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Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image

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  Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> - 2015-05-03 13:37 -0600
    Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2015-05-03 16:08 -0400
    Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image Warren Oates <warren.oates@gmail.com> - 2015-05-03 16:27 -0400
    Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2015-05-03 20:59 +0000
      Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image billy@MIX.COM - 2015-05-04 08:06 +0000
        Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> - 2015-05-04 08:28 -0600
          Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> - 2015-05-05 11:36 -0600
      Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> - 2015-05-04 08:24 -0600
        Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2015-05-28 18:08 +0000
    Re: Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image Fred McKenzie <fmmck@aol.com> - 2015-05-04 14:06 -0400

#74770 — Retrieving data from prehistoric disk image

I know it's a longshot, but any help would be appreciated...

I have some ancient files which I need to retrieve. Unfortunately, they 
are stored on equally ancient disk images. By 'ancient' I mean 
pre-System 5. The images are 400K, so I assume they are MFS rather than 
HFS disks.

Obviously, they will not mount in OS X. However, I cannot get them to 
mount using DiskCopy or ShrinkWrap under SheepShaver either.

hdiutil does seem to think they are valid images, but containing no 
mountable file systems.

Sadly, I cannot for the life of me recall which software was used to 
create them. Some have a .img suffix whereas others are .image. The 
creator and file types are both blank so no help there, but I suspect it 
must have been something other than DiskCopy since I *think* it used 
.dsk/.smi.

Any suggestions for software which could be run in OS 9 under 
SheepShaver that might be able to read a wider range of disk image 
formats than DiskCopy? (Or a suggestion for OS X software which 
implements MFS and might be able to mount and/or extract files from 
these images).

Andre

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#74773

On 15-05-03 15:37, Ymir wrote:

> I have some ancient files which I need to retrieve. Unfortunately, they 
> are stored on equally ancient disk images. By 'ancient' I mean 
> pre-System 5. The images are 400K, so I assume they are MFS rather than 
> HFS disks.

This may or may not help.

I was able to make physical (block by block) copies of 800k diskettes on
a VAX (backuP/image), transfer the resulting files with name ending in
".dmg", and used OS-X 10.6.8 "diskutil" to open the image and copy them
to a new disk image.

Note: of the old diskettes I had, many yielded too many disk errors
while being read to be of use.  Maybe a new diskette drive might have
helped.

Not sure if diskutil OS-X is able to open non HFS diskettes though.

And for classic MacOS, I think you needed a 3rd party utility to open
disk images. I *think* stuffit expander handled them. Someone else with
better memory can probably give better details.

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#74774

In article <agisaak.spamblock-03A6E5.13373903052015@shawnews>,
 Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> wrote:

> Any suggestions for software which could be run in OS 9 under 
> SheepShaver that might be able to read a wider range of disk image 
> formats than DiskCopy? (Or a suggestion for OS X software which 
> implements MFS and might be able to mount and/or extract files from 
> these images).

You may be able to copy them using dd:

dd if=/path/to/file.img of=/path/to/newfile.img

BUT I'm not sure of conversion stuff for dd:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_%28Unix%29
-- 
Where's the Vangelis music?
Pris' tongue is sticking out in in the wide shot after Batty has kissed her.
They have put back more tits into the Zhora dressing  room scene.
  -- notes for Blade Runner

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#74781

In message <agisaak.spamblock-03A6E5.13373903052015@shawnews> 
  Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know it's a longshot, but any help would be appreciated...

> I have some ancient files which I need to retrieve. Unfortunately, they 
> are stored on equally ancient disk images. By 'ancient' I mean 
> pre-System 5. The images are 400K, so I assume they are MFS rather than 
> HFS disks.

> Obviously, they will not mount in OS X. However, I cannot get them to 
> mount using DiskCopy or ShrinkWrap under SheepShaver either.

Do you have a 400K floppy drive (or an 800K floppy drive)?

> hdiutil does seem to think they are valid images, but containing no 
> mountable file systems.

> Sadly, I cannot for the life of me recall which software was used to 
> create them. Some have a .img suffix whereas others are .image. The 
> creator and file types are both blank so no help there, but I suspect it 
> must have been something other than DiskCopy since I *think* it used 
> .dsk/.smi.

Compactor and Crap-- er, Stuffit I believe both created image files with
.image extensions.

> Any suggestions for software which could be run in OS 9 under 

Mac OS 9? No, I doubt that will work. You will need to go back at least
to 7.x, and maybe to System 6. I know for a fact that Mac OS 8 cannot
handle the 400K MFS format. Hmm.. That might not apply to iamge files,
now that I think about it. For reading physical disks though, you would
have to be running pre-Mac OS 8 software.

On the other hand, early versions of OS X *will* read MFS disk images if
you happen to have the right tools from Apple which you probably cannot
get anymore.

I recall getting some data from a 400K or 800K diskcopy file back around
10.3 or 10.4 after scouring the Apple Developer page for an MFS utility.

