Macintosh Classic II and Macintosh SE Floppy Drives

I just picked up a Macintosh SE FDHD/Super Drive that is in absolutely perfect condition, but the floppy drive doesn't seem to work. I also have two Mac Classic II's with bad logic boards, but I'm pretty sure at least one of them has a working floppy drive. Are the drives compatible, so I could pull a working drive from a Classic II and install it in the SE?
Also, somewhat unrelated and less important, will the RAM from the Classic II work in the SE?

CN,
When you say that the drive does not seem to work, have you tried several disks? Can you place a new disk in the drive and format it? It is not uncommon for a disk to not be recognized in an older drive. When taking disks from one old machine to another, you sometimes have to format the disk in one machine and move it to another machine to see if the other will recognize it. We generally start by formatting the disk in the older machine and see if the newer machine will look back and see the older format.
Newer machines know how to look backwards but older machines do not always know how to look forwards because new technology built into the newer machines. Older drives may not have accurate read head alignment. What ever the cause for the disk errors, do not assume that the drive is bad until you have experimented with a few disks.
As for the classic floppy drives, it will not hurt to try one out.
Jim~

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I picked up a Mac SE FDHD a few months back - a model with a Superdrive and hard drive, as well as 4 MB of RAM. It came with a keyboard and mouse, but no floppies of any kind. Upon testing, I discovered that the hard drive did not work - the "flashing question mark folder" appears at startup, and the disk setup utility on the system 6 install disks I created using a more modern mac can't detect it. I don't hear HDD seek sounds either. Everything else works fine, as far as I can tell. The reason I want to use this old Mac is simply to boot it up and run a few favorite old programs (such as MacPaint and many old games), so I don't want to put too much money into it.
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I figure that since the original Mac had 128k of memory, a single 800k floppy, and no hard drive, and yet can still run OS 7, the SE should be able to run system 6 from floppies somehow. The question is how? Is there a tutorial online somewhere on how to set this up?
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PS: What happened to the LaCie drive - for information purposes:
WHen I attached to the LaCie drive to the SE and booted the OS 6 install disks, t worked - OS 6 installed to it just fine. However, it turns out that a "dormant" copy of Norton utilities reactivated when I booted to the SCSI drive, and encrypted the disk's partition table. (Why it was not encrypted BEFORE installing and booting OS 6, I don't know) Having not used the drive for 17 years , and thus not knowing the password, I had to reformat it. I have a Sawtooth G4 with an Apple SCSI card - but no cable that would go from the PCI card's SCSI port to the external enclosure. THus, I removed the drive from the enclosure, mounted it in the G4 internally, and formatted it as Mac OS Standard (with OS 9 drivers) using Mac OS 10.3. Upon re-installing the drive in its SCSI enclosure, I found that it no longer works - Norton was erased, but the SE gives me a "Sad Mac" icon upon boot. Furthermore, after borrowing the correct SCSI cable, I found the enclosure now kernel panics my G4 when attached. The drive itself, when mounted internally in the G4, still functions perfectly. Thus, it seems that either the enclosure is dead, or something about OS X's reformat is renders the HDD incompatible with the enclosure...

"I removed the drive from the enclosure, mounted it in the G4 internally, and formatted it as Mac OS Standard (with OS 9 drivers) using Mac OS 10.3."
I just re-checked Disk Utility's format options under Panther and only see "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" or "Mac OS Extended." I don't see an option for formatting Mac OS Standard. Are you certain that you formatted the drive as a Mac OS Standard (HFS) volume? If it's a Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volume, that would explain why it won't work when connected to the SE. When using external SCSI enclosures having a hard drive or optical drive, I always opted to connect an "active" SCSI terminator to the unused SCSI port on the enclosure. It seemed to provide stability, because I never had a problem with any of them. Does the LaCie enclosure have a built-in termination switch or do you plug in a terminator to the opposite SCSI port on the back? As for installing/using the 170 MB hard drive in the SE, it must have a jumper installed on its TE pins, if it's the last device connected to the SE's SCSI ribbon cable. Additionally, the HDD must have a unique SCSI address, The factory default is usually 0, which doesn't necessarily require a jumper. If another address is desired, a jumper or two installed across specific pins will accomplish that. If the LaCie enclosure had a switchable SCSI address button on the back (you change it by pressing in with a ball point pen), there were small wires from it that were connected to the drive's address pins in a specific way. Did you disconnect/re-connect these when you re-installed the drive in the enclosure? Also, if the enclosure has a termination switch, did you re-connect its wires to the drive's TE pins?

