I've got a Mac!

[piratePenguin]

it will allow me to type up setlists, lyrics, lists of what's on each track of each recording etc

a text editor for that.

EDIT: ok maybe I didn't read this:

i am not keen on the idea of having to save things to floppies, fire up the "real" computer and then reopen it in OO.o just to resave in a more modern format

[Calum]

a text editor for that.

ah well, i see, but what i mean is that
a) it can be in the studio (not the same room as the real computer (whose name is harvey by the way) and
b) it boots in 5 seconds and shuts down in 3, making it perfect if you just want to type something out before you forget it and then get back to recording.

perhaps you mean a separate handheld text device or something? that would be fine (or of course a pencil?) but i actually do have this computer for free, so i might as well use it. also, it will have internet access in 5 seconds (well, you know, time to click on the browser and all that too), which will help with any music related internet searches i might suddenly feel urged to do while i am playing music, and that does happen a lot.

EDIT: oh i understand what you mean now, you mean, why use a word processor when a text editor will do, that is a very fair comment. setlists though tend to want to be in maybe 24pt text so you can see them from standing height when they are on the floor, that's my only answer. also, if i can get a bit more formatting versatility then why not? i expect the mac text format is similar enough to the unix one that there will be some simple filter script i can use, that's not really a huge deal, although it would be better if i could output standard files directly on the mac (text or otherwise) in case i want to email them. also if somebody emails me an MS word file, i would like to be able to open it on the mac, though this will become less likely over time as MS do deprecate their older versions of word over time. i did try to open a .doc file once in MS word 97 which i had made using the version of write.exe that came with MS windows 1.0 on the same computer, but suffice it to say it was a total disaster. i was disgusted that they can't even make their newer versions of ms word support its own file formats.

anyway, that's just more digression.

[piratePenguin]

perhaps you mean a separate handheld text device or something?

No - I mean you could probably use a text editor on the mac, instead of a word processor, if you wanted..

EDIT: ok I see your edit

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Or you might consider writing it in HTML or something. Technically the only advantage of a word processor over a text editor is more formatting opitons ... like HTML.

[bedouin]

I really can't remember how I got the 7.5.5 files into something more manageable.  .sea files are "self extracting archives" and probably need opened on a Mac, or maybe StuffIt Expander for Windows can deal with it (do they make products for Linux?)  If they ended up as .bin files, I probably used OS X's disk utility to write them to floppy disk.  I don't remember much other than moving back and forth between my living room and kitchen with floppies in my hand about 40 times (I only had 10 disks around).  Or I might have moved them over with Appletalk from OS 9 -- it's hard to say.  The easiest thing to do, obviously, is find a SCSI CD-ROM and use an install CD when possible . . .

For editing text, I don't really see what's not modern about rich text files; I use them all the time for taking notes and what not (firing up TextEdit is easier than Word -- and needs less screen real estate).  I think OS 7.5 comes with SimpleText, or whatever it was called.  Hey, it even has a Wiki -- and Apple released the source to it apparently as well.  

If you plan on spending more than $30 on this you've already spent too much.  System 7 will probably mean saying bye-bye to your 5-second start up times as well.

[Orethrius]

Just contributing what I know from experience:
You're probably going to want to format the floppies HFS (hfsutils should help with that).

(B) MacBinary files are stored with a .bin extension (invisible to MacOS 9 and earlier by default).  Opening those files on an alien system will likely just yield raw data, the contents of which will be useless on your current system.  You appear to have multiple parts to a single self-extracting archive - that requires no additional software, but will only unpack on a Mac system.  You can find a UNIX port of StuffIt directly from Allume, but I've no idea whether that will work with Self-Extracting Archives or not.  If not, they have an SDK on that same page, and a quick journey through the APT repos should turn up something (though I doubt it'll say "StuffIt-compatible replacement" right there in the description).

(C) Take anything I may say with a grain of salt.  I've upgraded 6.5 to 7, 7 to 7.1, and 7.5.3 to 8.5 (each on separate systems) but I've yet to undertake what you're doing here.

