Copying legacy software from internet repositories to 68k Macs

[Paolo B]

Dear All,

I am sure the topic is thoroughly covered, but honestly I couldn’t find a single reliable source of information, so I decided to start a new thread.

Topic: how to download legacy software from web archives (such as the Macintosh Garden) and effectively deploy it on target 68k machines.

Practical example:

Target Mac: Mac Portable (with FD drive, plus various SCSI devices, including MO Drive, CD ROM, HD, plus AppleTalk)
Bridge Mac: SE/30 (with network card and various SCSI devices)
Source Mac: MacPro Monterey + MacFUSE for HFS, with CD/DVD recorder and MO unit

So, moving data from the MacPro to the Portable can be done in many ways. The problem I have, though, is that some 50% of the archives that land on the target Mac after at least one intermediate step is somehow corrupted, unreadable, not mountable, not expandable, not recognized etc.
And you will only find out at the end of the process.
I am never able to understand if the downloaded archive is itself corrupted, if the transfer via FTP or whatever is affecting the integrity of the archive or if the tools I use for expanding the archives are not appropriate (btw, every time I see a .zip archive of 68k sw my heart misses a beat…). So I just go back to another archive, download again, just for eventually finding out that is not working, either.

Which best practice do you use and recommend for reliable compressed data download, transfer, expansion and utilization?

 

[Volvo242GT]

Download files on the Mac Pro, then use a PowerMac G3 or G4 with a SCSI (the Adaptec APD-29160N is what I use) card as the intermediary. Transfer the files to the PowerMac using OS X 10.4.11, etc, then boot that computer in OS 9. Do any conversions or extracting of archives under OS 9. Then, either burn a disc in Toast, use a zip disk with a zip drive attached to either the Portable or the SE/30, use a USB floppy drive with a known good 1.4MB disk, or connect a SCSI hard drive to the SCSI card and transfer the files to the target Mac using one of those methods. That has worked for me over the past 10 years or so.

 

[3lectr1c]

The way I do things is using a PiSCSI device: https://github.com/PiSCSI/piscsi

It's basically a BlueSCSI with a web interface and a whole lot more functionality (with a couple major caveats).

It reduces the "bridge machine shuffle" to a simple process: Download a piece of software in .sit, .hqx, whatever format from Macintosh Garden or wherever, create a mac-formatted .iso file with the contents you need (I use a super useful utility called MacImage to do this on Windows 10), then upload it using the web interface of the PiSCSI. Once set up, it will output a local web server that you can connect to from anything with a web browser. Then, again using the web interface, you can mount the ISO as an emulated SCSI device and access it on your vintage Mac, no extra bridge machines required.

It can also emulate hard disks, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Best thing it can do for some is emulate a SCSI to Ethernet bridge - so you can get your Macs online using it!

The two main caveats are:
1. It needs a raspberry pi to work. Unfortunately, Pis are in short supply right now and it seems scalpers have ruined them
So yeah, it can be expensive if you don't already have a spare Pi like I did.

2. Because the Pi has to boot Linux and start a bunch of stuff, there is a wait for it to start up each time. This makes it just about useless as an internal storage device, as I don't think anyone wants to spend a minute and a half waiting at the question mark each time they boot the thing. You've also got to properly shut off the Pi from the web menu to avoid any corruptions as well, which would make using it internally even more annoying.

So, if you can find a Pi, or if you've got one, it's the best thing out there for external file transfer. Not so much for internal use. I'd absolutely recommend it 100% as a file transfer and network tool, it's incredible.

 

[fred1212]

I use rdmark Debian release from github. Has smb and appletalk server so you can access it from a new iMac which you can use to download software from the net and then copy to debian server which you can access from your older macs via appletak. Works great as you have a repository for all you era macs.

 

[YMK]

MacSD can transfer files from an SD card to your Mac with the Commander application:

There are a lot of broken and infected files on the archive sites, so there may not be anything wrong with your process.

There is a place for .zip files, like applications bundled with PDF manuals, box art, etc, which vintage Macs can't open.

Also, having Linux and Windows as my source machines, I prefer zipped CD images. An .iso within a .sit is an annoyance.

 

[Crutch]

So, moving data from the MacPro to the Portable can be done in many ways. The problem I have, though, is that some 50% of the archives that land on the target Mac after at least one intermediate step is somehow corrupted, unreadable, not mountable, not expandable, not recognized etc.
And you will only find out at the end of the process.

Why not run Mini vMac on the Mac Pro and test out your downloaded archives there?

 

[Paolo B]

It needs a raspberry pi to work.

Where I live they are almost impossible to source, the official retailers are “out of stock” since almost two years now…

 

[Paolo B]

Why not run Mini vMac on the Mac Pro and test out your downloaded archives there?

Never used emulated hardware, as I have… too many real Macs around. But I will check this option, too.

 

[S. Pupp]

I write to CF cards from my MacBook, and use these cards as the hard drive in my legacy Macs.

The drives for my SE/30’s and IIFX’s are Compact Flash cards initialized as HFS standard. One setup is CF-IDE adapter to Acard AEC-7720U SCSI-IDE converter. The other setup is CF PCMCIA adapter to Adtron SCSI PCMCIA card reader.

My bridge machine is a $35 2007 MacBook running OSX 10.7 Lion. To be able to write to HFS standard volumes, the free “HFS for Snow Leopard” is installed. I use a USB compact flash reader to write to the CF cards.

