OK, so while cleaning my house the other day, I found an old macintosh computer. It’s a Macintosh II si circa 1990 or 1991. It runs system 6 (I think it is specifically 6.0.8, but I’m not sure.) However, I have no disks for it, including the starup disk. I would like to run it, as it might be a treasure trove of old, awesome, Mac games. But, without a boot disk, it can’t run (if started without one, I get a picture of a floppy with a question mark in it.)
A big problem, is that I own a PC, not a Mac, so I can’t just download a disk, I need one that lets me make it from windows, to work on a mac. I found one site here that lets me do that, but it didn’t work. At first it looked like it was booting, then I get a message saying that the boot disk is 24 bit, and it was running in 32 bit, but I could restart and tun in 24 bit, so I did. Then I get an error message saying the system file on the disk is bad.
So, is there any hope for this old Mac to run again? Should I just try and find a place (maybe eBay?) where I can buy a boot disk?
OK, so I tried to make another bootup disk, this time from the siter the other one references, and that worked. So now my problem is how to get old macintosh games onto a disk from my PC? That could pose a problem…
Congratulations, you’re booted! Welcome to Macintosh!
If you wish to download old Mac games from the internet using your PC and then transfer them to the IIsi, the easiest way is to put them on PC-formatted floppies, which the IIsi is able to read. If you are booted with 6.0.8 you may need some additional software to mount the DOS-formatted diskette. (Mac System 7 came with the necessary control panel built in, System 6 did not. Check your email. I am sending you a BinHexxed Mac extension that will work under System 6. If you have System 7 you won’t need it though). To un-BinHex a file you generally use Stuffit Expander. If your IIsi has no copy of Stuffit Expander things get a little bit more interesting, please post if that is the case.
If the games you download are in excess of a floppy’s capacity, you may wish to snag a copy of the PC version of BinHex, which will let you encode files as text and then cut them into floppy-sized pieces with NotePad, then glue them back together and decode them on the Mac. Or as an alternative to BinHex you could use UULite on the Mac and one of the many UU-encoder freeware or shareware apps for PC.
The IIsi had a combo slot that could serve as a NuBus slot. If you wish you can prowl eBay and cut-rate Mac salvageware catalogs like MacResQ for a IIsi Nubus adapter and a NuBus ethernet card, and then you can set up a LAN and FTP the files back and forth (or install AppleTalk on your PC via Miramar MacLan) instead of doing the sneakernet floppy thing.
Well, right now the IIsi is not hooked up to the network, but it seems to have a network card in it, as there is a cable that came with it that hooks into a port in the back, and that cable id kooked up to an adapter that adapts it to a CAT 5 connection. So how do I go about hooking this bad boy to my network and getting those files (which I got) onto it? My PC has stuffit expander, can I expand them on my PC and them transfer them? Or will that not work?
Even if you have a network card for the Mac you still need to deal with different networking protocals and different file formats. With older Mac programs each program, extention, control panel, etc had two forks for each file. On any other OS these two forks were seen as too different files (I’m simplifying a bit). To get around this you could encase the Mac binaries in a format known as binhex (.hqx was the file extention IIRC). If you can manage to get your hands on a program to unbinhex the files on the Mac (stuffit for the Mac works fine) then you can transfer the files over to the Mac, decode, and have fun.
As for networking protocals, once you have a program to unbinhex the files ftp should work fine to transfer the files. You can get AppleTalk (Mac networking) programs for the PC or SMB (Windows networking) programs for the Mac but they cost money. If you can find a copy of BetterTelnet that will run on the older MacOS you’l be set as it has a simple ftp server built in.
Cool!!! I just assumed you had no ethernet on the IIsi. Since you do, ignore all that I said previously about transferring files via floppy disk. If you already have a LAN, just hook the Mac into it, then download a copy of Miramar’s PC MacLan. You can try it out for free:
PC MacLan puts AppleTalk networking on your PC. Once you’ve got it installed and share your C drive over AppleTalk you can go to the Chooser on the Mac and see the PC and mount the C drive on the Mac’s Desktop. If you install System 7 on the Mac you can go the other direction as well.
With this network set up you can move files back and forth with ease. Don’t try to unstuff Mac programs on the PC, you’ll get files you cannot use on the Mac because of the resource fork problem (your PC won’t know a resource fork from a salad fork).
::scratches head a moment and tries to remember how to tell System 6 to use Ethernet instead of LocalTalk (serial) for AppleTalk networking::
::realizes he has never, ever, had a System 6 machine that had ethernet on it::
You might want to put System 7 on it no matter what.
bouv, I have an old IIsi in my closet, as used it regularly as recently as two years ago.
If the IIsi has “PC Exchange” and “ResEdit,” you should be able to save to disk on the PC, and open the files on the Mac. PC Exchange will let the Mac read DOS-formatted floppies, and ResEdit will let you change the DOS-formatted files to recognizable Macintosh file types. “AAPL” is the file type code for applications, I beleive.
A note about ResEdit- Unless you know the program pretty well, make sure you keep a copy of the file you’re working with intact somewhere. ResEdit can be a handy utility, or a good way to screw stuff up.
At home, I have some good links for older Macs. There’s even a WWW browser available for System 6.0.7, I think. I’ll try to post them tonight.
Feel free to e-mail me or AIM me (this screen name) if you need help.
In case you didn’t know, System 7 is a free download from Apple.
Here’s the list of all their older stuff for download.
One of the best older Mac websites is Jag’s House. There’s instructions on how to get many things working on older Macs - do a search or click on the ‘every page’ list to see what there is.
I used to maintain a campus worth of IIsis back in the day. I wish I still had one, but I got rid of all my old computers when I moved one time. They were fun machines that you could hack in a bunch of ways - I had one overclock to more than 31 mhz, which was crazy fast at the time.
Yours should’ve booted from its hard drive, without a boot disk.
If that didn’t work, it probalby means that the hard drive is either missing or dead. Are you seeing a hard disk icon when you boot? That could be a problem, as System 6 is too big to run much of anything off of a floppy.
Also, the networking connector you describe sounds more like a phonenet connector than an ethernet connector. Are you sure an RJ45 connector fits in there? Are there two jacks on the adapter? Where does it plug in?
If it plugs into something in the shiny metal slot on the top back, then it may be ethernet. If it plugs into one of the serial ports (little round plugs with a printer and modem icon above them, it’ll go into the one with the printer), then it’s phonenet.
Or it might be an etherwave connector. I know those used ethernet cables, but I don’t think they work on a modern ethernet network.
