Need Help Transferring Files To My MAC CLASSIC

You're lucky: the only compact Mac which matches better with a IIgs is an SE/30.

In any case, you have _tons_ of connectivity options to the GS if your Classic has at least System 7.1. You should see if you can upgrade to that version or newer.

If you can, then the Mac Classic can read and write IIgs disks in its SuperDrive. Also, you can turn on File Sharing and the IIgs can connect to your Mac Classic's hard drive over the network. It's great!

To send files to the Classic from the GS, you need the HFS FST. That should be on your IIgs startup disk or on the install disk. With it, you can format an 800K disk as HFS (Mac format), copy files to it, then you can bring it over to the Mac Classic and it can read the files right off of it.

Thanks but how do I upgrade to 7.1 if I can't get it to read files from my IIGS currently? How would one go about obtaining the upgrade and installing it? Can I just connect my PC to my MAC direct via a null modem cable and send files from my current PC right to the Classic?
Thanks again!

It's been a *long* time, so you'd probably be better served by someone with a fresher memory. That said, I had a similar problem getting an OS onto a bare Quadra and solved it, so...

First off, it should probably be clarified, what OS does your Classic have on it again? There's no such thing as Mac OS "6.8.1". System 6 ran from 6.0.0 to 6.0.8. The reason I ask is that the Mac Classic has a built-in System ... 6.0.3? in ROM. I'm concerned that your system may actually be booting from that, not the hard disk. If that's the case... make sure you actually *have* a working hard disk in the system. If you don't, well, you're obviously not going to get too far.

Once you're certain the Mac has a working hard disk if your PC has a floppy drive you can use use that to spoonfeed-over a system 7 upgrade. The simplest thing is probably putting System 7.5.3 on it. You can download that in a bunch of floppy-disk size pieces here. Then you can download the System 7.5 Network Access Disk and image it to a real floppy. (Someone more classic-mac oriented then me can tell you the best way to do this. If you can find old copies of Stuffit Explorer and Disk Copy that work under system six might be able to do this on your Classic. Otherwise, there's lousy instructions HERE for making a Mac boot disk on a PC.

(The reason I think you need the boot disk is I *don't* believe you can run the self-extracting installer for system 7.5 (the 19 piece one) from anything prior to 7.)

This link also might be slightly helpful, although, again, it's not well organized.

Again, someone can probably help you more then I can. The *specifics* of how I did this with a Quadra probably wouldn't be particularly helpful because I used a Linux box with a SCSI controller to skip some of the really annoying steps.

--Peace

Thanks for the reply! Ok so I got the 19 files for the System 7.5.3 on my PC but what do I do? They are .bin files. Do I format 3.5 disks on my PC and ad the files to 3.5 floppies and then put those in the Mac Classic or do I have to transfer the files another way?
Thanks!

you have to unstuff the binhex files. Not sure if Windows will do it. If not you can get a copy of mini vmac for your PC and use a virtual Mac to expand the files. Then format your floppy in the PC for Mac and export the decompressed files from Mini vMac onto your disk.

Yeah, I didn't realize that System 6 didn't have the PC Exchange control panel. This makes life difficult.

So, here's what I remember about making this go on my Quadra. It was painfully convoluted.

1: I used a working installation of the BasiliskII mac Emulator to unpack the Network Access disk image. (My host OS was Linux so using Windows Stuffit wasn't an option.) Once extracted I wrote the image to a real floppy using "dd". (On Windows you'd use one of those RAWRITE-style progams.) This is how I got the Quadra to boot the first time.

2: Annoyingly, I seem to recall having to make my own "Disk Tools" floppy by deleting stuff off the the Network Access and copying "Drive Setup" to it to format my hard disk. Again, I did this with BasiliskII.

3: After managing to get the hard disk formatted, here's where I cheated: I removed the drive from the Mac, wired it up to my Linux box's SCSI controller, and used the HFS Utilities package to copy the 19 pieces of System 7.5 onto the formatted drive. From that point I believe it was enough to simply put the drive back in the Mac, booting from it, and clicking on the first .smi file copied to the hard disk, file as detailed in this article about setting up System 7.5.3 on Basilisk..

In your situation, well... here's what I would suggest, but I can't verify the steps since I don't have a working 68k Mac anymore: (Nor do I use Windows.)

1: See if you can get either one of the Windows ports of hfsutils mentioned on that page to work for you (the pages I've seen mentioning it claim it doesn't work with Windows XP or higher) or if the HFVExplorer program linked in the emaculation.com BasiliskII article works. Either one of those should let you copy files to a Mac-formatted floppy. There are also commercial programs that will do this if you're willing to be out $50-ish.

2: Make *sure* your Classic has a working hard drive in it, and that you're not just booting the ROM OS. Assuming it is working properly, use it to format a blank disk to a Mac format. Take that to the PC, and one by one copy the 19 pieces of System 7.5.3 to a folder on your classic using whatever transfer program you got working in step #1.

3: Make a bootable copy of the Network access disk. You should be able to do that with your PC via one of the methods linked in my previous posts, or you might be able to do it by copying over a System 6-compatible version of "Disk Copy" and the image via the method outlined in step 2. Boot from this disk, and then run the system 7 installer from the folder you copied the parts to.

Using a Mac emulator like vMac or BasiliskII might make some of these steps easier, or, well, possible if you can't get your hands on a PC->Mac disk copy program.

Again, sorry I can't be more help. It's been a long time and classic MacOS isn't my specialty.

--Peace