Need to get data off an old PPC mac

[happyslayer]

Hey all,
I have a customer with a 22 year-old Power PC 7300/200 desktop Mac that has data on it he needs to transfer. The Mac has a 12X CDROM (not a writer) and no USB ports. The floppy drive is also not working. The hard drive is a SCSI 50 pin cable type (I think) It does boot into OS 8.6 and seems to work okay. Also there is an Ethernet port, though not sure if that works.

Do any of you with more experience than I have (which isn’t a lot) with this old of a Mac know how I can copy data from it? Are there any old adapters or something that you can think of to connect to some type of external storage. My google searches have been less than helpful.

Also, can an OS 8.6 Mac “talk” to a new Mac with Mojave or High Sierra over Ethernet. If so, maybe I can copy from the old Mac to my laptop over the network and then to USB.

Thanks in advance for any possible options/opinions.

 

[eyoungren]

Hey all,
I have a customer with a 22 year-old Power PC 7300/200 desktop Mac that has data on it he needs to transfer. The Mac has a 12X CDROM (not a writer) and no USB ports. The floppy drive is also not working. The hard drive is a SCSI 50 pin cable type (I think) It does boot into OS 8.6 and seems to work okay. Also there is an Ethernet port, though not sure if that works.

Do any of you with more experience than I have (which isn’t a lot) with this old of a Mac know how I can copy data from it? Are there any old adapters or something that you can think of to connect to some type of external storage. My google searches have been less than helpful.

Also, can an OS 8.6 Mac “talk” to a new Mac with Mojave or High Sierra over Ethernet. If so, maybe I can copy from the old Mac to my laptop over the network and then to USB.

Thanks in advance for any possible options/opinions.

I'd try the Ethernet route first.

In the Apple Menu of the 7300 go to Control Panels>TCP/IP.

Set 'Connect via:' to Ethernet and 'Configure' to Manually. You want to setup a P2P two Mac network so pull your other Mac offline for this.

Where the IP addresses are, just assign the 7300 an IP of 192.168.0.1 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 You can leave the other fields empty.

On your other Mac go into Network inside System Preferences and select your Ethernet connection. Set it up to be manual and assign it an IP address of 192.168.0.2 with the same subnet mask. Be sure to apply the changes.

On the 7300 go back into Apple Menu>Control Panels>File Sharing

Setup File Sharing, Users and Groups if you like, but be sure to turn it on.

Connect the 7300 to the OS X Mac with an Ethernet cable.

In Finder on the OS X Mac, go to 'Connect to Server'. Enter: afp://192.168.0.1 and press return.

Give the credentials and mount the drive. Find the data you need and copy over like normal. I would suggest that you copy in small chunks so nothing locks up.

If the 7200 does not have a TCP/IP Control Panel, see if it has an Appletalk Control Panel. If it has both then make sure the Appletalk panel is also set to Ethernet.

 

[happyslayer]

Wow! Thanks you so much for info. Especially the screen shots. Very helpful. When I get the chance, hopefully tomorrow, to get back to the customer's office, I will try this. Again, thanks for the detailed response!

 

[eyoungren]

Wow! Thanks you so much for info. Especially the screen shots. Very helpful. When I get the chance, hopefully tomorrow, to get back to the customer's office, I will try this. Again, thanks for the detailed response!

Well, the screenshots were from Google Images, so no biggie there.

But I did want to illustrate where things are in OS9 and below. If you don't know where stuff is it gets confusing. It takes three places in an OS9 Mac to set up file sharing, where OS X has it down to two.

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

You might need a crossover ethernet cable.

I still have my 7300/200! Still works!

 

[AphoticD]

I still have my 7300/200! Still works!

Nice. Do you boot it much?

I’ve been eyeing off a 7300/200 currently on eBay (AU) in great condition. They were such a perfect example of the 90’s desktop Mac. The closest I ever got to the top of the crop was owning a 7600/200 back in about 2002, but that’s long since passed.

I’d love to eventually get a couple of Beige desktop Macs together for a nostalgic trip down memory lane, but they have been rare to spot in the wild, let alone for sale (locally).

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

I haven’t booted it in 3 yrs. I also have a 9600/300 tower I got from a friend so from an architecture standpoint, one is redundant.

I keep it for the floppy. When I get a 680x0 mac without internet access, modern Mac Ethernet to 7300 floppy to 680x0 is the path.

Neither sees much use. Museum pieces, really.

 

[Wieter]

Hello everyone,

I ran into the same problem as above..

I have a scanner that only works with a SCSI connection. It’s a very good scanner but sadly it was discontinued long time ago so I’m stuck with a beige G3 tower running OS 8.1. The scanner works perfect on this PowerPC, only thing is I don’t want to do updates on the old Mac because I don’t have a calibration slide for the scanner and it’s very hard to find one. The scanner was always in use with this beige tower so the calibration works perfect for now.

What I have beside the SCSI on the Mac is a AsantéFast ethernet 10/100 PCI card.
With some used Mac’s in house I wanted to connect the G3 to a MacBook Pro 3.1 (2.4 GHz) running OS X 10.6.8 using the built-in PCI ethernet Port.

