OS9 and a Macally Floppy, why it no workie?

[part12studios]

Hi everyone,

So I got this USB floppy drive that appears to be able to read mac formatted floppies as well as USB ones..  the unit works under OSX fine.  When I hook it up to the G4 under OS9.

I lost track of a thread I posted before asking a similar question about a generic usb drive that wasn't working.  i need to read old mac floppies and ideally write to them as native Mac OS friendly formats (thinking about sharing files with an old Mac Classic running OS6)

Someone mentioned something about moving a driver somewhere or something to enable usb floppy drives to work under OS9. 

Any tips / advice would be welcome!

Thanks,
Caleb

[GaryN]

I think you're referring to this comment

"9.2.2 (I'm certain) and 9.1 (not sure…maybe) will mount pretty much any USB drive provided you have the Apple USB Device Extension installed and active in the System Folder.

You should be able to write and read back from floppies all day long.

IF however, you are hoping to read from old Macintosh floppies, you will probably find that your drive will NOT read them. The 800k and 1.2Mb Mac disks used a unique format.


So… now, I'm confused. You say you have a USB floppy drive that "appears" to read old Mac floppies under OSX. I have never seen or heard of such an animal. What do you mean by "appears"? Are you actually mounting genuine old Macintosh floppy disks and reading them on a Mac running OSX? If so, many people would love to know the make and model of this floppy drive. Please explain further.

But anyway…

If your main objective is to share floppies with a Mac Classic, you shouldn't have a problem there. The Classic has what Apple called a "Superdrive" capable of reading all of the various Mac and PC floppy formats, so anything you write on your USB drive should be readable on the Classic.

Theoretically…

The other direction (from Classic to USB) may be more complicated depending if your USB drive really is a "magic" drive that I don't know about.
You should read these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_External_Disk_Drive  AND  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDrive

There are miles and miles of postings and articles on various methods of overcoming the maddening hassle of trying to share data between old-world and newer computers. Somewhere I have a file on this exact issue that I'll have to look for if the above doesn't get you anywhere.

[MacOS Plus]

  I have three USB floppy drives which report in OSX system profiler as follows:

1. Label on case - Lacie "Pocket USB FDD 706018 MYFLOPPY3"
Vendor - Y-E Data
Version - 5.01

2. Label on case - "USB Floppy Disk Drive" model MPF82E
Vendor - Sony
Version - 6.01

3. Label on case - IBM "USB Portable Diskette Drive Manufactured for Lenovo" model MPF82E
Vendor - Y-E Data
Version - 7.01

  I just tested them now and they all read the same factory-formatted software disk from Digidesign in OS X 10.5 on my TiBook.  They won't read a factory-formatted 800k software disk.

  I'm certain I've used all three drives successfully on OS 9.x/OS8.6 but with the same limitation.  I also remember having a counter-intuitive issue where Disk Copy 6.x won't see USB drives but Disk Copy 4.x will.  If presented with DC6-type images I would have to open them with Disk Copy 6.3.3 and convert the images to DC4.2-type and then write the images to disk using Disk Copy 4.2.

  Any time I've had to deal with an 800k Disk Copy image I've had to copy it to my Mac Classic and write them from there.  For best results I hooked up a true 800k external floppy drive to the Classic and wrote the disks with that.  I seem to recall the internal "SuperDrive" would read the 800k disks but couldn't format them.  My Classic boots either System 7.1 or Mac OS 7.5 depending on what I need to accomplish.

[Protools5LEGuy]

Offtopic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caleb_UHD144

[Mat]

Ok, I had to learn today that there really seems to be no USB Floppy Disk drive that can handle 800k Mac floppys. That was completely new to me, as my TEAC FD-05PUB does fine with HD floppys (Mac and PC) as with 720k DD floppys. But as it seems it will not read/write Mac formatted DD (what I never tested).
Here is an article why. Apples drives (like the "Super Drive") used a "variable-speed spindle drive system" while PC Floppys, and as it seems all modern USB Floppys are fixed-speed drives: http://siber-sonic.com/mac/newmillfloppy.html

The "Super Drive" built into all Oldworld Macs can handle any Mac Floppy format. Even the old 400k ones (at least if you use DiskCopy). Mac Os 7.6.1 or below seem to be able to handle 400k Floppys directly (with any Super Drive at any Oldworld machine). For the usage of 400k floppys in Mac OS 8.x or 9.x you can use DiskCopy. Here is an interresting article about it:
http://siber-sonic.com/mac/MFSbootfloppy.html

For 800k disks it seems that any Super Drive with any Mac OS 8.x or 9.x should work from what I read. I also transferred data from my 9600/G4 to and from a Mac SE

And if you really need every Floppy Disk that you can imagine with all possible File Systems (inkluding all old Mac floppys) connected to your modern computers via USB, check out KryoFlux http://kryoflux.org/

[part12studios]

wow this is great news.  i'm not 100% sure the disks i have are the 800kb ones.. they are maybe HD..  so my question is after reading this.

where can i find this "Apple USB Device Extension"?  how do I install it into the system?

as it is right now.  I have two usb external floppy drives..  the generic pc one and the macally drive that don't work on my OS9 system.  They both work on my OSX system so the drives are not bad, just not seen by the system.

to clarify also..  at this time i'm just using pc formatted floppies (MSDOS) which the OSX macbook pro can see just fine. 

