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I've just got a Specter GCR :)


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I have the earlier version (Magic Sac Plus). My plan was to look into seeing if a Mac Plus emulator out there supporter a serial connection so I could connect it to a real ST.

I need time to look into whether was viable though...

 

 

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I cant get to the desktop to start the System 6 installation.

 

I am wondering whether it is a disk drive issue rather than a faulty disk. I know when I used Spectre I had some problems with my disk drive and reading the Mac disks, as in I couldn't seem to access some tracks (this was with a disk from a real 'bridge' Mac). I believe I eventually had to copy the disks piecemeal to get a working minimal system disk, which was just enough to get the system to boot, and then fudged things around to get a working install. Did you get the 800k or the 400k disks? I'm wondering whether you are having issues with the HD disk drive not being able to access later tracks (although you wouldn't have thought that would be an issue).

 

I dread to think how hard it would be to get the other ST Mac emulators up and running in this day and age, given Spectre can at least access disks, whereas they can't.

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Man I see/hear the mention of Spectre GCR and it makes me want to get a Atari ST again. Or an Atari TT 030. Aw damn the TT030 was an AWESOME and swift Mac Plus. :P I loved playing Creepy Castle, SPECTRE (the tank game), and Rescue (Star Trek game). Damn that was amazing. And Z-Term, what was a great term program with macros and features. You are making me pine for my System 6 Mac and the Spectre now!

 

Made a website about the Spectre GCR and mentioned what worked and what didn't.

 

My experience: The Atari ST floppy drives are crap. They sometimes work, and they sometimes don't and that was in 1999 only a few years after they were released. Those things have got to be on their last legs at this point. Mac 3 1/4 drives were pretty solid, shame you can't hook one of those up. But again the whole 3 1/4 media is sooo flakey.

 

If you can get the files on a hard drive that is your best bet. That is what I did in all cases. Again, booting a Mac disk from a ST floppy is self induced AGONY. The Spectre GCR deserves better, and can do amazing things. Can't run all mac programs (like Dark Castle), but enough.

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I am wondering whether it is a disk drive issue rather than a faulty disk. I know when I used Spectre I had some problems with my disk drive and reading the Mac disks, as in I couldn't seem to access some tracks (this was with a disk from a real 'bridge' Mac). I believe I eventually had to copy the disks piecemeal to get a working minimal system disk, which was just enough to get the system to boot, and then fudged things around to get a working install. Did you get the 800k or the 400k disks? I'm wondering whether you are having issues with the HD disk drive not being able to access later tracks (although you wouldn't have thought that would be an issue).

 

I dread to think how hard it would be to get the other ST Mac emulators up and running in this day and age, given Spectre can at least access disks, whereas they can't.

I'v got the 800k disk, the drive I'm using is nos from best electronics and the floppy disk aren't HD disk. I can tell you that Spectre doesn't like the satandisk it does see the satandisk but it can't use it so I'm using my Atari SH203/Megafile 30. I think the disks I've got they are not up to par and they wasn't packed every well.

Edited by walter_J64bit
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I checked my disk collection and found the installation set of System 6.0.5 on (4) 800K disks. These are the disks I used many years ago to setup Spectre GCR. I want to verify the disks work - will need to setup one of my old Macs. Send me a private message if you're interested in these disks, and I'll send them gratis.

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Horray!

 

You'll be much happier when getting the system installed on your hard drive. I didn't have any problem running SpectreGCR off my ICD equipped hard drives and 44 GB Syquest cartridges back then. I don't know if the Syquest drives held up over the years, because the drives haven't been connected.

 

FYI, these days even real, old Macs don't work well formatting 800K disks, due to the variable speed drives.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have the Magic Sac Plus so reading original Mac disks will be impossible for me.

I’m hoping to get a setup where I can use a virtual Mac on one side, along with disk images from a Gotek. Hopefully, conversions can be done in software against images rather than using original hardware that I don’t have. Will need to sit down and think this one through..

 

Btw, do you have a converted copy of the system disks?

 

 

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I have the Magic Sac Plus so reading original Mac disks will be impossible for me.

I’m hoping to get a setup where I can use a virtual Mac on one side, along with disk images from a Gotek. Hopefully, conversions can be done in software against images rather than using original hardware that I don’t have. Will need to sit down and think this one through..

 

Btw, do you have a converted copy of the system disks?

 

 

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No, I don't have converted copies.

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  • 2 years later...

I have entered the rabbit hole of Specter 128.  I have a Supra HD with Specter 128, I can get to it asking for a boot floppy.  Then I'm dead in the water.  It looks like there is a HFS HD partition but it is not starting from HD. It looks like I might have to make a system floppy.  In the manual pg25.

 

If you have a Spectre 128, you can only read Spectre format disks;

you can't read Mac format disks. You have to use other means to get
stuff off of Mac disks and into your ST.

 

 

PG 83,

Floppy Disk Menu
� Format: This allows you to format floppies into Spectre or Macintosh format (see Figure 12).

 

Once I have a Specter Formatted Floppy.  How do I get system 6 on to it?

 

Thank you

 

 

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I now have 1.44 system 6 disks from here -

https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/mini_vmac_setup

 

800k better over here -

https://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/system/sys60/index.html

 

Sort of better I can expand the first 2 disks but not the 3 & 4 on a mac with system 10.15.7

 

slow progress - I already have mini vMac running system 7 on the same Modern Mac

 

 

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On 3/11/2019 at 10:54 AM, doctorclu said:

 

My experience: The Atari ST floppy drives are crap. They sometimes work, and they sometimes don't and that was in 1999 only a few years after they were released. Those things have got to be on their last legs at this point. Mac 3 1/4 drives were pretty solid, shame you can't hook one of those up. But again the whole 3 1/4 media is sooo flakey.

 

 

I guess it just depends on user experience. Here, having been an ST owner since 1985, I have had probably -2- floppy drive failures in all that time.

 

Last one was on the Mega ST4 that runs DarkForce. I've had that machine since 1987/88 or so. First time I had problems with the floppy drive. (it

died and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it). Replaced it with a brand spanking new one from Best Electronics. I fully expect it to last an

additional 30-40 years.

 

I, having just turned 60 in December of 2021, may not...  :)
 

Edited by DarkLord
Spelling correction....
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Much aggravation trying to fix this on a Mac.  It looks like I have a Geotek file but can't make a boot disk from it on a Mac.  I might build a geotek just to try it.  If I find a way under Windows I'll flip.  But I will take any win.  I have a friend that might be able to do it on a GCR.

 

Thank you

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22 hours ago, Goochman said:

If you figure out a way to get a Mac disk from the PC onto Spectre on the ST please post.  Anything "binary" would not move from the ST/PC side to the Spectre disk/partition for me.  .SIT files or anything else.

i do know back in the day, to get around this, many people would just use a null modem cable and connect a mac together (could use a pc also) to the ST in spectre mode and use modem software to d/l stuff to the spectre hd partition.  I realize this is a ton of work, but it is an option

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9 hours ago, Goochman said:

If there was a way to use the Gotek on the ST to read Mac disk images under GCR that would be ideal but dont think its supported.

I don't have any personal experience with the Spectre, but I don't see why you shouldn't be able to mount a Mac disk image on the Gotek and read it with the Spectre GCR. It might be difficult to produce a suitable right image in the first place. But if say, somebody with an original Mac disk makes, i.e., a SCP image, that should definitely work. Of course, that requires hardware that can produce flux level images of floppies, like the SCP, Kryoflux or GW.

Edited by ijor
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