Use - view floppy disk Basilisk II & Ubuntu

[petes]

Hi, I am new to Basilisk II.

I have Basilisk II running system Macintosh 7.53 with Ubuntu. Everything is working fine, but the system does not recognize (see) mac floppy disks when they are put into the computer. I downloaded as per instructions. The only tabs I have in Basilisk II are Volumes, SCSI, Graphics/Sound, Keyboard/Mouse, Serial/Network, Memory/Misc/ Jti Compiler.

I do not see or have Preferences Tabs for Basilisk II. Is there anyway I can get my Basilisk II system to recognize Macintosh Floppies that are put into my Ubuntu computer?

Thanks!

Pete

[petes]

Let me try this another way. Does anyone know how I can get Prefrences for my Basilisk II - Ubuntu system? Did I do something wrong in the download or setup. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Cat_7]

Hi,

My knowledge of this issue is a bit rusty...
If these are 800k floppies, you are out of luck. You might be able to use 1.4Mb floppies.
There are several ways to mount a mac floppy:

mount: mount -F hfs /dev/fd0 /floppy
hfstils: I you have to install the hfsutils packages for your system. You can then try to mount the floppy with hmount /dev/fd0

In Basilisk, might then try to add /dev/fd0 as a volume to the list (you'll need to manually edit the prefs file)

You can also try to create a disk image from the floppy with the dd command. Something like:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/place/name of the image (you should look up the exact command parameters to use).

If that succeeds, you can add the resulting floppy disk image file to the volumes list in the basilisk prefs.

Best,
Cat_7

[petes]

Thanks so much for the help. I will try those options.

[Cat_7]

Hi,

I created an image of a mac floppy using:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=~/imagename.img (creating a file called imagename.img in my home folder)

I then added the imagename.img to the volumes list in SheepShaver and the disk showed up on the desktop. The file in the image (a .sit file) could be copied to the SheepShaver hard disk and I was able to double click the file, which started stuff-it. The file was unpacked correctly.
The same procedure should work for basilisk.

Best,
Cat_7

[24bit]

Hm, Control-F1 always worked for me for mounting Mac HD floppies on my Mandriva32bit host running BII.
My Mandriva 64bit beast doesnt even have a floppy drive no more.
Your milage may vary, of course.

[Cat_7]

Hi,

Yes, you are absolutely right. Ctrl-F1 mounts the floppy!

Thanks,
Cat_7

[petes]

HI Thanks again for the help to all who have replied.

The floppies are old Mac formatted MF2HD 1.40 mb, not 1.44mb, so maybe my laptop is not reading/mounting them because they are not 1.44?

I have tried Ctrl-F1, Ctrl-F4, and Ctrl/Shift F11 but none of these options work for me.

my system shows that I have the hfsutils packages

I am new to Ubuntu and obviously new to Basiliskll, so please excuse this question, but in creating the disk image, I am assuming that I would put the floppy in the computer, and then run the dd command through the terminal? The created file would be on the desktop, move it to the home folder and then to the Basiliskll volumes in the GUI, does this sound correct?

Thanks again!
Pete

By the way, I have also tried this as noted on http://sourceforge.net/projects/basilis ... pic/653456, but I may not have copied the text exactly into the right location, because it did not help.

"The code to detect if the floppy is inserted tries to read from the floppy device file which is opened when Basilisk starts and which fails once the floppy is changed.

The workaround I used was to change the code to close and reopen the floppy device file.

basilisk2-0.9.20020115 on Debian Linux Kernel 2.4.18 i386

In sys_unix.cpp I added these lines:

if (read(fh->fd, block, 512) == 512)

return true;

// try to close / open / retry"

close(fh->fd);

fh->fd = open(fh->name, fh->read_only ? O_RDONLY : O_RDWR );

if (fh->fd < 0) {

fh->read_only = true;

fh->fd = open(fh->name, O_RDONLY );

}

lseek(fh->fd, 0, SEEK_SET);

just before the line:

return read(fh->fd, block, 512) == 512;

[Cat_7]

I am new to Ubuntu and obviously new to Basiliskll, so please excuse this question, but in creating the disk image, I am assuming that I would put the floppy in the computer, and then run the dd command through the terminal? The created file would be on the desktop, move it to the home folder and then to the Basiliskll volumes in the GUI, does this sound correct?

Yes, the dd command I gave you assumes you put the floppy in the drive and then execute it. It results in an image file with the name you chose in your home folder (the "~" in the command means you refer to your home folder). You can then use the preferences editor to add the image file to the volumes list.

Please try the dd command first, see if it creates an image of the disk.

Best,
Cat_7

[petes]

Hi Cat_7,

You are are awesome. Thanks so much for the help. the dd img worked great. Only thing was I had to use "sudo" before the command in the terminal.

Now, that I can see my floppy data, I have another problem which is none of the files will open because "the application that created the files could not be found". I understand this for the Claris works files, but I even get that message on simple jpeg files. Oh well I am happy that we solved the big issue of getting into the floppy data. Now I will have to think about how to get software to my new mac system. If you have any ideas about viewing jpegs or word processing files, please let me know. My current Basilisk ii system is 7.5.3 Mac.

Thanks so much for the floppy fix!
Pete

[Cat_7]

Hi,

I'm not certain, but it could be that the dd command copies only the data part of the files on the floppy. Mac files consist of two parts, a data part and a resource part. The second part contains the info about which program created the file etc. If that info is missing, Mac OS doesn't know what to do with the file.
You can, however, open the file from within the application you know should open the file. So, for a claris file, start claris, choose File/Open and select the file you copied from the floppy image. That should also repair the resource part of the file.

I should also remark that you should not open files from the floppy disk image. Please always copy the file(s) you want to use from the floppy disk image to the hard disk on which your Mac OS system is installed

How to get software into Basilisk? Use Mac CD-Roms, use the Unix drive option or download from the internet? Check out the macintoshgarden site, it has a lot of old mac software available.

Best,
Cat_7

[petes]

Thanks again!

Great information.

Have a great day!