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Macintosh System Software 7.1 for a SE

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Ozfer

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2014
Messages
82
Location
Connecticut USA
Hey guys I have a Macintosh SE that I have had for a while. It has 4MB ram, a 80MB quantum Hard drive, 1 800k disk drive, a micromac 68030 accelerator at 16Mhz with a expansion FPU, and a 100MB iomega zip drive. The thing is in order to use the software that I need the best I need software 7.1. On Apples FTP they have OS 7.0 with 7.0.1 updates and system 7.5.5 but they don't have 7.1. I have looked around online and could only find 7.1 in 1.4MB disk images and they wont work in my 800k floppy drive.

Can anyone show me where to download or send me a copy of their system 7.1 disks on 800k floppies? Or if anyone has the rom upgrade kit to allow for 1.4MB floppies that they are willing to sell.
 
Ozfer said:
Hey guys I have a Macintosh SE that I have had for a while. It has 4MB ram, a 80MB quantum Hard drive, 1 800k disk drive, a micromac 68030 accelerator at 16Mhz with a expansion FPU, and a 100MB iomega zip drive. The thing is in order to use the software that I need the best I need software 7.1. On Apples FTP they have OS 7.0 with 7.0.1 updates and system 7.5.5 but they don't have 7.1. I have looked around online and could only find 7.1 in 1.4MB disk images and they wont work in my 800k floppy drive.

Can anyone show me where to download or send me a copy of their system 7.1 disks on 800k floppies? Or if anyone has the rom upgrade kit to allow for 1.4MB floppies that they are willing to sell.
Click to expand...

There are a few versions of MacOS that Apple has not made freely available, I am not sure why.

FYI I believe it is more than JUST a ROM upgrade to go to 1.44MB IIRC it also involved swapping out the SWIM chip as well. I just did a motherboard swap in my SE to get 1.44mb, I had a trashed FDHD that I yanked the board from.
 
Yea do you have the 800k images or the upgrade chips? IDK what a swim chip is but I hear all you have to do is swap the chips out and replace the drive.
 
You can push the whole thing over the network.

Or you can mount them using the network (AFP only) and install that way.

Or if you find the Legacy Recovery CD, it has 7.1 on 800KiB images.

All depends on your configuration.
 
Ozfer said:
Yea do you have the 800k images or the upgrade chips?
Click to expand...
No, I do not. You are going to have to try ebay or other marketplaces for obscure things like these that were never released freely.

Ozfer said:
IDK what a swim chip is
Click to expand...
Maybe you ought not be messing with it then.

I am not trying to be a total jackass here, just saying about the only way you will come across the ROM's and SWIM chips are already installed on another logic board, so you might as well just swap logic boards, its less work, and less chance of breaking things.
 
Okay well if you find the download or someone selling them on 800K floppies please link me as I have searched ebay and other sites for month and only come across 1.4Mb disc images. Is it possible to replace the ROMS with like EPROMS and flash new ones? My mac is not connected to any network so I don't think I can do it that way. I don't really know much about how to install mac systems that are this old.
 
Another possibility, if that is just a standard SCSI drive, you might be able to connect the drive to a PC with a SCSI adapter and install MacOS on it directly using Basillisk II. It has the interesting feature it can use SCSI devices (HD, CD, Zips, even scanners) directly. I used that method to install MacOS 8.1 on a machine without a CD drive once.
 
Cool now that is a helpful option thanks for the info. I will probably try that as it does have a standard scsi drive.
 
Ozfer said:
Is it possible to replace the ROMS with like EPROMS and flash new ones?
Click to expand...
I would think you could use EPROMS if you found compatible parts, however like I said before, its not just ROMs that it needs to see a 1.44MB drive, it needs a new SWIM chip (to replace its IWM chip), which is the floppy drive controller (IWM = 800k, SWIM = 800k&1.44mb). It is VERY unlikely to find a SWIM chip on its own anymore these days, I would look for dead/failed logic boards that you could steal one from if you are set on upgrading and not replacing your board.

Best bet for installing software on an 800k Mac (like an SE), is either via network (ethernet or localtalk) from another slightly more modern mac (not iMac or OSX modern, think beige), or like SomeGuy said via a SCSI drive which can be done from another Mac, or a PC using an emulator.

I find the most trouble free way of working with old 800k and 400k Mac's is via an intermediate Mac, I personally use a Beige G3 PowerMac, its the newest Mac to have a fully capable floppy drive, still supports localtalk, has onboard ethernet, and runs OS8 or OS9 quite well. They can be had quite cheaply, most people don't consider them vintage yet and would rather just dump them, personally I think they are the best machine for the job.
 
Another option is to load the floppy images up on to a Zip disk, then read them from a SCSI Zip drive on the target machine. you will need the right disk tools to juggle that. SCSI Zip drives are not too hard to find and not very expensive.

Rick
 
Yes I have a scsi zip drive attached to it and have thought about that but the issue of juggling mounting the images with a freshly formatted hdd is what makes me unsure if this would work. Maybe if I installed 7.1 onto the zip then copied the zip contents to the internal hdd?

Also I don't have a beige G3 mac unfortunately :( If anyone has one they are willing to give away/sell I am interested.
 
Thats a great Mac SE you have with all those additions. I would just use 7.0.1 and install that. The only reason you would need 7.1 is if you wanted to put the SE on the internet and didn't want to configure MacTCP. The only additions 7.1 added was network configuration if I remember right.
 
That's the thing I do currently have system 7.0.1 installed. My micromac accelerator works better with system software 7.1 and the manual highly recommends it over 7.0.1. Also I do want to attempt to get this on the internet and don't really want to configure MacTCP.

If any of you guys are looking for a accelerator for your old mac made by micromac technologies I do have the contact info for one of the guys who started it and he has a limited amount of NOS accelerators and he is where I got mine. He did accept paypal.

Thanks for the help guys I appreciate it.
 
Thanks guys for the help. Some helpful forum members have sent me a copy of system software 7.1 and now I can finally complete my mac project :)
 
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