How to install Windows 7 on E20 with only DOS and no DVD/floppy driver?

I am considering buying the cheapest E20 - with following configurations:
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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd535816.aspx
obviously you don't have cd drive, therefore you should follow the above instruction to install the windows 7 from a usb key.
The integrated video card should have at least a vga output, which will work with your dell monitor, provided that monitor is working.
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

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Protege P4000 - BIOS update without floppy drive

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Ok
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BR
Tom

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I just put together the system in my sig last night. Except for me not understanding how to configure 2 SATA drives in non RAID mode (in another thread), I have only one other outstanding problem. I can't read floppies in my floppy drive (which I may need to do for that nVidia RAID stuff.... )
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Quote
Originally posted by dacull
What case do you have? I had a similar problem in that the screw offsets were incorrect for the face panel, and therefore the floppy drive button was always slightly depressed causing some problems.
You may be on to something there!
It's a Lian Li V1000.
I'll try monkeying with that. Perhaps the drive button is getting mashed in a bit more than it should....!
Thanks for the tip!

I switched to the classic 'landscape' and when i reboot, it just stays at the greay screen, with the macintosh logo, and a blinking question mark. ive tried several methods of key combinations with rebooting etc.. i just bought this. please help.

i switched to the classic 'landscape' and when i reboot, it just stays at the greay screen, with the macintosh logo, and a blinking question mark. ive tried several methods of key combinations with rebooting etc.. i just bought this. please help.
I bought this off of craigslist with my christmas money, TODAY. i really need help, i have OS X experience from school, just not OS 9x. I need to reboot back to OS X asap. anything that may help is very appreciated. Thank You.
Chris.

Are you able to start up in Safe Mode?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455?viewlocale=en_US
If this works you will see the normal desktop Once completely started up in Safe Mode, try to restart normally and go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Click on the top hard drive icon in the left sidebar and note the S.M.A.R.T. status at the bottom right of the pane. What does it say?
Select the named boot volume in the left sidebar, ("Macintosh HD" unless it has been renamed). What is the hard drive capacity and how much space remains available on it? Repair permissions on it.
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FCP X does not recognize projects and events on USB drive after a time machine restore of the MBP macintosh disk

FCP X does not recognize projects and events on USB drive after a time machine restore of the MBP macintosh disk.
I upgraded from an i5 to an i7 15" MBP and restored my files using my time machine backup. All seemed to go ok, except I had to use the migration assistant because on the initial boot the MAC didn't recognize the backup database on the USB device. MAybe this is a hint.
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Thanks... alas no one has responded.
I think I have the structure that you are recommending.
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Please bring to downgrade to iOS 6.1.3! iOS 7 seems like the macintosh ago ... the beginning of the end! Sorry, but then provides for all iPhone lovers, the classic design and unlimited use without fault love the previous version available. It's super tir

Please bring to downgrade to iOS 6.1.3!
iOS 7 seems like the macintosh ago ... the beginning of the end!
Sorry, but then provides for all iPhone lovers, the classic design and unlimited use without fault love the previous version available.
It's super tiring to work with iOS 7!

Submit your feedback to Apple here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback

How many external floppy drives can be attached to a Macintosh Plus?

