Re: Help! Apple IIc+ with no working diskettes

["Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net>]

<star_fire@hushmail.com> wrote
>
> Ok...more questions.  Do you mean format a floppy and put ProDOS on
> it, or is it a special type of disk?  I bought a package of Imation
> 2DD 720KB diskettes that are IBM formatted.  Can I just reformat them
> on a Mac and download that file to one of them?

Yes. There are some qualifiers, though. I think the latest Macs and Mac OS's
may not work. For starters, the iMac doesn't even come with a floppy drive.
I think the latest OS may have dropped support for ProDos, too. But assuming
you are working with a Mac from the mid 90's, pop in one of your disks,
select the disk by clicking on it, select "Special" at the top of the
screen, then "Initialize Disk".  Then it will give you three format choices:
720K MSDOS, 800K Mac, and 800K ProDos. Select ProDos, and it will re-format
the disk.

 Do I need to do
> anything with that file (extract or whatever) or will it boot from it
> as is?  Please forgive my ignorance.  I'm learning a lot, though.  :)
>

Yes-  that file comes as a .sea (self-extracting archive) or a .sea.hqx. If
you download the .sea file on a Mac, you can just double-click it to
extract. It will probably make a second disk image file, that will then need
to be transferred to floppy. It may do that on it's own, or require
DiskCopy.  If you download onto a PC, you need to choose the .sea.hqx file
type. (The .sea is a Mac program, it would be damaged if you downloaded it
to a PC.) It needs to be extracted with Stuffit Expander.
This is getting complicated...

> >If you're going to school, you may be able to use a Mac there, or at a
> >library, to get yourself going.
>
> Good idea, but the local libraries don't allow downloading because
> of virus risks, or at least that's what the information desk lady told
> me.  She did suggest Kinko's, though, and I think that's what I'll
> try next.  They only charge 20 cents a minute, so as long as I have
> a rough idea what to do, it'll be pretty cheap.

They may have iMacs that probably aren't capable of doing this...  However,
if they do have usable Macs, and assuming they are connected to the
internet, your best bet would be to download that .sea file and try working
with that.
-Paul