[Calum]

.sea files are "self extracting archives" and probably need opened on a Mac, or maybe StuffIt Expander for Windows can deal with it (do they make products for Linux?)

well, i wonder if i could stick them on floppies, copy them to the mac and then extract them there and make the floppies using it. the original .sea files will have to fit on floppies in their current form though, which they look like they would.

If they ended up as .bin files, I probably used OS X's disk utility to write them to floppy disk.

cool, this suggests to me that .bin images are byte for byte disk images of the floppies, and so i can use dd to make the disks with those files.  i will try all these things till one works though.

The easiest thing to do, obviously, is find a SCSI CD-ROM and use an install CD when possible . . .

nah! where's the fun? :-D

For editing text, I don't really see what's not modern about rich text files; I use them all the time for taking notes and what not (firing up TextEdit is easier than Word -- and needs less screen real estate).

cool! the only reason i asked is because i *really* don't know what's available, and which programs work, and i know that with macintoshes back in the day, most software did cost, so i have no idea which ones might be free now. your (plural) comments on this have helped though, you're right about the html too.

System 7 will probably mean saying bye-bye to your 5-second start up times as well.

well, as i say it currently has 7.5.3 and this is the startup time it has, however the disk size is one thing i am a little concerned about, which is why i was seriously thinking of trying to use 6 instead of 7, except i don't know what sort of features i would be missing, because the internet says alternatively very good or very bad things about system 6.

Just contributing what I know from experience:
You're probably going to want to format the floppies HFS (hfsutils should help with that).

i will use hfsutils for this, because i should install it if i plan to network the mac, but if push comes to shove, the mac is working so i could format the disks using it, before i start. many of my old disks are in HFS format already i think, i got them from a university department that were throwing them out, they have always used only macintoshes in that department. i'll probably format them anyway to see if they have any bad sectors etc

(B) MacBinary files are stored with a .bin extension (invisible to MacOS 9 and earlier by default). Opening those files on an alien system will likely just yield raw data, the contents of which will be useless on your current system. You appear to have multiple parts to a single self-extracting archive - that requires no additional software, but will only unpack on a Mac system. You can find a UNIX port of StuffIt directly from Allume, but I've no idea whether that will work with Self-Extracting Archives or not. If not, they have an SDK on that same page, and a quick journey through the APT repos should turn up something (though I doubt it'll say "StuffIt-compatible replacement" right there in the description).

you never know actually, i find most of the apt descriptions to be quite helpful. anyway, that information is quite a help to me to understand what's going on with these new (to me) file types, so thanks for that. the best thing would be to copy the stuff to the mac and go from there, except it occurs to me that if there are 19 disk images, at 1206656 bytes each, and i currently only have 7MB free then i might be stuffed, unless i delete virtually the whole contents of the hard drive. i wonder how one is supposed to actually do this? what i might try is copy a couple of the .sea parts at a time, make the floppies and then delete the files (if you see what i mean) so i will gradually make all 19 on the mac, but there will only be a couple of files taking up space at any one time on its hard drive. sorry, was thinking out loud (well, onto the keyboard)

(C) Take anything I may say with a grain of salt. I've upgraded 6.5 to 7, 7 to 7.1, and 7.5.3 to 8.5 (each on separate systems) but I've yet to undertake what you're doing here.

well, i would imagine an upgrade would be more complicated than a clean install, and the only extra step i am doing is trying to make my own install floppies, with a linux machine and the mac as my tools, so it shouldn't be too hard.

not like that time i tried to force 16 bit windows to install natively on a non-MSDOS machine!
by the way, i would be really interested to know what you have to say about 6.5 compared with 7.5 because like i say if i can get away with 6.5 with no obvious issues, then i would do that to save disk space, however if you (from experience) know of some issues with 6.5 that might irritate a modern computer user, then please mention them.

edit: i wonder how come the boxed edition of macOS 7.5 came as only seven floppies?!?!?!

