System 6.0.8: New images for Macintosh System 6.0.8

As part of a general cleanup and as something to do on rainy days, I’ve decided to make a version 2 of the drive and partition images I created a couple of years ago:

• I’m going to get rid of the 512MB image I created, from what I can see people are only using the 1GB and 2GB versions, and the 2GB is what is mainly used now.
• I want to review and clean up the applications I provide on the images,
  • provide readme and manual documents as Adobe 1.0 PDF files so they are all in a standard format (in addition to the originals), so they can be viewed on System 6.0.8 with Adobe Acrobat viewer 1.0.
  • convert any disk images to a disk image format that can be mounted in System 6.0.8 using DiskDup Pro v.1.0.3
  • re-compress using Stuff-It 1.5.1
  • clearly indicate if a program works on System 6.0.8 or needs System 7.x+
• I want to include some additional system folders* pre-configured for:
  • Internet connectivity with Asante EN/SC drivers (should also work with other cards). Mainly for FTP.
  • Serial connectivity with a modem cable connected via USB to a modern Windows PC.
  • Serial connectivity between two vintage macs.
  • Apple talk connectivity between two vintage macs.

* You can choose which System folder to boot from on my images by using the included System Picker utility

I’m using a combination of Basilisk II booting with one of my System 7.5.5 disk images that I had upgraded to the full version of System 7.5.5 to add and convert files, and mini vMac to sort out which applications run under System 6.0.8. The 6.0.8 images were also tested using my Mac Plus and both a FloppyEMU and a SCSI2SD.

1. Converting to PDFs (using System 7.5.5)

This took me a bit longer to sort out than I thought, mainly the issue was trying to find something that could open most of the files, a lot are in the simple text format, but there were also macwrite files, word perfect files, ms word files, text files etc. Then convert those files to PDF version 1.0 so they would be viewable on System 6.0.8 using Adobe Acrobat viewer 1.0.

First I did a install of Adobe Exchange 1.0 to my System 7.5.5 drive, I only really needed Adobe Type Manager and the Adobe Acrobat PDFWriter, but didn’t want to mess around with figuring out the other minimum install files.

The setup of the PDFWriter extension is very simple, open chooser, select the new PDFWriter printer (figure 1), then reboot Basilisk II. After that the PDFwriter virtual printer became the default printer.

I found MS Word 5.0 for the Macintosh seemed to be the most flexible editor for loading all these different formats. There was occasionally some formatting / font issues that I had to clean up, but overall it did a good job for the conversion from non-MS Word formats.

Once the documents were loaded in MS Word I used the Adobe Acrobat PDFwriter to print each document to a PDF. The resulting PDF files are viewable in Adobe Reader 1.0. Version 1.0 is the only version I’ve found that works on System 6.0.8, the later versions I found all need System 7.x. I tried PrintToPDF, but these seem to create a newer version of PDFs that were not viewable under Adobe Reader 1.0.

2. Mounting Disk Images under System 6.0.8

Working with and mounting Floppy Disk Images in System 7.5.5 is fairly straight forward, and there are many options, my go to is a tool called DropDisk that I typically use to quickly mount Disk Copy 4.2 and ShrinkWrap images.

Unfortunately System 6.0.8 options are more limited, the extension for mounting disks (mountImage) has a serious bug, so should not be used. At first the only solution I found was the shareware version DiskDup+ v2.7 which does work, but each time you use it you have to print the registration form to activate the disk mounting feature. BUT, after some hunting around I finally found a copy of DiskDup Pro v.1.0.3 hidden on the internet and it was actually registered and works under System 6.0.8!

You first have to open the image file, then the mount option is available under the file menu. Works for DiskCopy 4.2 images (figure 2).

3. Compressed folders and files under System 6.0.8

Most files found on the internet for applications that run under 6.0.8 are compressed using the StuffIt format, so I’ve included StuffIt Expander, the last version to run under System 6.0.8. Unfortunately you may find that some files you want were compressed using a newer version of StuffIt, and will not uncompress using the version of StuffIt I provide. My work around is to either boot my system in to System 7.5.5 and use StuffIt expander 5.5 that I provide on my System 7.5.5 images, or boot in to 7.5.5 under an emulator and uncompress the files there.

To make it easier for users of my images I’ve re-compressed all files and packages using StuffIt 1.5.1.

I’ll create additional blog entries as I add more functionality to my image files.