee f APPL/MAST 14430 0 Sep 30 1985 MasterGuess f APPL/RJUN 9216 0 Nov 25 1984 Missile f APPL/CCLD 23368 0 May 3 1966 MrCycloid Mystery EDUCOMP Disk 2: $ hls -l 'Copyright?1988 EDUCOMP' f APPL/BmX 65198 0 Jun 7 1988 BMX-THE Racing Game f APPL/KMRU 28367 0 Jul 31 1987 HumpBack d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Solitaire d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Solitaire! f APPL/???? 46006 0 Sep 16 1986 Space Artillery f APPL/SPAT 44160 0 Sep 1 1986 Space Attack f APPL/INVA 18110 6508 May 23 1986 Space Invaders d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Tablut Game f APPL/CAJN 23837 0 Jun 28 1986 TAO f APPL/HNOI 5665 0 Jul 17 1985 The Towers of Hanoi f APPL/???? 7168 0 Jan 2 1904 Tic-Tac-Toe-Too? d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Torpedos Folder f APPL/WHAR 17022 0 Jul 5 1948 TrekTrivia f APPL/TRIA 34803 0 Mar 1 1987 Triangle d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Val f APPL/VAXR 16247 0 Jan 3 1904 VaxRunner5.0 f APPL/MIKE 59777 0 Jan 2 1904 Video Poker d 8 items Aug 14 1988 Wator Files f APPL/HARS 10512 0 Apr 6 1985 Wave Maker f APPL/WHBB 21845 0 Jun 2 1986 Wheel f APPL/SOFT 48396 0 Jul 2 1986 Window Blaster 1.0 f APPL/WORM 46164 0 Oct 7 1986 Worm f APPL/MACa 4030 0 Sep 8 1986 Write 5.0 (ha) f APPL/MAIF 35328 0 Jun 9 1986 Yo Mama 1.0 f APPL/ZGRV 47312 0 May 22 1988 ZeroGravity Mystery EDUCOMP Disk 3: $ hls -l 'Copyright?1988 EDUCOMP' f APPL/TESC 20480 0 Nov 18 1985 3rd Dimension f APPL/???? 23361 0 Jan 1 1904 Amazing23k f APPL/AMPS 13469 0 Feb 16 1987 Amps 3.0(B2) d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Animals f APPL/AQRM 32942 2024 Nov 18 1985 Aquarium d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Ashes! d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Asteroids Folder f APPL/MPRK 31232 0 Nov 27 1984 Backgammon f APPL/ERIC 15328 0 Sep 16 1987 Ballistics v2 f APPL/BZAI 38608 0 Apr 6 1985 Banzai! f APPL/BASH 25861 2080 Apr 18 1985 Bash Big Blue f APPL/BIOS 39891 0 May 26 1986 Biorhythm f APPL/BBox 16512 19712 Dec 5 1985 Black Box? f APPL/ 30443 0 Feb 1 1986 BlackJack f APPL/BLK1 3295 0 Jul 18 1986 Blocks f APPL/BRIK 17142 0 May 11 1985 bricks f APPL/MIKE 44901 0 Jan 16 1988 Canfield 2.0 d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Connect4 f APPL/CYRD 21454 0 Oct 24 1986 CrystalRaidr d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Daleks Folder f APPL/TESB 30720 0 Oct 9 1987 Destroyer f APPL/RAMW 24263 0 Jan 31 1987 Do All V1.58? d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Eland d 2 items Aug 14 1988 Enigma Backpack f APPL/HMSL 4132 0 Apr 23 1985 F.M. Sounds f APPL/???? 13258 0 Feb 22 1987 Face the Music v.1.8843 f APPL/MINE 27536 9870 Dec 10 1985 Fido f APPL/ DS 1748 0 Apr 3 1985 Galaxy f APPL/MMCC 44215 0 Aug 17 1983 GO f SCOR/AIRB 0 286 Apr 26 1988 HighScores f APPL/CONC 35391 0 Dec 10 1985 MacConcentration f APPL/MHED 10109 0 Dec 4 1985 MacHeads Anyway, anyone got an EDUCOMP catalog and have any idea what the disk numbers of these should be? Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-09 18:36:03 | |
| Actually, looking at those lists is amusing me now, because each disk has a separate app with creator code 'MIKE'. Those would have needed to be put on different disks to avoid conflicting with each other even if they had been close naming-wise 😉 Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-09 18:44:08 | |
| Anyone doing classic Mac on a modern Mac also needs this: https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu/ -- it can read/write/list/convert all the old image formats 🙂 But I don't think it can convert between flux and MooF. In fact, I'm drawing a complete blank how I generated my MooF set in the first place; I do know that it selected the best flux data and then I needed to add metadata. Posted by: adespoton on 2025-12-09 21:04:56 | |
| So far, the only thing I've found that can create MooF is Applesauce, but that requires hardware that costs almost $300, which is just too much. 🤷♂️ The Greaseweazle seems to work perfectly for what I'm doing with it, and it only cost around $30. Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-09 21:28:36 | |
| @CharlesS Yay! Someone else who has copies. I also have a large box of old BMUG floppy disks, but they all have mold on them. I was unable to recover any of them. The magnetic coating was just flaking off the platters. 🙁 Tons of early and likely missing freeware and shareware. Please do archive them. MOOF is only required if they have copy protection. Otherwise DiskCopy 4 is the preferred format. Greasewezle is perfectly fine 99% of the time if you happen to find one of the relatively uncommon floppy drives that'll read 400K and 800K disks. In any event, you don't need the latest version of Applesauce to make MOOFs. v1 and v2 are still great. v1 only works with Apple disks & drives, but v2 is essentially a Greaseweazle with a very nice and easy-to-use GUI. Applesauce + (v3) has added a ton of support for esoteric floppy drives and formats of all sizes and configurations and now has the ability to use up to 8 floppy drives simultaneously for bulk archiving & duplication. Posted by: olePigeon on 2025-12-10 08:17:22 | |
