New Way to Transfer Files to Vintage Macs!

marciot

Tinkerer
Nov 13, 2021
19
96
13
One of the biggest pain points of working with vintage Macs, in my opinion, is getting files to it. Here is the scenario: you've just download a file from Macintosh Garden and now you want to get it to your vintage Mac. Depending on the age of your Mac and your environment, the process might be simple or very hard. For me, it is a multi-step process that goes something like this:
  • Open the Basillisk II GUI and connect a specially formatted "Scratch" disk image
  • Boot Basillisk II, find the file I just downloaded in "This PC" and copy it to the "Scratch" disk
  • Shut down Basillisk II and run over to my Mac and shut it down
  • Open up Chrome to my PiSCSI web interface
  • Delete the existing "Scratch" disk image and upload the new one
  • Attach it to the SCSI bus
  • Run over to my Mac and power it up
  • Wait for it to boot
  • Copy the files from the "Scratch" disk onto my hard disk
For #Marchintosh, I wanted to do something to help with this. I knew certain VNC clients such as TightVNC supported file transfers and having this feature my MiniVNC remote desktop tool would greatly simplify getting files to my Mac! Adding this feature was way harder than I anticipated, because it involved adding a bunch of poorly documented TightVNC extensions, but I've managed to pull it off right before the end of March!

The process to get files to my Mac is now:
  • Use the TightVNC client to connect to my Mac
  • Upload the file using the "Transfer files..." tool
  • Use the remote VNC session to extract or use the file
TightVNC File Transfer Widget.PNG


Right now this feature only works on color Macs, which is pretty much any non-compact Mac. If you would like to try out this new feature in MiniVNC, the release is here:

https://github.com/marciot/mac-minivnc/releases/tag/v1.4-beta-mar-28-2024
 

tripolar

New Tinkerer
Mar 11, 2023
5
2
3
For me, getting software on to my old macs, I've used this site mostly as it works on very old web browsers http://www.themacattic.com/ amd there's even a Gopher connection as well, although I've never tried it. I've also used FTP in the past but I can't remember the name of the client I used...starts with T... lol

But internally getting files in and out using your software seems like another useful tool to me. Good effort on making something in March...I have to get around to doing something for marchintosh next year.