MacPack and BlueSCSI

[GerrySch]

Good morning All, I hopefully have a simple and direct question. I downloaded MacPack from the BlueSCSI website onto my MBP. As suggested, I took the uncompressed, downloaded files and imported them to Disk Jockey to make valid .hds files for my BlueSCSI Desktop installed in my SE/30. Disk Jockey did make a couple of images but when I formatted the file names correctly and put it on my BlueSCSI SDcard, the drives didn't mount. I checked the log file and it reports the .hda files made by Disk Jockey are not valid disk images but my 3 other disk on that SDcard are valid images and all work fine.

So, the question is how do I prepare the MacPac downloaded and uncompressed files to be valid disk images for a BlueSCSI?

Thank you for your help,
Gerry

 

[eric]

The MacPack file does not need any conversion, they are already setup for BlueSCSI and (real) emulators that emulate SCSI. Just drop the file on the SD card, no DJ required.

 

[GerrySch]

Eric, thank you for your response. Would you explain your answer and what you mean. For instance, what is MiSTer FPGA? That's mentioned in the read.me file but I don't know what it is or what it means. It appears to be a Mac Plus emulator but that's a wag.

Next are .vhd files. In the read.me file:

Included file ‘boot.vhd’ is a pre-configured bootable multi-OS hardfile intended for use with the MacPlus MiSTer FPGA core. Several hundred games, applications, and utilities are pre-installed on the image. This file should also work with the Plus Too core for MiST FPGA, various emulators, as well as real classic Macs with the appropriate specifications and hardware.

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Do .vhd files work directly with a BlueSCSI v2 like .hda files? As there's no mention of BlueSCSI in the read.me file, I need for you to explain what you mean by "they are already set up for BlueSCSI." So far, I've seen no reference in the BlueSCSI documentation on .vhd files and how they fit into the BlueSCSI environment. Also, I won't be running these files in an emulator but directly on my SE/30. Can I do that? I assume it's a yes since the BlueSCSI are my 'hard drives.' But you know what they say when you assume.....

Thank you for your help,
Gerry

 

[eric]

File extensions are meaningless, so you can name it HD1 MacPack.exe and it'd still work

MacPack's authors are focused on MiSTer and other emulators, but works just as well with a BlueSCSI out of the box.


Emulators like MiSTer, QEMU, PCE, MAME, etc emulate a real SCSI bus - so their images have to be raw copies of the HDD (with SCSI driver partitions, etc) that a real computer would use. These images can be placed on a SD card and used with BlueSCSI.

Emulators like MiniVmac, Basilsik II, and sheep shaver do not emulate SCSI devices so many images over the last 20 years were made as just "hfs partitions" which is not what is on a real drive, but can be converted using Disk Jockey to be used in BlueSCSI. To make it even a bit more confusing these emulators can use both image types and just "skip" the scsi stuff.

Hope that helps clarify the two types of hard disk images there are out there and why you'd use one over the other.

 

[GerrySch]

Okay, I'll transfer the .vhd files directly onto the SDcard and configure them for their SCSI ID but leave the .vhd filetype. I'll let you know what happens.

I agree that filetypes are meaningless in a classic MacOS like 7.x as that's in the header of the file, but we still work with modern Macs using, in my case, Sonoma to run Basilisk II, Disk Jockey and copy drive images on and off the SDcard. Specifically, when making the BlueSCSI.ini and NE4.hda files, I used TextEdit and when I changed the filetype from .txt to .ini or .hda, the OS confirmed with me that I wanted to change the filetype. So, filetype extensions are important in modern Mac OSes and should not be dismissed. I've seen this issue specifically in Disk Jockey as there are certain filetypes it won't open.

I'm off my soapbox. Thank you,
Gerry

 

[eric]

File types _are_ meaningless in the context of our conversation about image files created for retro Macintosh computers. Your examples actually prove that point. Disk Jockey inspects the contents of the file to determine what it is, you can name it HardDrive.foobar and it'll still open it fine and allow you to convert/inspect (if it's a supported disk type). Basilisk II does not care what the file name is (there is a Basilisk GUI app that oddly puts a limit to .img on adding files via the dialog only, but that is an invalid limitation in that 3rd party app). Good apps for retro image handling will inspect the contents instead of the file name.

In fact modern macOS and Windows hide file extensions these days by default which leads to issues. People try to create bluescsi.ini in TextEdit and actually get a file named "bluescsi.ini.txt" - which is then not found (happens so much we have a warning if we find that file and tell the user they need to fix the name)

img/image/dsk are even worse as DiskCopy 4 and 6 both used them and both are not raw/disk images, but some are!

.hda was just a name we picked in Ra/PiSCSI at the time to denote apple drive images from other ones and it stuck.

vhd is a Virtual Hard Disk with a 512 byte footer - so the files in macpack don't even appear to be vhd files - as they have no footer. They are associated with VMWare Fusion on my mac, which can't do anything with them. (I'm not 100% familiar with this format so maybe all 0's is a valid footer, and it is likely safely be ignored by a real mac as it would be outside the partition definition, though would be overwritten if you used a formatting utility on a real mac)

Helping people navigate this for 5 years I've seen (almost) all the issues. I'll get off my soapbox now too