Reading floppies from my Mac SE

[Travis86]

I got a Mac SE from my grandfather and I found it's an excellent text editor. Unfortunately, I can't get my other computers to read the floppy. I guess the format for the floppy isn't hfs or hfs+? What is it then? And how do I read it?

By the way, I don't have a modern Mac. I've got a Linux computer which should read the hfs and hfs+, and I've also got a Windows computer with a program that supposedly reads Mac disks.

Don't get all mad, I think Macs are the best. I'll get one the next time I buy a computer.



Doh! I should have posted this in the "Mac Classic System & Software" section. Oh well, this is my first post.

[JohnnyV]

What version of the OS is it running?

Click the Apple in the upper left, and click About This Mac

[Cheryl]

What kind of floppy are you using? Some of the old Mac's used 800k one sided disks. Some could read the Double Density.
If you used a High Double Density (HDD) the old Mac can not write on it properly.

[Travis86]

It runs the "fabulous" system 6.0.8 with a 6.1.8 finder.

It boots every time off of a floppy since there's plenty of room for OS 6 and a text editor. I think the disk was originally an HDD disk, but I formatted it in DOS to be a double-density disk and covered up the hole with a piece of electrical tape. When I stuck it in the machine for the first time, it said the disk wasn't formatted, and it formatted it to be double-density (1.35 MB). Anyway, it reads and writes from the floppy just fine.

Thanks

[Golfer099]

You will need to have PC Exchange to read PC formatted disks in any System prior to 7.5. You can use it in 7 but I don't know about in 6 - I used to have copies but don't any longer. They should be free online at Apple's site (somewhere - try their FTP) but you need a hard disk to install 7 - 10 megs should do and 2mb ram should be fine (oh those were the days)

[Travis86]

I've looked all over for PC Exchange, but I can't find it. It looks like I need something prior to v. 2.2 since that isn't backwards compatable. Also, is this a PC program or a Mac program?

[Cheryl]

PC Exchange is a Mac program. I did not find a separate download of that control panel.

See if it is in your control panel folder. If not, then it was not included with System 6.

[DeltaMac]

Both PC Exchange and Easy Open (both parts of Mac OS) are needed to use PC formatted disks and view files from PC formatted disks, combined into File Exchange since OS 8.5 I'm not sure if that combo was in 7.1, but probably not at all in System 6, I don't think 6 could read DOS formats natively, but my remembery is not complete here! If you've formatted the floppy for Mac, all that discussion is irrelevant anyway
Unfortuately, the Mac standard floppy format is pretty much hardware specific. (you may be able to read on other non-mac hardware with special software) If you have formatted to 1.35 or 1.4 MB, then you have a SuperDrive which is hardware capable of using Dos-formatted floppies, and read/write to double denstity (800K) or HighDensity (1.4MB), also to Apple II format, if you're internested, but if the PC reader software is not there (I don't know with System 6) then it's a little useless. That limits you to only that MAC (or look for an older MAC that is running OS 7.1 or OS 8, gives you more capabilites for swapping files.)