@CharlesS Yay! Someone else who has copies. I also have a large box of old BMUG floppy disks, but they all have mold on them. I was unable to recover any of them. The magnetic coating was just flaking off the platters. 🙁 Tons of early and likely missing freeware and shareware. Please do archive them.@olePigeon , isn't there a flux to MOOF converter out there? MOOF is essentially a single "best guess" flux pass plus metadata, after all. Posted by: adespoton on 2025-12-10 12:10:59 | |
@CharlesS Yay! Someone else who has copies. I also have a large box of old BMUG floppy disks, but they all have mold on them. I was unable to recover any of them. The magnetic coating was just flaking off the platters. 🙁 Tons of early and likely missing freeware and shareware. Please do archive them.Out of curiosity, did you ever make a list of the disks you had? I'm curious how many of them my collection overlaps with. Interestingly, it seems that a couple of these disks contain a file called "BMUG Form" which appears to be a list of all the floppies that existed up to that point, along with lists of (some of) the items on each floppy. MOOF is only required if they have copy protection. Otherwise DiskCopy 4 is the preferred format. Greasewezle is perfectly fine 99% of the time if you happen to find one of the relatively uncommon floppy drives that'll read 400K and 800K disks.Actually, Greaseweazle seems to read the 400/800K disks just fine with a completely bog-standard Sony PC drive when I use the FluxEngine app with it. It's kind of amazing, really. I thought I'd never be able to image these things without doing a really tedious back-and-forth imaging each disk on an actual old Mac and then copying the images to a HD floppy one-by-one to get them somewhere else, each time. As it is, I've now converted all the flux images to DC42, and they all seem to mount in Mini vMac. I will say that there's one advantage to having ripped to flux, which is that the flux files store information on which disks had bad sectors on them. This is important because for a color-blind person, the FluxEngine GUI kind of sucks since it relies on color differentiation on a graph to distinguish between good and bad sectors. So a bunch of these got ripped with some bad sectors in them, but I was able to find out which ones by re-reading all the flux files. The CLI version of FluxEngine just shows a number, which is a lot easier to deal with, and I managed to get all of these disks to eventually show 0 bad sectors after retrying a few times. In any event, you don't need the latest version of Applesauce to make MOOFs. v1 and v2 are still great. v1 only works with Apple disks & drives, but v2 is essentially a Greaseweazle with a very nice and easy-to-use GUI. Applesauce + (v3) has added a ton of support for esoteric floppy drives and formats of all sizes and configurations and now has the ability to use up to 8 floppy drives simultaneously for bulk archiving & duplication.So after fiddling around a bit, I found out that the Applesauce app actually can convert stuff to MOOF without the hardware. Unfortunately, it doesn't support .flux as an input format. It does support both A2R and SCP, which FluxEngine is supposed to be able to export to, but every time I try it I end up with a corrupted A2R or SCP file with tons of bad sectors that weren't there before. Oh well. Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-10 17:42:57 | |
I've uploaded the BMUG collection to archive.org, in DC42 format (wrapped in MacBinary to preserve the type/creator codes):
BMUG Floppy Collection : BMUG, various : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet ArchiveA collection of images ripped from floppies in the BMUG catalog. These floppies contain vintage freeware and shareware software for the classic Mac OS, dating...
archive.org
Posted by: CharlesS on 2025-12-10 19:37:11 | |
I've uploaded the BMUG collection to archive.org, in DC42 format (wrapped in MacBinary to preserve the type/creator codes):Thanks! That's awesome! And since none of the disks appear to have had copy protection, flux/moof isn't really needed. I must have been using the Applesauce app in combination with something else to convert my flux images. Posted by: adespoton on 2025-12-11 08:23:44 | |
I've uploaded the BMUG collection to archive.orgToo awesome! Thanks! Posted by: Juror22 on 2025-12-11 19:02:21 |