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Year: 2018

Published December 27, 2018

MAME: Using MAME o edit my Macintosh 68k bootable image files

You likely already know what MAME is, but if not, the simplest description is a multi-purpose emulator.   Most people use it to emulate old arcade systems and gaming consoles, but it also provide support for several of the 68k Macintosh Systems (search the page for mac.c). For this blog entry I’m going to walk through setting up MAME to emulate a Macintosh Plus with the assumption your using MAME instead of Basilisk II because you want to initialize and partition an image file that you created from a physical drive, SD card etc.

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Published September 10, 2018

SoftMac: Using SoftMac to edit my Macintosh 68k bootable image files and create your own

One of the most popular features of my site is my ready made System 6.0.8 or System 7.5.5 bootable images for use with 68k Macintosh systems. This entry describes how you can use SoftMac XP 8.2 or 9.0 beta to edit my images and create your own drive and volume images (up to 2.74GB) on Windows 10 (I did experience glitches if you switch from SoftMac to another window and switch back, SoftMac often locks up and has to be killed in task manager)

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Published September 2, 2018

System 7.5.5: Editing my Macintosh 68k bootable images to add the full version of System 7.5.5

In my previous blog entries I mentioned that I could not include the full version of System 7.5.5 with my drive images due to copyright restrictions, but you can install the full version of the North American version of 7.5.5 using Apple’s Legacy Software Recovery CD, if you want to install one of the other versions you need to use either disk images from Apple’s FTP site the Internet Archive, or from Apple’s Developer CDs.

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Published September 2, 2018

System 6.0.8: Editing my Macintosh 68k bootable images to add the full version of System 6.0.8

In my previous blog entries I mentioned that I could not include the full version of System 7.5.5 or System 6.0.8 with my drive images due to copyright restrictions, but you could download the full versions from Apple’s FTP site…. that option is gone, and is now replaced with the files being available from the Internet Archive.   So if you are using one of the drive image files I created with minimum versions of System 6.0.8 and System 7.5.5 this guide will tell you how to update to the full version of 6.0.8.

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Published May 28, 2018

DD: Using DD to create and write disk images

With SCSI being essentially obsolete, and the fact that Macintosh systems (since OS X 10.6 I think) can no longer write to HFS formatted disks, the best way to use modern systems when setting up your classic 68k system is to create a bootable drive image using a Macintosh 68k or PowerPC emulator then writing that disk image to a real or emulated disk drive. This guide is written for Disk Duplicator (DD) is a standard application that can be used for imaging hard drives, removable drives, memory cards, usb keys, and CD ROMs.

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Published February 11, 2018

SCSI on Windows 10 64-bit and Windows 11: Adaptec AHA-2940 (29xx) Ultra, AIC-7870 (78xx), or 29320LPE Ultra 320 and LSI Logic

When I first started playing with 68k macintosh systems around 1999/2000 (a Macintosh Plus) I connected an external SCSI drive to my Windows 98 system and was able to use an early version of Basilisk II with SCSI pass-through to format the hard drive.  Now 18 years later, SCSI is an obsolete technology, and in general is not supported under the latest versions of Windows and the the Macintosh OS, although I believe Linux still has support.

Luckily a skilled person on the internet has made 64-bit compatible drivers to support some of Adaptec’s cards under Windows 10 (sorry I’ve found nothing for the latest version of the Macintosh OS).   I’ve personally tested the Windows 10 driver for Adaptec AHA-29xx cards with an AHA 2940U PCI card. Others have tested additional cards on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

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Published January 19, 2018

Basilisk II: Using Basilisk II to edit my Macintosh 68k bootable image files

One of the most popular features of my site is my ready made System 6.0.8 or System 7.5.5 bootable images for use with 68k Macintosh systems. This entry describes how you can edit my images on Windows 10 using Basilisk II. You probably know what Basilisk II is, but if not, a quick summary: Basilisk II (manual) is an open source emulator of 68k-based Macintosh computers that support 32 bit memory (see section 2) that runs on Windows, OS X and Linux (also works on some other platforms).

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