-- 
I WILL NOT EXPOSE THE IGNORANCE OF THE FACULTY Bart chalkboard Ep. 8F15

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#74803

Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> writes:

> On the other hand, early versions of OS X *will* read MFS disk images if
> you happen to have the right tools from Apple which you probably cannot
> get anymore.
> 
> I recall getting some data from a 400K or 800K diskcopy file back around
> 10.3 or 10.4 after scouring the Apple Developer page for an MFS utility.

10.4 is required and it's named MFSLives.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/MFSLives -or-
http://sdg.mesonet.org/people/brad/XCode3/Documentation/DocSets/com.apple.adc.documentation.AppleSnowLeopard.CoreReference.docset/Contents/Resources/Documents/#samplecode/MFSLives/Listings/Read_Me_About_MFSLives_txt.html

This is source code, so you (or someone) has to build it.

Billy Y..
-- 
        sub     #'9+1   ,r0             ; convert ascii byte
	add     #9.+1   ,r0             ; to an integer
	bcc     20$                     ; not a number

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#74815

In article <mi79ap$n0a$1@reader2.panix.com>, billy@MIX.COM wrote:

> Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> writes:
> 
> > On the other hand, early versions of OS X *will* read MFS disk images if
> > you happen to have the right tools from Apple which you probably cannot
> > get anymore.
> > 
> > I recall getting some data from a 400K or 800K diskcopy file back around
> > 10.3 or 10.4 after scouring the Apple Developer page for an MFS utility.
> 
> 10.4 is required and it's named MFSLives.
> 
> http://preview.tinyurl.com/MFSLives -or-
> http://sdg.mesonet.org/people/brad/XCode3/Documentation/DocSets/com.apple.adc.
> documentation.AppleSnowLeopard.CoreReference.docset/Contents/Resources/Documen
> ts/#samplecode/MFSLives/Listings/Read_Me_About_MFSLives_txt.html
> 
> This is source code, so you (or someone) has to build it.

Thanks for the link -- I found references to this while searching for an 
answer but not the actual code. I'll compile it later and see if it 
still works on 10.5 (the oldest bootable system I have access to).

Andre

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#74895

In article <agisaak.spamblock-97E018.08283804052015@shawnews>,
 Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> wrote:

> In article <mi79ap$n0a$1@reader2.panix.com>, billy@MIX.COM wrote:
> 
> > Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> writes:
> > 
> > > On the other hand, early versions of OS X *will* read MFS disk images if
> > > you happen to have the right tools from Apple which you probably cannot
> > > get anymore.
> > > 
> > > I recall getting some data from a 400K or 800K diskcopy file back around
> > > 10.3 or 10.4 after scouring the Apple Developer page for an MFS utility.
> > 
> > 10.4 is required and it's named MFSLives.
> > 
> > http://preview.tinyurl.com/MFSLives -or-
> > http://sdg.mesonet.org/people/brad/XCode3/Documentation/DocSets/com.apple.ad
> > c.
> > documentation.AppleSnowLeopard.CoreReference.docset/Contents/Resources/Docum
> > en
> > ts/#samplecode/MFSLives/Listings/Read_Me_About_MFSLives_txt.html
> > 
> > This is source code, so you (or someone) has to build it.
> 
> Thanks for the link -- I found references to this while searching for an 
> answer but not the actual code. I'll compile it later and see if it 
> still works on 10.5 (the oldest bootable system I have access to).
> 
> Andre

Just an update for the curious -- while MFSLives builds fine under 10.5, 
it doesn't actually appear to work. Or at least I thought so at first. 
The images still won't mount after installing that, but apparently with 
MFSLives installed, Pacifist can open some (though not all) of the 
images. Not sure why Pacifist but not Diskutil sees MFSLives.

At least that's some progress.

Thanks everyone who offered suggestions.

Andre

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#74813

In article <slrnmkd33r.2ed.g.kreme@amelia.local>,
 Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:

> In message <agisaak.spamblock-03A6E5.13373903052015@shawnews> 
>   Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I know it's a longshot, but any help would be appreciated...
> 
> > I have some ancient files which I need to retrieve. Unfortunately, they 
> > are stored on equally ancient disk images. By 'ancient' I mean 
> > pre-System 5. The images are 400K, so I assume they are MFS rather than 
> > HFS disks.
> 
> > Obviously, they will not mount in OS X. However, I cannot get them to 
> > mount using DiskCopy or ShrinkWrap under SheepShaver either.
> 
> Do you have a 400K floppy drive (or an 800K floppy drive)?

No, I have neither a floppy drive nor actual disks. Just disk images.

> > hdiutil does seem to think they are valid images, but containing no 
> > mountable file systems.
> 
> > Sadly, I cannot for the life of me recall which software was used to 
> > create them. Some have a .img suffix whereas others are .image. The 
> > creator and file types are both blank so no help there, but I suspect it 
> > must have been something other than DiskCopy since I *think* it used 
> > .dsk/.smi.
> 
> Compactor and Crap-- er, Stuffit I believe both created image files with
> .image extensions.
> 
> > Any suggestions for software which could be run in OS 9 under 
> 
> Mac OS 9? No, I doubt that will work. You will need to go back at least
> to 7.x, and maybe to System 6. I know for a fact that Mac OS 8 cannot
> handle the 400K MFS format. Hmm.. That might not apply to iamge files,
> now that I think about it. For reading physical disks though, you would
> have to be running pre-Mac OS 8 software.