edit 2: this is so confusing! i got as far as formatting a floppy on the mac, copying the first of the 19 files to it on the PC, then sticking the floppy in the mac again. copy the file to the desktop (hey, that should get it off the floppy and onto the hard drive, right?) wrong! it's still on the floppy! when i run it it complains that the other 18 parts are missing, so presumably they all have to be in the same place, but i don't have the HDD space for this! surely apple must have anticipated this issue since they were the ones who released the mac with this size hard drive in the first place!

so i still don't know how to literally put the file from the floppy to the hard drive, and i certainly can't think of a way to have all 19 files in the same place at once, and i am *certain* i shouldn't have to either. i think i should be able to make 19 disks and install straight from them. oh shit, you know what? i bet i have to get all the parts in one place to open the archive and then the content of this archive will be the disk images! well, i'm scunnered in that case, i have no access to a mac to do this.

i don't suppose anybody knows where i can download whatever is in this 19 part archive as straight disk images? if not, does anybody volunteer to open the archives on a mac for me and upload the contents somewhere (maybe inside a proper tar.gz file perhaps? or else you could PM me to get my gmail address and email it to me...

thanks for any answers you might have guys!

and i still don't know how to simply copy a file from a floppy to the hard drive, you see how clueless i am at using macintoshes?

edit 3: this is ridiculous! i have installed the hfsutils, macutils and stuffit for linux, but nothing is helping me to get the contents of these 19 files into some workable format! macunpack doesn't do anything to the files at all despite claiming to extract macbinary files. i have a feeling that ark from the kdeutils package *may* help, but i do not want to install kde (i don't have it installed) because it's enormous, simply to *try* this and see if it works or not. i even used cat to create one big archive (well, that's what i was hoping anyway, i just concatenated file 2 on the end of a copy of file 1, then file 3 on the end of that etc) but macunpack still leaves the file unchanged.

the lack of output in these programs doesn't help either, but that's another issue. at least they have man pages. the linux version of stuffit is an insult by today's standards too, it requires a manual installation! this literally means copying the contents of the man, doc and bin directories to your local man doc and bin folders (wherever they are in your $PATH) - this method of installation is about 20 years out of date! and for a nagware product that's not good enough. it doesn't even have a GUI!

so i'm back to square 1, anybody got any helpful suggestions? the internet doesn't seem to know anything that might help me (but then i didn't actually read the whole internet)

[Orethrius]

My only other thought is that if you can get the primary self-extracting archive (the one with a .sea extension) onto the hard drive, it should ask you to "Insert the next disk <>" when one part completes.  It's been a while since I did this, though, so it should prove interesting - also, the OS 7.5 disks have none of the r1 or r3 packs, so OS 7.5 could quite possibly fit on seven disks.

[Calum]

well, you're seeing what i've got above, the update 3 disk set is sea files but unfortunately the 19 part set (downloaded from apple.com) is not in that format, it is smi.bin (apparently this is macbinary II format). i expected it to do what you describe when i put disk one in, but all it did was complain that the other parts weren't there, and then exit.

i suppose i could pay 12 quid  (inc postage costs) (about 19 bucks you know!) to get the box set but why should i when it is officially abandonware?

i wonder if there is a .sea archive of this out there, in floppy sized bits that i could get instead...

[bedouin]

It would probably be easier for you to do all of the manipulation of archives in a Mac emulator like Basilisk II on your PC then take the floppies to the Classic when finished.

[bedouin]

This might be of some help to you in at least getting Basilisk going on your PC and possibly putting the files on floppies from there.

[Calum]

no use. i got as far as installing BasiliskII and also getting the ROM image from my mac, however the mac i have is too old (it does say that black and white macs are not supported), since the ROM image from this machine is not 512 or 1024 K in size!

so back to square one again, unless somebody wants to illegally email me a macintosh ROM image from a slightly newer machine (a powerPC has to be by the look of it), except that's highly illegal, and you know what apple are like. nevermind the fact i would only use it once to get the files off!

oh well...

edit: hold your horses, i'm not out of ideas yet...

[bedouin]

Just Google for one; there's tons out there.