The OS9 sawtooth doesn't even seem to try and read.  Nothing appears on the desktop which i would expect to be what happens like using a usb (msdos formatted) thumb drive i have or cd roms (even pc cds') at least appear as something they can read from.

I will see if i can find an original superdrive eventually but i'm thinking that maybe the macally drive will read some, just not ALL.. and maybe that's all I need.  we'll see once i can pop them in, but for now I just would like to know what I can do to get the drives I do have to work.

Also getting somewhat daring.. I do have a Mac Classic in my studio with a working drive.  However I doubt that drive would interface with a usb external adapter.  My need is pretty minimal.. basically 2-3 old software programs and i was looking to be able to migrate some old software online i downloaded (turbosynth) and see if i could move it over to the mac...  I did get the MSDOS approach to work but apparently the MSDOS formatting mangles the files (8 character limit, etc) into things the OS6 system doesn't understand.. 

So in short, any suggestions on how i can configure my OS 9.2.2 system to recognize any usb floppy drives?  It sounds like you had a solution I just didn't have any luck finding a file to download and install. 

Thanks!
Caleb

[Mat]

As you got an G4 with built in USB, you should have all the needed drivers installed allready. Please got o your Control Panels Extensions On/Off, and see if all the USB stuff is active there. If not activate it.

If there are no USB driers at all, something went wrong with your initial OS installation back than (manually disabled USB at a retail OS installation, or simply drag &dropped the system from an other Mac or similar). So a reinstallation should do the trick for the onboard USB ports.

If you got an USB PCI card you need Apples "USB Adapter Card Support" – but really just for the PCI USB cards!

About the vintage Macs, there is also another possibility. The other way round than the KryoFlux; to equip them with an SD card adapter. A so called Floppy Emulator. You can use the SD cards at every modern system, and the vintage 68k Mac sees them as floppys:

http://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

[DieHard]

Are you using Mac OS 9.0.4, 9.1, 9.2.1, 9.2.2 ?

to clarify also..  at this time i'm just using pc formatted floppies (MSDOS) which the OSX macbook pro can see just fine. 

Verify that your "Mounting PC Disks in the Finder: PC Exchange Control Panel" PC Exchange is turned ON

PC Exchange control panel that automatically mounts the floppy disk on the Desktop

Also make sure Foreign File Access is enabled as an extension.

Also, for PC CDs...

Mac OS has the ability to mount DOS and Windows CD-ROMs on the Finder's Desktop. This is made possible by the Foreign File Access and ISSO 9660 File Access extension files in the System folder. Turning these extensions off in the Extensions Manager control panel disables the Mac's ability to read PC CD-ROMs.

Lastly... try rebuilding the desktop if "Auto-mounting" is not working

[part12studios]

I finally had a chance to follow your settings.. i went through them and everything seemed right..  so for the heck of it..

I go to hook it back up and FML.. it's working now.     Thanks, I just didn't know if a floppy should "just work" or not.  I don't get it but I'm just happy it's working now.

it does seem to be a bit tempermental about disks.. i can get one to work.. the first disk.. but then after that ejecting properly or without permission seems to not recognize any others..  but i can work with that..  just a strange behavior. 

[geforceg4]

if u want to read or write 800k disks u have to find one of the old vintage compact macs !
im going to be getting an SE/30 very soon ! cant wait!

also, not only do u need to have a beige mac with a variable speed floppy drive but u also need to be running mac os 7.6.1 or lower to be able to access the content on the 400k/800k disks... with mac os 8 or 9 it will appear as being unformatted + unreadable.

using file sharing between a compact mac running mac os 7.6.1 on a network should be able to share (reading + writting both) to a mac os 9 machine.

so yea, u need a beige powermac running system 7!!!!! with a floppy drive that works!

[DieHard]

also, not only do u need to have a beige mac with a variable speed floppy drive but u also need to be running mac os 7.6.1 or lower to be able to access the content on the 400k/800k disks... with mac os 8 or 9 it will appear as being unformatted + unreadable.

During the 8.6 era, many users did not realize this (the whole "variable speed" to "fixed speed" floppy drive change) and many thousands of disks were pitched in the educational market under the "these disks are old and bad/unreadable" excuse.  Many software titles "died" forever.  Some stuff was imaged from smarter users, some stuff was not.  I urge any "vintage" users to at least diskimage as much stuff as possible.

[part12studios]

yea that's super informative thanks!  Yes I have a program that appears "unreadable" and yea my instinct would be that the disk is bad..  but thankfully i found the same program online so I was able to get it running on OS9. 

It's called "SP Remote" which is a Peavey SP Sampler editor for Mac.  Of course getting it to talk to the sampler is another hurdle to figure out, but there is a manual.. just figuring out how to get it to talk with my MOTU Midi Interfaces (which it appears to support in some capacity) is next.

Getting an old mac to access one disk i a bit extreme for me.. i just sold my Mac Classic on CL a few months ago.  Glad it found a new home, but that was running 6.x

Thanks!
Caleb

[mrhappy]

there is also another possibility. The other way round than the KryoFlux; to equip them with an SD card adapter. A so called Floppy Emulator. You can use the SD cards at every modern system, and the vintage 68k Mac sees them as floppys:

http://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

Hey Mat... that thing looks very interesting!