That's what I was afraid of. I'm fairly sure SheepShaver is limited to 
OS 9. I tried to track down an older copy of DiskCopy to see if it would 
run in System 9 and came across the following site which has an archive 
of older mac systems (probably not entirely legal)

<https://winworldpc.com/product/mac-os-0-6>

Unfortunately, most of the software here is on images of 400K floppies 
which are no more mountable than the images I need to mount. However, 
they seem to use the same image format (based both on file extension and 
a cursory examination with a hex editor) so at least that suggests that 
I didn't use something terribly nonstandard to create them.

I suspect I may be S.O.L. but at least the images aren't compressed or 
encrypted so I can at least retrieve those files which were text-based 
if I can't find a solution.

Andre

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#76004

Ymir wrote:
> In article <slrnmkd33r.2ed.g.kreme@amelia.local>,
>  Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
> 
>> In message <agisaak.spamblock-03A6E5.13373903052015@shawnews> 
>>   Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I know it's a longshot, but any help would be appreciated...
>> 
>> > I have some ancient files which I need to retrieve. Unfortunately, they
>> >
>> > are stored on equally ancient disk images. By 'ancient' I mean 
>> > pre-System 5. The images are 400K, so I assume they are MFS rather than
>> >
>> > HFS disks.
>> 
>> > Obviously, they will not mount in OS X. However, I cannot get them to 
>> > mount using DiskCopy or ShrinkWrap under SheepShaver either.
>> 
>> Do you have a 400K floppy drive (or an 800K floppy drive)?
> 
> No, I have neither a floppy drive nor actual disks. Just disk images.
> 
>> > hdiutil does seem to think they are valid images, but containing no 
>> > mountable file systems.
>> 
>> > Sadly, I cannot for the life of me recall which software was used to 
>> > create them. Some have a .img suffix whereas others are .image. The 
>> > creator and file types are both blank so no help there, but I suspect
>> > it
>> > must have been something other than DiskCopy since I *think* it used 
>> > .dsk/.smi.
>> 
>> Compactor and Crap-- er, Stuffit I believe both created image files with
>> .image extensions.
>> 
>> > Any suggestions for software which could be run in OS 9 under 
>> 
>> Mac OS 9? No, I doubt that will work. You will need to go back at least
>> to 7.x, and maybe to System 6. I know for a fact that Mac OS 8 cannot
>> handle the 400K MFS format. Hmm.. That might not apply to iamge files,
>> now that I think about it. For reading physical disks though, you would
>> have to be running pre-Mac OS 8 software.
> 
> That's what I was afraid of. I'm fairly sure SheepShaver is limited to 
> OS 9. I tried to track down an older copy of DiskCopy to see if it would 
> run in System 9 and came across the following site which has an archive 
> of older mac systems (probably not entirely legal)
> 
> <https://winworldpc.com/product/mac-os-0-6>
> 
> Unfortunately, most of the software here is on images of 400K floppies 
> which are no more mountable than the images I need to mount. However, 
> they seem to use the same image format (based both on file extension and 
> a cursory examination with a hex editor) so at least that suggests that 
> I didn't use something terribly nonstandard to create them.
> 
> I suspect I may be S.O.L. but at least the images aren't compressed or 
> encrypted so I can at least retrieve those files which were text-based 
> if I can't find a solution.
> 
> Andre
>

Try using mini vMac. Boot System 6 or 7 in that emulator. With OS X Disk
Utility you can make an HFS image to mount in mini vMac, then you can mount
the MFS image in mini vMac too. Then just use the emulator to copy the files
to the HFS image.

I'm moving this followup to comp.sys.mac.vintage too.

-- 
]DF$
The Marina IP stack for Apple II--
http://marina.a2hq.com/

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#74832

In article <agisaak.spamblock-03A6E5.13373903052015@shawnews>,
 Ymir <agisaak.spamblock@gmail.com> wrote:

> I know it's a longshot, but any help would be appreciated...
> 
> I have some ancient files which I need to retrieve. Unfortunately, they 
> are stored on equally ancient disk images. By 'ancient' I mean 
> pre-System 5. The images are 400K, so I assume they are MFS rather than 
> HFS disks.
> 
> Obviously, they will not mount in OS X. However, I cannot get them to 
> mount using DiskCopy or ShrinkWrap under SheepShaver either.

Andre-

It is not obvious they will not mount unless you have tried it.

If it didn't, try this:  Make a copy and change its suffix to .DMG.  
Double-Click it under OS-X.

If that doesn't work, try opening with StuffIt Expander.

Fred

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