Q&A for the Macintosh Plus

Mac Plus 800K drive internal & 400K drive external
Q. I have spent the entire day (literally) trying to get this to work. I will make this as brief as possible. I have a Mac Plus, internal 800K drive and external 400K drive. I have a program that is just over 600K. I would like to boot from the 400K and run the program off the 800K. Sounds easy but a wrench was thrown into it. I figured I make a System 6 boot disk with the minimum for a Mac Plus. It turns out to be under 400K so I make it and stick it in the 400K drive. I put the program disk in the 800K drive and then the wrench "Cannot make a preferences folder" appears. Apparently when you use this minimal 400K boot disk it won't be functional enough to make a preferences folder. And if you use a regular install, it requires over 700K.

I don't have another drive. Any suggestions?

A.  What is happening is the 400K disk format is MFS (Macintosh Filing System). It looks like you have folders, however you physically don't. When the original Macintosh came out, you could have unique names once on the whole disk. So a file hello could be in the folders on the disk "mydisk:projects:nothing:here", when you saved a file called hello on the root of "mydisk" is will not save.

When HFS (Hierarchical Filing System) came out, it provided a true folder structure.

Your application cannot run as it must place its preferences in the preferences folder. There is a preferences folder, however its contents are on the root of the disk.

Solution: The best solution is to find an 800K external disk drive. Another way is move the application to the same disk as your minimal System disk.

I have had several working System boot disks which had a minimal System folder on each disk (the same version). Different applications were on the different disks. The nice thing about this is, if you launch a different application from a second disk. The startup disk will change to the disk which has the different application & System folder. Then you have have your data files on the external 400K.

You might have to launch Font/DA mover to remove any unnecessary Fonts and Desk Accessories to create space. Anything you don't need in the System Folder can also be removed. Remember different startup disks can be created for specific tasks - like if you need a spell checker for MacWrite but don't for MacPaint, only have the spell checker INIT on the MacWrite boot disk.

Mac Plus keyboard Cable
Q. I need to create a keyboard cable for my Mac Plus, how can I do that?

A.  You need to pin the cable as follows (A phone cable will work with repinning):
o 1st end- Yellow, Green, Red, Black - looking at the end with the metal pins facing you.
o 2nd end - Yellow, Green, Red, Black - looking at the other end with the metal pins facing you.

A regular phone line (in the US) is reversed.

Pin Name Comments
1 CGND Chassis Ground
2 KBD1 Keyboard Clock
3 KBD2 Keyboard Data
4 +5V

Connector Type: RJ-11 Connector, 4 pin male

WARNING: Macintosh Keyboard cable connectors are just like those used in modular telephones, but the cables themselves are not. Never connect these cables to your telephone, and never connect a phone cable to your Macintosh.

Old Mac question-
Q. I just purchased two compact Macs (a 512 and a plus) from a thrift store for dirt cheap. As far as I know they are in great condition. However I am a late-comer to the world of Macs and I don't know how to get them up and running. When I turn them on they display a disk icon with a question mark. Do I need to install system software? How do I do that?
Is there a way to make disks readable from my 8600 to the classics? I would love to resurrect these computers any help would be much appreciated.

A.  The Mac 512 is not permitted to allow Macintosh users to download System Software, per a decree from Apple Computer, Inc.'s legal team.

A source for double sided/double density diskettes-
Q. I will soon be adding to my classic mac collection a 512k <not a 512ke> with one 400k floppy drive and a whopping 512k of RAM. First and foremost, I need to know if someone out there knows of a ready source for 800k/400k disks to be used with this little guy.

A.  Office Max has a steady supply of DS/DD

Life expectancy of DS/DD disks-
Q. I tried reformatting a double sided <800k> disk to single sided <400k> on my Plus, and I'm not sure if the disk is usable in the 512, since I keep getting finder error type 3's when the format is finished <problem with
>the disk, or with the system - sys 7.0.1?>

A.  It sounds like that perhaps the disk is going bad.  I am using 7.1 on a Plus with no formatting problems.
Using new disks, most of my 7+ year disks are failing me now.

Old Macintosh System Software
Q. Where can I obtain older System software or other applications for my Macintosh?

A. The Mac 512 is not permitted to allow Macintosh users to download System Software, per a decree from Apple Computer, Inc.'s legal team.

Sad Mac Error Codes-
Q. I've just inherited a classic Macintosh and when it is powered up the sad Mac icon is the first and only thing to appear, with this code, 01E3BE and some bits cycling underneath the icon, it does this whether there is a valid system disk in there or not.

A. Your Mac is reporting a very rare "Bad ROM" error. You will need to replace the ROMs on the motherboard.
01 is the Class code, E3BE is the Sub Code - in this case it doesn't mean anything. Here is the full chart of Sad Mac codes.

Error 02 from external floppy drive-
Q. When I use my external drive on left side of my Macintosh I get a 02 errors.

A. You could be getting RFI interference from the power supply. Use the external drive on the right side of the Macintosh.

Problems with a LaserWriter-
Q. When I use my LaserWriter it is slow to print. When the pages come out, I have excess spacing between the words.

A. It sounds like you are using large screen fonts (like Venice and London) or are switching among screen fonts a lot in a document. The excess spacing can be caused by having the Font Substitution option selected in the Page Setup dialog box. To speed it up select a LaserWriter font.

Problems with the Switcher application-
Q. Switcher cannot load a set I have created. What could be causing this?

A. Switcher needs the applications in the same folder as the Switcher application. Also try turning the RAM cache (aka Disk Cache) off or reduce the memory allocated to it. It is best for Switcher to use as much available memory in your Macintosh.

The Mac 512 is a gYounk design & programmed site.