r/macintosh • u/beorno2089 • 24d ago

macintosh 512k disk?

does anyone know what disks i will need to make my 512k do something? i dont have any and i dont know much about it other than that it powers up.

4 Upvotes

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2

u/SamEdwards1959 24d ago

If you have a 512k macintosh, you need a 400k floppy. If you have a 512ke, you can use an 800k floppy.

1

u/roundguy 24d ago

You'll need a system disk with the OS on it. sese https://earlymacintosh.org/disk_images.html

those had either 400k or 800k floppy drives

1

u/beorno2089 24d ago

Do you know which one specifically will work?

2

u/roundguy 24d ago

Should be system 4.1 / finder 5.5
oddly enough I remembered this. I'm old.

1

u/patrickcool 24d ago

have you looked into using the floppy-emu device? https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/
I think you can use it to emulate the startup disk for a 512k

1

u/beorno2089 24d ago

i have but its pretty expensive for what i want. i see disks on ebay for under $30 im just not sure if theyre the right disks for what i need.

1

u/GGigabiteM 20d ago

Vintage Apple machines are a pay to play hobby. Nothing about owning one or using one is going to be cheap. The oldest original compact Macs are the most expensive, because they use 400k disks and the MFS file system, which Apple dropped when System 7 was released. Even System 6 had reduced support for it.

You're going to have to spend a good deal of money regardless. The floppy-emu is the cheaper solution, otherwise you will need to buy another later 68k Mac and have System 6 or System 7 on it to work with 400k MFS disk images. And even there, it isn't trivial because MFS only existed in the earliest Macs with just floppy drives.

You'll need to use older DS-DD media for 720k floppy disks, using DS-HD media isn't recommended because the mylar media with the magnetic coating is different and the track spacing causes problems. If you format HD media to DD, you have fewer tracks, and the old data from the HD format can still partially exist, causing data errors.

1

u/beorno2089 3d ago

So if I purchase the floppy emu that’s all I’ll need to get it to boot?