They were giving away old hardware at work, so I picked up this Quadra 700, with no manuals, no hard drive, and no floppy disks. I'm quite accomplished in the PC hardware world, but have next to no experience with Macs. I pulled down System 7.5.3 off Apple (19 images), Aladdin's decomp thingy, and Apple's Network Access image. Now what? The decomp'd image is larger than a 1.44 floppy (at least from the IBM world), and there doesn't appear to be any combination of tracks/sectors that I can format my floppy to, to accommodate the entire image. So I'm inferring that the DiskCopy proggie must be stripping off something from the image b4 writing it to floppy. Question: how do I do this from an Intel machine? Machine will boot to grey screen with mouse action and floppy question mark when blank disk inserted. Specs on the Quadra: 68Meg RAM, 512k VRAM, Video Accelerator in NuBus, DayStar Power 601 in the PDS, keyboard, mouse, floppy drive. Mac-to-VGA converter, SVGA monitor, 3rd party keyboard cable. External SCSI cable, Quantum Empire 2Gig SCSI drive, SCSI CDrom, requisite cabling and chassis to (eventually) install both as external drives. Additionally I have a Linux / WinNT system with CD burn capability.

First thing you HAVE TO do is physically install a Hard Drive. I suggest putting the Quantum 2gig in there unless it is already an external case in that case hook it up to the SCSI chain along with the CD drive. Don't forget to terminate! Best advice i can give that will minimize the 'pain in the ass' factor is to get a CD of the O/S and just do the deed from the CD drive if it is bootable. It's pretty cheap to buy a copy of 7.6 on CD. Try ShreveSystems.com or go thru a search engine. Otherwise find a Mac User friend and have them make floppies for you on their Mac. What you COULD DO is give your ext 2gig drive to a Mac User friend and have them initialize it and install a fresh system right onto it. Then you hook it into your Q700 and you are all set. Personally I would rather have the O/S on CD for safetys sake no matter what. Make floppies later when you have the chance as the ext CD may someday flake out.

Yes, I agree, that would most likely be the easiest way to do it. But let's just say I'm ornery :). And I'm trying to learn something about Mac internals. So I've been able to get a bootable image of 7.5 Net Access onto a floppy using a Win utility called WinImage. When I load the floppy into TransMac, it shows me various folders under an entity called 'Network Access'. I'm assuming that this is the Mac filesystem. Theoretically I should now be able to copy other utilities onto this disk, as it has around 900k free. As it turns out, the SCSI drive I had been intending to use won't spin up. But I have an external Jaz drive I could press into service, until a new SCSI disk arrives. So, in an attempt to not be dead in the water, what would I do next? I think, from what I see, I should try to get a copy of DiskTools installed onto my floppy... That raises the issue: a) how do I mount .smi files onto a floppy boot (w/o first having a running system)? b) or can I mount a DOS filesystem on a SCSI drive directly?

"Net Access" is NOT the mac 'filesystem'. I don't know what you downloaded, but that 'ain't it'. The latest free mac o/s available online was 7.1 to my knowledge, but if 7.5.3 is indeed the latest freebie then you are lucky. The boot floppy you need to make is generally called "Disk Tools" in the Apple world (Basically, this is installer disk #1). That's what you should be looking to put on a floppy. The 'smi' files you have are meant to be used to make the install floppies using apples 'diskcopy' utility. Therefore: You are fucked. Forget about the 'DOS filesystem on a SCSI device' crap, It's useless to your needs here. There is no way to proceed without a Mac Buddy. What you CAN do is copy the 'smi' images to floppies (ONE each); Take those floppies along with an equal number of blank floppies to a local computer store that sells Blue & White G3 macs (last ones to come with floppy drives) or older (even used) macs; Use the DiskCopy utility to make your floppies from the 'smi' images (which you will have copied to the local hard drive of the host mac).

To reconfirm: 'smi' stands for 'self mounting image'. Apples DiskCopy util is not needed for these, but you do need to use a Mac to open them. You will still need to use the util to make them into the 'bootable' and useable install disks. If memory serves you use the 'Make a floppy' menu selection from somewhere under one of the choices in the upper menu bar.