Reading an old Mac floppy?
Feb 12, 2020, 10:19 am
#1
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Reading an old Mac floppy?
I found a 3.5" floppy in the lock box I had when I was a kid and I'm dying to know what 12 year old me thought important enough to put on a floppy and lock it away. I have a USB floppy drive.
I've tried running MacDisk and it says it can't find the Macintosh volume header. Windows 10 says it's not a valid disk. I am 100% sure that I would have used a Mac to create the disk...my trusty old Mac IIsi running System 7 or System 8.
Are there any other things I could try or is the disk just hopelessly degraded at this point? Perhaps there's a way to pull the data off the disk bit by bit and analyze it?
I've tried running MacDisk and it says it can't find the Macintosh volume header. Windows 10 says it's not a valid disk. I am 100% sure that I would have used a Mac to create the disk...my trusty old Mac IIsi running System 7 or System 8.
Are there any other things I could try or is the disk just hopelessly degraded at this point? Perhaps there's a way to pull the data off the disk bit by bit and analyze it?
Feb 12, 2020, 11:50 am
#2
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Feb 12, 2020, 11:54 am
#3
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Oh, no, I had Zip drives for that... 
Actually, this predated the Zip drives. I had their predecessor...they were made by Iomega I think and the drive cartridges were more like 5.5" cartridges. Each held 80 MB. I forget what they were called...
I'm sure it was a diary or something like that.
edit: it was the SyQuest drive! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology
Actually, this predated the Zip drives. I had their predecessor...they were made by Iomega I think and the drive cartridges were more like 5.5" cartridges. Each held 80 MB. I forget what they were called...
I'm sure it was a diary or something like that.
edit: it was the SyQuest drive! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology
Feb 12, 2020, 2:22 pm
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Feb 12, 2020, 2:47 pm
#6
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https://fletcherpenney.net/2018/02/r...c_floppy_disks
https://lowendmac.com/2016/floppy-di...the-mac-world/
Find an old school MUG perhaps?
Feb 12, 2020, 6:40 pm
#10
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SCSI interface HD? Haven't seen a controller card for such in decades. Not sure if my sister still has my old desktop (in Kensington) but it has a SCSI controller. 2GB was a huge amount of space in the mid '90s.
Feb 13, 2020, 2:32 am
#11
Join Date: Jan 2017
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My Google search found a blog post, that seems to describe the problems in reading old Mac floppies in detail and offers hints on affordable solution.
Feb 13, 2020, 3:32 am
#12
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I have some old functioning Apples and Macs still around from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I haven't turned them on in ages. At some point I will probably have to toss them. I also have some ancient Apple ][ computer with something like 8kb of memory, and the last time I started it up was about a decade ago. I had forgotten that there were computers with such little memory, but maybe that was because the TRS-80 had more. 
My excuse for keeping these around was that I still had files from using them. Not sure the soft or hard floppies still all work. The TRS-80 used to have me running things from a tape recorder IIRC.
My excuse for keeping these around was that I still had files from using them. Not sure the soft or hard floppies still all work. The TRS-80 used to have me running things from a tape recorder IIRC.
Last edited by GUWonder; Feb 13, 2020 at 3:38 am
Feb 13, 2020, 3:58 am
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I have some old functioning Apples and Macs still around from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I haven't turned them on in ages. At some point I will probably have to toss them. I also have some ancient Apple ][ computer with something like 8kb of memory, and the last time I started it up was about a decade ago. I had forgotten that there were computers with such little memory, but maybe that was because the TRS-80 had more.
My excuse for keeping these around was that I still had files from using them. Not sure the soft or hard floppies still all work. The TRS-80 used to have me running things from a tape recorder IIRC.
My excuse for keeping these around was that I still had files from using them. Not sure the soft or hard floppies still all work. The TRS-80 used to have me running things from a tape recorder IIRC.
There are still programs for my Mod III that worked better than anything I have today.
Feb 13, 2020, 7:04 am
#14
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 3,785
I have some old functioning Apples and Macs still around from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I haven't turned them on in ages. At some point I will probably have to toss them. I also have some ancient Apple ][ computer with something like 8kb of memory, and the last time I started it up was about a decade ago. I had forgotten that there were computers with such little memory, but maybe that was because the TRS-80 had more.
My excuse for keeping these around was that I still had files from using them. Not sure the soft or hard floppies still all work. The TRS-80 used to have me running things from a tape recorder IIRC.
My excuse for keeping these around was that I still had files from using them. Not sure the soft or hard floppies still all work. The TRS-80 used to have me running things from a tape recorder IIRC.
Feb 13, 2020, 7:26 am
#15
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My Google search found a blog post, that seems to describe the problems in reading old Mac floppies in detail and offers hints on affordable solution.
In any case, the disk I'm trying to read is a 1.44 MB HD floppy, which according to that article a USB floppy drive should be able to read.