I have not tried to download software from web sites recently with this setup, but the currently maintained Sealion browser works in Lion, so downloading software from websites shouldn’t be a problem.

 

[speakers]

I've used a Beige G3 as a bridge machine. It's a popular choice which runs OSX Tiger - but also boot into Classic macOS 9.2. I use ftp or Safari to download from the web and then use AFP over AppleTalk on ethernet to send files to older machines. You need to run AppleShare 3.8.3 on the target side to see OSX shares (see http://www.applefool.com/se30/ for a great Mac networking ressource). Sometimes due to umpteen versions of archive tools, I have to unstuff/unzip/unpack files on the bridge machine before sending them on the target machines. The G3 is also the last machine still with a floppy drive (9.2 only) if sneaker net is needed.

Lately, I've been using a virtual bridge. I use qemu on a modern machine to run a PPC Tiger guest. - see https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/ppc-osx-on-qemu-for-osx and https://gist.github.com/cellularmitosis/63b2914711f9ee32053d3c1f48d5c89a The host can access the guest's filesystems and inject files which can then be transferred to target machines via AppleTalk.

I've also played with PISCSI. it's a very convenient way to grab an iso from the internet and make it available to a vintage SCSI host as a CDROM. But it's yet another OS to have to futz with! Using Blue/ZuluSCI, it's easier to pull a disk/cdrom image from the net with a modern machine and write that to a SD card. I note that Raspberry Pi's have begun re-appearing on the market and Amazon has them .. albeit at a pre-Covid higher price.

Finally, a note about dodgy files: many files dotted about the net are corrupt or unusable or (worse) virus-infected. Beware. However, the Internet Archive is often a trustworthy source for images of original install media.

 

[Paolo B]

So, today I had some spare time and took out of the closet one of my Cubes.
I plugged a MO drive via USB and formatted the disk (230 Mb) in HFS.
Using OS 9 and the web browser Classilla, I had a very smooth browsing experience on macintosh garden.
Once downloaded, using StuffIt Expander 6.0 I could crunch all the archives regardless of the format and expand them on the optical disk.

I then moved the disk to a SCSI MO drive attached to the target Mac (a Portable, in this case).

Only drawback: you need to have minimum System 7 and the MO extension loaded at start up on the target machine, else the disk is not seen (you can still use something like HDT for forcing mount, though).

 

[eric]

My process(s):

If I have a system without networking I use BlueSCSI Toolbox (similar to MacSD Commander) to place files on the SD card and transfer them to the Mac.

If the machine has network access I run Filezilla FTP server on my windows desktop and use Fetch or Transmit.

Also another easy solution (if you're on a windows machine and using a image based emulator) is to use CiderPress - the UI is a bit wonky but you can add a file to an HFS drive pretty easily.

--
To your original question though, maybe take a checksum/md5 of the file at each step and see where corruption, if any, happens.

As people mentioned there are a lot of bad archives of software out there too. If you find them on sites like the Macintosh Garden be sure to leave a comment to let people know, or maybe someone in the comments has a work around.
--

Only drawback: you need to have minimum System 7 and the MO extension loaded at start up on the target machine, else the disk is not seen (you can still use something like HDT for forcing mount, though).

If you format the MO disk with a SCSI formatting utility it will put the scsi driver partition on there and you wont need to mount it like this (you can even boot from it)

 

[Sideburn]

I have a floppy EMU (and a BlueSCSI in the portable but not required).

my process is on the MacBook Pro I download my disk images from Macintosh garden and extract them.

I then use either miniVmac or Basilisk ii to mount the disk images onto the desktop and I mount the sd card disk from the floppy emu as well.

i then copy the disks to the floppy emu sd card and connect it back to my Mac. I can now copy to floppy’s or hard drive.

 

[Bolkonskij]

Err...i find the Garden renders ok on my IIci, with a browser like Netscape 2 or Wannabe it's even usable on a lowly 68030. Though I prefer iCab 2.9 and a few seconds wait

If you know what you're looking for, the text-only approach is fine. There is even a WannaBe search plugin for the Garden around. So you can do this all from the very machine.

There is also a First Class server around that allow to connect via client from even lowlier Macs. Basically mirrors the Garden's content. Fun experience too!

Of course, some archives were packaged with little care and a zip file from OSX can give you a hard time on a SE/30. But as far as I know, there are plans to tackle that problem on the side of the Mac Garden.

 

[Paolo B]

If you format the MO disk with a SCSI formatting utility it will put the scsi driver partition on there and you wont need to mount it like this (you can even boot from it)

In theory it is like you describe, but my sometimes the disk is not automatically mounted, even if it’s marked “auto mount”. Maybe some conflict with some other SCSI device or whatever.

(All in all, though, I must say it’s a mystery to me how the MO format could not reach the deserved recognition as replacement of the floppy disk.
It indeed ticked all the boxes…)

 

[ShadeDream]

I wasn't aware of the bluescsi toolbox method, that's nice.

I typically use a piscsi to get the initial installation and networking set up on machines (if they have networking) and then I have a Mac OS X 10.4 Server VM running in ESXi on a trash can mac Pro as my file server/repository. My only machine without networking at the moment is my SE, so I use the piscsi for that but intend to eventually put a piscsi internal on it to give it networking.