Good luck with your tedious but worthwhile project! (I did this with all my old Mac floppies a loong time ago, still have a nice box of formatted-ready-to-use disks as a result)...
You might want to install antivirus software (especially if you don't know where the floppy came from) and disk repair software (like Norton) first, if you have it. Just sticking a floppy into a machine & looking at its contents without opening any files cannot give you a virus AFAIK, but many antivirus programs can scan every floppy inserted for viruses, and you might as well know up front if you've got an infected disk before you start opening any files. The disk repair software will come in handy if any of the floppies are damaged; older floppies can go bad but can often be rescued. Like others said, PC exchange will read PC floppies in a Mac (have never used the PC program others mentioned but it sounds good); the control panel can be installed by itself in a 7.x mac if it's not already built into your version of system software. > > 1) if it was formatted on a PC and you don't intend to erase over it and > record new data > [ should i just save it to the PC box and try it on that later?} yes; eject, don't format > > 2) if it was recorded in a different operating system than the one on > your machine at the moment? the computer doesn't care, unless it is a very early 400K MFS disk, but that is unlikely, and system 7 can read them anyway. also, an 800K drive cannot read a HD (high density) floppy, but your computers should all have HD drives which can read both 800K and 1.4M disks. > > 3) if it's blank and you want to make it one of your mac supplies for > future storage? Format, but make sure that it's not PC or damaged first (either condition may produce the "do you want to format?" question, if you don't have PC exchange). If neither the PC nor the mac recognizes it, it might be damaged; try inserting/opening it after opening Norton Utilities or the like. Once you get any useful data off a damaged disk, toss it unless you really value it for some reason -- a disk that goes bad once will often turn up bad again later. (If you're sure you don't care what's on the disk, just skip Norton and format it; the computer will tell you if the format fails because the disk is bad). > > 4)if it has something irrelevent to you and you decide you want to clean > it up and reuse it for storing something else 'mac' on, in the future? Double & triple check to make sure the data is really irrelevant, then format on the machine you plan to use it on. (I also recommend renaming it blank and putting on a fresh disk label so you will remember later that you already reformatted it -- office supply stores carry floppy disk labels in the label section, at least they used to.) > > is there any quick way to tell from looking at it, if a floppie is mac > format or PC? > Not really. Even if a disk is actually labeled mac or pc, it might have been reformatted by someone later in the other operating system. PC exchange has a nice feature where a PC-formatted disk pops up with "PC" on its icon. If you care, you can tell the difference between HD and 800K floppies by looking at them -- HD floppies have an extra hole in the upper left corner, 800K floppies don't. 800K floppies have only the write-protect hole in the upper right corner (HD disks have this hole also). Hope this helps -- good luck! Sara -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Vintage Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml> The FAQ: <http://macfaq.org/> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
