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How to factory reset a Macintosh Classic without installation media?

Fire-Flare

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 17, 2009
Messages
273
Location
Washington State
Is there a way to reset the system to factory settings without the original installation media?

I'd hate to have to wipe the hard drive because it seems to work just fine, but I can't keep any of the previous owner's data on it.
 
You could simply delete everything but the System folder. Or just reinstall. It came with 6.0.7, which are only two disks anyway.
 
The old user's name would still be on the system, and it didn't come with the disks. :(
Commonly users would customize the name of the hard drive volume. If that is what they did, then just click on the hard drive icon and rename it.
 
Some of those 1.44mb image are technically in uncompressed Apple Diskcopy format. Winimage will open them fine, but raw-writer type programs will barf unless you prune the header and footer. Just opening and re-saving them as IMA using Winimage will do that if needed.

Now 800k/400k disks are a whole different bag of worms. The only way to write those from a PC is using a kryoflux.
 
Mac classics are if I recall the only macs that can boot from ROM. CMD + OPTION + X + O after the chime makes it boot a minimal version of system 6. I don't recall though if there was enough space in ROM however to fit HD SC Setup or the smarts to handle SMI's.
 
Yes you can use Linux, but it's "ssɐ ǝɥʇ uᴉ uᴉɐd ǝƃnɥ ɐ".
I've tried but it's basically impossible on a MAC Classic.
People have done it, but I certainly can't.
 
Okay, I've made a set of installation/upgrade floppies. Now I'd like to do a factory reset.

Will setting the system to boot from Floppy allow me to erase the hard drive, restart, then install from scratch?

I don't want to brick the machine in the process...
 
Will setting the system to boot from Floppy allow me to erase the hard drive, restart, then install from scratch?

I don't want to brick the machine in the process...
Yes, it will. Also, you can't brick a Classic, as you can always boot from floppy or from ROM.

Boot from disk 1, use the HDD setup to format the HDD, then start the Installer/Updater to re-install the system. That's it. There's not much that can go wrong.
 
You're not going to brick it, there's no flashable firmware involved, worst you do is mess up the install, and then you can just start over and install it again.

Use the Disk Tools disk, "Apple HD SC Setup" utility will let you partition and format the hard drive.
 
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