Issue with Mac SE/30 and FloppyEmu as HD20

**Old_hitech** · February 26th, 2021, 07:41 AM

My SCSI hard drive quit working on my Mac SE/30 and I am looking for a solid state replacement. I have a Floppy Emu and Ruminator II installed. I have tried to use the FloppyEmu as an HD20, but my System 6.08 and System 7.1 disk images are not working right. They both boot up fine and provide a desktop and I can access the left side upper apple "about" information. I can even open and close folders. But when I open an application like MacDraw it launches and I can do some things, but then it will crash. My only option is to power down the Mac and power back on. At this point, the disk image does not boot properly and says there is a disk error. I searched the web for solutions and found that a clean SD card with only the HD20 disk image may help. I'm going to give that a try.

**ajacocks** · February 26th, 2021, 09:16 AM

I've not tried that combo, and unfortunately, due to a fire, my SE/30 is inaccessible right now.

I'd suggest asking over on 68kMLA, as this sort of thing is their specialty. Alternately, ask BMOW (Steve Chamberlain) himself. If you post on his blog, he's usually pretty responsive, as is the community around his products.

- Alex

**dillera** · February 26th, 2021, 09:23 AM

I have a SCSI2SD internal in my SE/30 that is great. If you want to stay external they make a little external version I use on my SE (link below). These will give you more options than the FloppyEmu, plus they will be faster on the SCSI port than on the floppy port. With the SCSI2SD you can have multiple 'drives' set on a SD card and you even use it to emulate CDROMs. It's very useful.

https://store.inertialcomputing.com/...ps-int-1st.htm

-andy

**GiGaBiTe** · February 26th, 2021, 06:14 PM

The problem you're having with MacDraw is running a 24 bit program on a 32 bit CPU and OS.

MacDraw is an ancient 24 bit program released with the original 1984 Macintosh. Most Macintosh computers up to the release of System 6 used the Motorola 68000, which had a 24 bit address bus. Since memory was so limited back then, one space saving trick used was to take the high byte of the memory address (the upper eight bits) and use it to store flags and status registers. This was OK on the 68000 because the upper eight address bits were ignored since they weren't used.

However, when the 68020 came around, it became a big problem because those eight bits were suddenly part of the memory map and programs randomly editing the upper byte of the memory address caused havoc. Since the Macintosh System Software itself, and even the ToolBox code in the ROM did this in "24 bit dirty" machines, Apple had to make 32 bit addressing optional in System 7 to retain backwards compatibility with older machines and software. But even with this backwards compatibility, 24 bit applications often still did not work properly and could cause crashes and massive corruption.

The "solution" is to avoid running 24 bit applications like MacDraw on System 7, or on Macintoshes with 68020 or later CPUs because you're playing with fire. There's really no reason to even be using MacDraw on a SE/30 when there are more modern applications like ClarisWorks that do the same thing and work fine.

If you absolutely must use 24 bit Applications, make sure they're on a Macintosh with a 68000 running System 6 or earlier. Or use an emulator.

**Old_hitech** · February 27th, 2021, 08:12 AM

Thanks for the replies. Appreciate the detailed explanation on 24-bit MacDraw. I am experiencing FloppyEMU HD20 mode crashes and errors when I just boot to System 7.1 and check the About menu and open and close a couple of folders then select Shutdown and turn on my SE/30. When I turn it on again and it tries to boot to System 7.1, but gives error like Finder is missing or -127 error. I have not even tried to run an application. I have just tried some basic system/finder tasks. Very strange.
I'm an about to order a SCSI2SD from inertial computing and have some questions. I like the internal drive model and there seems to be different version numbers of V5.1 or V5.2. Which one should I get? Also does the mounting bracket fit and mounting screws holes align okay with the SE/30?. I am also going to need a floppy to 4pin Molex power harness. I have a MacBook Pro running macOS Mojave. What is the easiest way to build a hard drive image of System 7.1 for the SCSI2SD?

**GiGaBiTe** · February 28th, 2021, 03:36 AM

Has your install of System 7.1 previously experienced any crashes from misbehaving applications like MacDraw? It only takes one system crash to cause file system corruption. The Hierarchical File System (HFS) that Classic Mac OS used is notoriously unreliable and is very vulnerable to corruption. Any serious Mac user back in the day had usually a suite of programs for fixing corruption issues, Norton Disk Doctor being one of the most common.

I was recently trying to play Dark Castle on my Mac SE FDHD with a 68030 upgrade running System 7.1.1. It clobbered the screen with garbage, made ear piercing static noise and then crashed the system. Upon rebooting, I was greeted with the floppy disk with a flashing question mark, indicating the drive had been corrupted. Using a startup disk I was able to run Norton Disk Doctor that had revealed all four partitions had been corrupted so badly that the only option was to reformat and reinstall. Running the game on System 6.0.8 had no issues.

According to the table of Mac System errors, error -127 is "hMenuFindErr: could not find HMenu's parent in MenuKey", which means something isn't right within whatever data structure is being used by the Finder. I would suspect some sort of disk corruption, or malfunctioning bit of hardware. I'm not really familiar with the FloppyEMU, but it could be having compatibility or configuration issues.

As for what SCSI2SD version to use, just get the plain 5.2 board:
https://store.inertialcomputing.com/...si2sd-v5.2.htm

There are no brackets sold by Inertial Computing that will mount properly in a compact mac's 3.5" hard drive bay. When I installed one in a customer's Mac SE, I had to print an adapter. This adapter should work fine with the use of standoffs:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1827530

Standoffs:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/313424166115

**dillera** · February 28th, 2021, 05:15 AM

Originally Posted by Old_hitech

Thanks for the replies. Appreciate the detailed explanation on 24-bit MacDraw. I am experiencing FloppyEMU HD20 mode crashes and errors when I just boot to System 7.1 and check the About menu and open and close a couple of folders then select Shutdown and turn on my SE/30. When I turn it on again and it tries to boot to System 7.1, but gives error like Finder is missing or -127 error. I have not even tried to run an application. I have just tried some basic system/finder tasks. Very strange.
I'm an about to order a SCSI2SD from inertial computing and have some questions. I like the internal drive model and there seems to be different version numbers of V5.1 or V5.2. Which one should I get? Also does the mounting bracket fit and mounting screws holes align okay with the SE/30?. I am also going to need a floppy to 4pin Molex power harness. I have a MacBook Pro running macOS Mojave. What is the easiest way to build a hard drive image of System 7.1 for the SCSI2SD?

PM me and I can send you an image you can dd onto your own SD card...

Setting up is difficult unless you have all the disks and or emulation on an older mac. But you have to setup just like a regular disk you would have put into the Mac... Plus you need a modified version of HDSetup to recognize the new disks on the SCS2HD.

**Old_hitech** · February 28th, 2021, 05:47 PM

Originally Posted by dillera

PM me and I can send you an image you can dd onto your own SD card...

Setting up is difficult unless you have all the disks and or emulation on an older mac. But you have to setup just like a regular disk you would have put into the Mac... Plus you need a modified version of HDSetup to recognize the new disks on the SCS2HD.

I'm not having much luck with the FloppyEMU HD20 emulation. Not sure my SE30 is all working right. Is there a diagnostic application that will run from the internal floppy drive? I am going to order the SCSI2SD card and bracket for my SE30. I will PM you to receive an image. Thanks.