Assuming I don't have a hard drive attached to a Mac Plus, is it possible to attach two external floppy drives? That way, I can use the internal floppy drive for the startup disk, the 1st external drive for the application disk, and the 2nd external drive for a data disk so save files.
Otherwise, how can I save to a data disk without having to eject one of the other floppies?

So the way you used to do it was -- you write-enabled the System disk. When you went to save, you saved your data file onto the system disk. Then if you wanted to copy it to another disk, eject the Applications disk and insert another all-data disk where you accumulated all your data files.
The operating system was very forgiving, and would let you eject the system disk if you had to. So you really could operate these Macs with one drive, as long as you didn't mind swapping disks all the time.
Even the HD20 was a big step up from that. But a Mac Plus has a SCSI port, and you can add an external SCSI drive of enormous proportions. (An 80 MegaByte drive was about a $1000 item.) I think you can install up to about 1 GB.

What Floppy Drive can I use with Mountain Lion to read and write floppy which can be read by SE30 with 7.1

I want to File Exchange between an iMac with 10.8.4 and a SE30 with 7.1.
All I want to do is install some software, such as Word 5.1 and a Chess game and some Fonts.
I have an external USB Floppy Drive but my iMac can only write to it IF I format as FAT, if I format it with the SE30 it can only be read and not written onto by the iMac.
Is there a way I can actually format/read/write Macintosh extended (HFS+) with Mountain Lion?
The external USB Floppy is a generic black one I bought from Amazon last week.
Someone else said I should get a Macally USB Floppy Drive and that reads/writes HFS+ etc with 10.8 no problem.
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>surely there must be some Terminal command or workaround for 10.8 to be able to Format in HFS?
Using dd to write an existing HFS disk image to a floppy may still work (but formatting/writing HFS from the operating system does not). You may want to compare this with the technique described in the article below. Obviously, this is only of interest if one wants to try creating floppies from certain (Disk Copy 4.2-style) downloaded 1.44 MB disk images.
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>If I got hold of an old iBook or Powerbook G4 (my sister has one) could I plug the USB Floppy drive I have into one of these and copy files over this way?
At least according to the following Wikipedia article, writing HFS has not been supported since Mac OS X 10.6. This should mean that your idea with the USB floppy drive connected to one of the older computers mentioned could work. BTW, I do not think that the USB floppy drive type/make/model is of importance in this very context.
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Jan

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How to copy files from a color classic w/broken floppy drive to an i-book ?
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If a second old Mac is not available, you may want to try something else. It would not be unusual for a Color Classic to have ClarisWorks already (obviously, one cannot expect anything new to become installed). If so, that program suite would contain a communications part. This means that you could connect an external serial modem, and send the files over the phone lines (or locally, modem-to-modem, in principle as in KB article # 22229; sometimes a very simple home-built line simulator may have to be added) to any other computer using a terminal emulation application with file transfer capabilities. It would also be possible to connect the modem port directly to the serial port of a PC, through a combination of a Mac modem cable (MiniDIN-8M to DB-25M) and a standard PC null-modem cable (DB-25F to DB-9F).
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Is there a way to get data to and from the hard drive of a Powerbook 180 without having to use the floppy drive?

Howdy folks!
I have an 20 year old Powerbook 180 with what I think is an unreliable floppy drive. Sometimes while accessing a diskette the screen flickers and usually power to the whole computer drops out.
I'm not familiar with Mac connectivity. Is there a way to access the hard drive--to get data off of, and install files, etc onto, the hard drive? 3.5 inch drives are 20th century.
But... I am happy because my old Powerbook still boots up just fine and I can look at my old files installed on the HD ok.
Thanks,
Hayward Matt

Hi Hayward,
This may be a power supply issue, not necessarily a problem with the floppy drive itself. Any change if you try removing the battery?
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https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4974860
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manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/0302674APB160180UG.pdf
Jan

Macintosh Classic II and Macintosh SE Floppy Drives

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