I did everything as described above but when I try to make the connection in Finder it fails...

I’m using a crossover cable.


What am I doing wrong?

Friendly greetings,
Wieter

 

[chabig]

If the Ethernet route fails, the next best solution might be to replace the CD-ROM with a CD burner:

https://www.amazon.com/scsi-cd-rom/s?k=scsi+cd+rom

There are also adapter to connect the SCSI hard drive to USB, but I can’t vouch for them:

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-UNITEK-Universal-External-Support/dp/B01NAUIA6G

 

[Wieter]

So the MacBook Pro shows a green dot (connection) for ethernet, but when i click ‘connect to server’ in OS X it fails.. I think I’m close to make this work..

 

[TzunamiOSX]

1. Filesharing between OS 8.6 and Mojave will not work

2. if you copy Programms (some file types too) to an OS X you will destroy the resource fork and Programs are not useable anymore.

The working way...

Install a FTP server on OS 8.6 (I prefer Rumpus 2, you find it on Macintoshgarden which also work with OS9 browsers, per FTP or HTTP) so you can transfer files between OS9 and OSX. Simply connect the 7300 through your router or switch. OS 8.6 also support DHCP.

If you want to save Programms, it is the best way to create a toast image of your hard drive or the needed folders. But if you mount it on OSX without write protection, you will destroy the resource forks too.
SIT compression is safest way for archiving.

 

[Wieter]

Hi,

Thanks already for the help.

The MacBook Pro is running OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and the beige tower is running OS 8.1

I would only send files (Photoshop/JPEG’s/..) from the tower to the MacBook. From the MacBook I can more easy transfer those files.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

Sorry, i have answered to the thread creator.

Perhaps 10.6 supports connection through classic OS, but I think support ends with 10.5.

You don't need a crossover cable because all Intel Macs and also some PPCs support automatic crossover on the ports.

For picture transfer I would prefer the FTP Server, but I think DAVE for the classic OS can also create a connection (SMB) through a 10.6 system.

A third solution (but a bit more complex) is to create a classic OS emulation with sheep shaver on your 10.6. then you can transfer files from OS 8.1 to you emu and from the emu to 10.6.

 

[Wieter]

Ok.. I’m really bot so familiair with those connections

Although yesterday I took a look inside the beige minitower and discovered that there’s also an Apple DVR-104PB. Although.. it seems that the software isn’t working for this..

Can I collect it somewhere or What should I do?

 

[Wieter]

Excuse above.. I read that the maximum capacity of a CD-rw is only 700mb. The files are over 1Gb... I figured out a ZIP is also top small.

What about those external SCSI drives? I know some older samplers/drumcomputers work with them. Or doesn’t that work either?


- Edit -

Just discovered there are also ZIP Jaz drives that go up to 2Gb. Will this work?
Than I could use the drive with SCSI on the beige G3 and also use it with an adapter to USB on any other Mac.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

ZIP drive max capacity is 750 MB, JAZ capacity is up to 2 GB. If you find a drive anywhere, the price is very high for the capacity.

Best way is the network way. Say, if you need a step by step instruction.

 

[weckart]

Just discovered there are also ZIP Jaz drives that go up to 2Gb. Will this work?
Than I could use the drive with SCSI on the beige G3 and also use it with an adapter to USB on any other Mac.

Jaz drives are SCSI only. USB to SCSI adapters are around $200+ if you can find one. You might be able to find a Jaz SCSI to PC card and cable on eBay. It should be a version of the Adapter 1460 with Mac drivers but the number of notebooks it is compatible with is going to be limited.

Your best bet is the PCMCI to SD/CF adapter card. Those are cheap and plentiful.

E.g.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Compact-fl...-reader-for-Notebook-LaptopSN-WF/193238274917

NB: Avoid the ones that come from cars like Mercedes Benz. Those tend to be wired for Windows only with specific drivers needed. The other cards are passthrough adapters and work on any OS no drivers needed.

If you don't have a CF card, you can buy an SD to CF adapter.

E.g.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SD-SDHC-SDXC-To-CF-Compact-Flash-Memory-Card-Adapter-Reader-nm/362732455024

You should be able to find something similar closer to you if you don't want to deal with overseas shipping and the long waits from the far East.

 

[Wieter]

The price around here for a 2GB jaz is ok, but those SCSI to USB adapters? Unbelievable expensive for a cable..

Still, if I count everything I might be cheaper and (hopefully) easier off buying a G4 with SCSI running Mac OS 9.

Correct me if I’m wrong.
I can use ethernet to transfer everything (the software for making the scanner work) from the G3 (OS 8.1) to the G4 (OS 9.2). Then hope the scanner still works (is calibrated).

From the G4 (USB) I can transfer files to any other Mac using an external hard drive.

I see G4’s with OS 9 and SCSI ports around 100 dollar.

Is this something that might work?

 

[TzunamiOSX]

Why keep it simple, if you can do it hard...