Monthly Archives: December 2020

Electronics and Computers, Macintosh, Posts, System 7

Odd Startup Disk Behaviour

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Odd Startup Disk Behaviour

Update – I’ve since discovered that this behaviour is improved if you put newer drivers on the disk. This sounds obvious, but in most instances, if you format the disk in an older version of Mac OS, and then try to update the driver, it doesn’t work because there isn’t sufficient free space for a larger driver (I believe, let me know if I’m misunderstood). The crude and destructive way of fixing this is to delete the first data partition, create a small 1 or 2MB partition straight after the driver partition, then recreate the data partition. At this point, delete the small partition and you’re left with a little gap. If everything works out, updating the driver will use this gap and will actually work. I… haven’t done this in a little while, so I can’t remember if it is best to use one of the versions of Drive Setup that supports 68k macs, or the last version of Apple HD SC Setup.

Original Post

I’ve found that when I put a large (9GB), more modern SCSI hard disk in some of my older 68k Macs, they stopped allowing me to individually select boot partitions in the Startup Disk control panel. This is extremely frustrating as it limits you to only booting from the first partition of each installed disk, even though your desktop is full of smaller partitions.

Startup Disk

The issue most obviously manifests when you find that if you open the Startup Disk control panel and pick a partition, closing and reopening the control panel shows all partitions on that disk as selected, and when you restart, the computer just boots from the first partition on the disk.

I haven’t worked out exactly what causes it, it may be due to my choice of partition size, or just the model of disk, but, regardless, I have found a workaround that doesn’t involve using the elderly utility “System Picker”.

I’ve found that for some reason, this issue goes away (although the the all partitions selected in the control panel remains) in Mac OS 8, and more interestingly, if you copy the Startup Disk control panel from Mac OS 8 onto other systems (I just copied it to the desktop, it doesn’t need to actually be installed), you can boot from any partition!

Useful to know.

If you don’t have a copy of Mac OS 8 or similar available, here is a copy from Mac OS 8.1 :

http://elephantandchicken.co.uk/downloads/Startup%20Disk.sit.hqx

Electronics and Computers, Macintosh, Posts, System 7

Macintosh System Compilations, System 7.0 to Mac OS 8.1

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Macintosh System Compilations, System 7.0 to Mac OS 8.1

Based on the Anthology DVDs that Apple made available in 1999, I extracted as many system installers as I could fit on a single CD, for one region. First of all for UK versions, but then for the US and the International installers. Where I couldn’t find an installer I tried to fill the gaps, mostly with the International versions.

I put each of these region based compilations onto a CD iso disk image after adding a bootable copy of System 7.5.5. Hopefully these will be helpful to get people up and running. You just need to burn the image directly to a CD. I recommend burning the CD at the slowest speed you can tolerate, on a quality brand CD-R. Also, if your old Mac has trouble reading the disk, try dismantling the drive and cleaning the lens as roughly described here. Note that the CD should (but might not, as I don’t have the hardware to test) boot any machine between a Macintosh Plus (with 4MB of RAM) and a 9600. It might not be able to boot some 5400, 6400, 8600 and 9600 variants (although it shouldn’t boot my 9600/350 and does). It also wont boot in most third party drives.

I had to make a new HFS Standard image for the 8.1 updater, as the original was HFS Extended… which was stupid because it meant you needed 8.1 or newer to mount it, making it extremely difficult to actually use!

The installers seem to be all Disk Copy images, but note that an older copy of Disk Copy is claiming ownership of the files. To overcome this, look in the Utilities folder and there is a newer copy of Disk Copy 6.x in a folder there, along with a number of other useful recover / maintenance / troubleshooting utilities.

For the UK :

http://elephantandchicken.co.uk/downloads/Brit%20Mac%20OS%207%20to%208.1%20(755).zip

For the US :

http://elephantandchicken.co.uk/downloads/US%20Mac%20OS%207%20to%208.1%20(755).zip

and the International version :

http://elephantandchicken.co.uk/downloads/Int%20Mac%20OS%207%20to%208.1%20(755).zip

Electronics and Computers, Macintosh, Posts

Cleaning the Lens in a ’90s Apple CD Drive

Cleaning the Lens in a ’90s Apple CD Drive

90s CD-ROM drives frequently struggle to read CDRs (home written discs). Sometimes this can be helped by using another brand of disc or writing the disc at a lower speed, but in the end, the best solution is often cleaning the drive’s laser lens with a cotton bud and IPA. These instructions will be approximately helpful for other brand drives, but the majority of 90s Apple SCSI CD-ROM drives are Matsushita drives of a very similar construction (some early ones were Sony and different – I find the caddy Sony drives tend to be better at reading CDRs anyway).

The actual drive in the following pictures is an IDE drive, but the construction is identical, specifically this drive is basically the same as the one in my Macintosh PowerPC 9600, but I’ve used the same process to clean drives in an 8500 and an 8600.

Matsushita CD Drive
Matsushita CD Drive
Side Bezel Latch
Side Bezel Latch
Top Bezel Latch 2
Top Bezel Latch 2
Front Bezel
Front Bezel
Homemade Drive Eject Tool
Homemade Drive Eject Tool
Ejecting the Tray
Ejecting the Tray
Tray Ejected 2
Tray Ejected 2
Release Right Bezel Catch
Release Right Bezel Catch
Release Bottom Bezel Catch
Release Bottom Bezel Catch
Release Left Bezel Catch
Release Left Bezel Catch
Bezel Released
Bezel Released
Ready to Remove Screws
Ready to Remove Screws
Lower Cover Removed
Lower Cover Removed
Latch 1 (Front Right)
Latch 1 (Front Right)
Release Latch by Pulling Away from Metal Tab
Release Latch by Pulling Away from Metal Tab
Latch 2 (Back Left)
Latch 2 (Back Left)
Disassembled Drive
Disassembled Drive

This is a more modern version – the older ones have a bit more stuff inside them, but the process is identical.

Lens Assembly
Lens Assembly

Don’t touch the lens!

Wipe with IPA
Wipe with IPA
Dry Dry a Little
Dry Dry a Little

Then reverse the instructions to reassemble. All the latches clip in easily when you put things back in space. If you’ve done it before the whole process is only a 10 minute job.

Good Luck.