There may be a time when you want to boot your Mac using System 7 on a floppy disk, but you don’t have a high density (1.4 meg) floppy drive. For example, you may have a hard disk problem that you want to fix with Norton Utilities or Disk Tools. Booting from System 6 on a floppy disk would (attempt to) add a Desktop file to your hard disk that could complicate recovery efforts. Or, you may want to optimize your hard disk, but it can not be done if you have booted from that drive.
The following approach presents one solution. For those of you that remember the early days of the Mac and MiniFinder it will sound familiar. For some of the reasons discussed below this approach may not work for you, but it may be worth a try. It has been tested on a Mac Plus and SE, both with accelerator boards. It has not been tested with a variety of hardware configurations or environments.
I am not sure if I should make any disclaimers here or not. Obviously you try this at your own risk and no warranties of any sort are implied. If you do not understand the approach described I suggest you get appropriate help or not try it.
What you will need
1. A set of System 7 Installer disks. I used 7.1, but the same approach should work for 7.0.1.
2. A place to install a special copy of System 7. I used an extra partition on my hard disk. If you have not partitioned your hard disk you may want to do so (be sure to read all the caveats in your software manual about backing up first!). You may be able to borrow an external hard disk from a friend (be sure they know what you are up to). As a worst case, you could probably install the configuration described below over the current one on your hard disk, perform the procedures described and then reinstall your normal configuration on your hard disk.
3. A copy of QuickFinder 1.1, available in Adam Stein’s System 7 Pack Companion! which can be found on AOL, Compuserve and from many users groups. Other small programs with application launching capability probably could be used. But, at only 18K of disk space it allows you to launch applications as well as move, delete, copy and rename files. Be sure to pony up your shareware fees!
4. A program, desk accessory, INIT or cdev to allow you to change the Creator and other Finder attributes. Options include ResEdit, commercial desk accessories such as DiskTop from CE Software and DiskTools from Fifth Generation Software, or many free/shareware utilities such as Get More Info or Get Info.
5. Font/DA Mover version 4.1 (possibly). Available from your Apple dealer. I have also seen it included with commercial programs such as WriteNow 3.0 and ALSoft Power Utilities.
6. Two floppy disk drives, unless someone can explain how to make it work with only one.
Step by step
1. Create a minimal system configuration for your Macintosh using your System 7.1 or 7.0.1 Installer disks. You must choose the Customize option to do this and then select only one option such as “Min System for Macintosh SE” available at the bottom of the scrolling list. I installed mine on a partition of my hard disk. Be sure to use the Switch Disk button to get to the right place.
2. Create a new folder on an 800K disk and name it System Folder (or whatever you want, really). Copy only the System file that you created in step 1 to this folder. I used System 7.1, but if you used System 7.0.1, you should probably also copy the System 7 Tuner file to the 800K System Folder. Note that I have not tested the System 7.0.1 option.
3. Now that you have a System file, you need a Finder to make the 800K floppy a bootable disk. Copy QuickFinder 1.1 to the 800K System Folder. Rename it “Finder“ (without the quotes) and use ResEdit or similar to change the creator code to MACS (all caps). I also set the Name Locked attribute “on” to match the setting of the real Finder. Leave the type as APPL. When you have completed this phase, you should see the little system icon on the System Folder of the 800K diskette.
4. You may be done at this stage. I had to do two additional things. First of all, I use Silver Lining to partition my hard disk. I had to install the Silver Volumes DA (for opening password protected partitions) in QuickFinder, since QuickFinder can not open desk accessories without the real Finder being present. If you need to do something similar to this, use Font/DA Mover version 4.1. Hold down the option key while clicking on the Open button to open the desk accessory and to open QuickFinder. Copy the desk accessory to QuickFinder (now named Finder). If your disk partition opening module is an application, you will have no problem accessing it with QuickFinder (that is, you can not install it with Font/DA Mover ). Just copy it to the 800K boot diskette. If it is too big to fit there, you can access it from another floppy disk.
5. The SE I was experimenting on uses an accelerator board. I added the INIT (extension) to the 800K System Folder (it will be placed in an “Extensions” folder automatically if you are working from a System 7 configuration to build the boot disk, which you probably should be). If you use an accelerator that has an installer program you may run into problems, particularly if it tries to install something into the “real” Finder that it expects to find. You may wish to contact your software vendor or other knowledgeable people if you have any questions or problems.
6. At this time I had 64K of free space on the 800K diskette. If you need to print, it may be possible to install an ImageWriter driver (that occupies 46K), but I am not sure if it will work without the Chooser or if there will be enough workspace to print. I did not experiment with this option.
7. Now you can boot from the 800K floppy. You will need a second 800K floppy from which to launch applications. Every time I tried to eject the boot disk to insert an application disk it immediately asked to have the boot disk back (how many of you early Mac folks remember a similar scenario?). When you quit Finder (nee QuickFinder) your system will shut down with the “It is now safe to switch off your Macintosh” dialog box and the Restart button.
8. If it works fine, make additional copies of your 800K boot diskette (you don’t want to go through all this again, do you?). A Finder copy (drag one disk icon to the other) seems to work OK. Remove the system folder you created in step 1 from the hard disk.
Limitations and comments
If operation of your system requires Control Panels for some reason, I have not found a way to incorporate them into this approach. Anyone have any ideas? I already tried the Control Panels DA from System 6 with a resulting big bomb. Can someone write a small “shell” for Control Panels so they can be accessed like applications or desk accessories? Does one exist?
I would not want to operate in this manner with an 800K boot diskette with any regularity. But if you need to do it, this may be one way to solve the problem. My real recommendation, if you can afford it, is to get a 20 meg or larger SCSI external hard disk (even if it is used) and install System 7 and needed utilities on it. It will probably be safer and more effective. In fact, I have such a setup. I developed this approach for an 800K disk simply because I thought it should be doable. I have used it with Norton Utilities and Speed Disk from the same package and have not noticed any ill effects.
Should work on 1.4 meg disks, also
An added thought for those of you with a single High Density drive (which I did not test). If you have enough room on a 1.4 meg floppy after step 2 above you may be able to copy your application (file fixer, optimizer, etc.) to the System Folder instead of QuickFinder and modify it as described in step 3. When you boot it should start up to this application. I don’t know what will happen when you quit. If you need a DA such as Silver Volumes you will have to install it in the application as described in step 4.
Any comments, thoughts, potential pitfalls or suggestions are welcome for the benefit of all.
