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Tag: Macintosh 400k Floppy

The 400k floppy is a single sided 3.5″ floppy was introduced with the Macintosh 128k systems, and also used with the Macintosh 512k system.

Unfortunately Windows PCs cannot create these disks, nor can any of the iMac Systems that use USB floppy drives. To create these disks you’ll need one of the systems listed on my compatibility table: http://www.savagetaylor.com/2015/11/22/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-selecting-your-system-software/

Or skip the whole thing and just use a floppy disk emulator.

Floppy Drive: Using a 3.5″ HD Floppy Drive to setup your 68k Macintosh

Photo of a 3.5 inch floppy disk
Photo of a 3.5 inch floppy disk

Booting your classic 68k Macintosh from a 3.5 inch floppy disk was the most common and the easiest way to get most classic macs working when your starting with a more modern machine (most, but not all, more on that in a bit).

This post focuses on 3.5″ High Density (HD) disks that can be created using modern USB floppy drives.

I will create separate posts describing how to get started using 400k and 800k floppy disks using either a intermediary Macintosh that supports both these the HD format, or using floppy-emu to emulate these old drives.

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Selecting your System Software for your 68k Macintosh

As I mentioned in my Setting up your vintage (classic) 68k Macintosh not every Macintosh System can run every OS, for example System 7.5.5 was the last version to support the original Macintosh Systems with their Motorola 68000 (68k) processors, 7.6 required Systems with a 68030 and 32bit clean ROMs, with support for 68k processors ending with System 8.1. I also include some information about PPC systems, but my main focus for this page is 68k systems.

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Setting up your vintage (classic) 68k Macintosh

I recently pulled my old Macintosh Color Classic (with an Apple IIe Emulator Card) out of storage in preparation for a move to see if it still works (last used in 2001)… so far so good.   I also obtained a Macintosh LCIII to setup as my backup system in case the Macintosh Color Classic decides to die on me (need to get a cap job done on both of them).

When I started to look for the guides etc.  that I used back in 1999/2000, I quickly found out that Apple has finally started to abandon these old machines, removing the free downloads and knowledge base articles that vintage mac users have relied on (still available on apple support, use the search, then select filter, then check the box labeled “include content no longer being updated).  Luckily the software can still be found on the internet archive, or sites like the Macintosh Garden and the Macintosh Repository, but it looks like it will be a lot harder to find the information that used to be in the knowledge base.   To help myself remember what to do in the future, and to hopefully help others, I’ve decided to put up a series of posts on how to set up these old systems with links to the disk images and files I use.

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