[WMD]

Try this:

1.  Get 19 floppies.  (Yeah, I know...but they are cheap.)

2.  Copy each file to each disk.

3.  Open the first, right from the disk.  Perhaps then it'll ask for more disks?

By the way, the output of the 19-disk set is NOT disk images - it's just the install folder (I've done it myself).  That's why I think this method could work.  (I didn't have to do it that way, though, so I'm not sure.)

EDIT: Didn't see the second page.  You can't use a PowerPC ROM image.  I have a 68030 Performa image lying around somewhere if you can't find anything yourself.

[Calum]

your instructions don't work, unfortunately, i've already tried the thing with doing the disks part by part on floppies and it simply complains that the other parts aren't there, and i don't have space on my mac hard drive to stick them all on at once (not to mention i still don't know how to actually copy things from the floppy to the hard drive!)

i did get basilisk II working despite most of the instructions on the internet being for ms windows, except one gem of a page which i think was linked to earlier in this thread. nonetheless, i still cannot see a Unix drive in BasiliskII and a bit of frustrated searching turned up a thing which has to be used if i want to get this. now it's a file system manager however the linux CLI only version of stuffit (using command unstuff) doesn't work! it exits abnormally each time i try to unpack this thing. so now i will reluctantly have to boot to ms windows, install stuffit trial for windows and unpack my FSM there, then come back to linux and use it in some way to enable BasiliskII to see my $HOME! (phew!)

wish me luck! it is a right pain in the arse that so many things are in these mac only formats and that there are no working tools to manipulate them on other architectures! you would think that stuffit would be easily available and working in all unices, since macOSX is a *ix, especially since the buggers don't give you a GUI, and that's the only real difference as far as i can see, when it comes to writing for darwin compared with BSD/linux etc (not that i am any sort of programmer you understand)

thanks all for your help, i will check back in once i have tried these steps to get BasiliskII to see my home directory.

Come to think of it, i might still be scunnered there... if the 19 files i downloaded do not contain disk images, and i do successfully decompress them in BasiliskII, and they end up to be a big directory of stuff instead, then i am still stuck since they will then be on this computer, not the mac! so what to do?

disk images for the install floppies is what i really need. all the tutorials assume i want to install macOS 7.5 on BasiliskII - i haven't yet seen one about getting the damn thing off and onto a real mac! how can this possibly be so difficult? why doesn't apple just make the thing available as disk images like anybody sensible would?

by the way thank you everyone for your answers, you've all put thought into your replies and i appreciate it.

edit: these guys don't know the answer either by the looks of it

another edit: aha! i think i *may* have a solution. i haven't tried it yet but *please* tell me if anybody thinks this is the wrong way to go about it, because i don't want to leave the mac totally useless.

well, i will boot from a mac os 7.0 bootdisk that i have, then WIPE the contents of the hard drive (using HD SC setup from the boot floppy) - now i will have 22MB or so free! then i will copy all the parts of the 19 files to the mac using floppies THEN i will try to open them, still using the system i booted from from the floppy, and hopefully this will work. if it doesn't then i am left with a mac with no system, and a full hard drive of useless crap! that's the only snag...

i have just used the boot floppy to repair errors (some of which were found) and to verify the integrity of the hard drive.

actually, do you think it would be a good idea to just use the three update files to try and upgrade to 7.5.5 (bearing in mind it has 7.5.3 on right now, but in a dodgy state. one thing i wouldn't mind trying is to replace the system folder (still no idea how one renames things on this mac either! i really have to look up some sort of cheat sheet or something! (small edit: here's one: http://www.olemiss.edu/online/mac_basics.html so i'm sorted for that now)) with the much smaller one on the 7.0 bootdisk and then run the 3 update disks, or will this be catastrophic too?

so many unknowns! it's a bit like the twilight zone!

yet another edit: actually, if i am running a system from the bootdisk, is it possible to take the bootdisk out so i can use the floppy drive? or do i have to leave the bootdisk in there, thus meaning that i can't get anything else onto the machine until i boot from the hard drive again?