I couple nights ago, I swapped the spare 500 MB drive into my Mac IIci (which happens to be a Low End Mac best buy) and booted it up with my Mac OS 6.0.8 install floppy. The IIci is the most comparable machine to a Mac Plus that I own, and one thing about the OS is that you can install it for "all Macintosh systems" to include support for every system OS 6.0.8 is aware of, so off I went for quickest OS installation I've done in a while - I believe it took about 5 minutes.
The next thing I had to do was gather up the necessary parts to hook the drive up to my TT's ACSI port. That included an external enclosure I grabbed from work, my ICD AdSCSI ST host adapter, mounting bracket, and a few cables. Once I got all that put together, I turned on the TT and configured HDDriver to scan the ACSI bus, and I was pleased to see it recognize the drive on reboot (along with the CD-ROM drive I added to the enclosure for future tinkering). It seems perhaps I'm finally learning how to configure a SCSI chain properly on the first try. :)
Now for the moment of truth. The only thing left to do was start up the software to kick off Spectre and try to use the drive. Not surprisingly (since RTFM is always my last resort), it took me a few tries to get the configuration settings right, but once I finally did... Well, that's where the "no freakin' way" comes in. The Mac BIOS was able to find and boot from the transplanted hard drive, and right in front of me sat my new Macintari TT Plus! My floor is just a bit cleaner now, so I DID do the Dance of Joy for this one. The hardware emulation runs quite smoothly, and I'm eager to get back to it tonight to test out some apps on it. The Spectre, even though it plugs into the TT's cartridge port, does absolutely nothing but stay out of the way unless you tell it to take over. This means I can just leave it plugged in all the time - even when I'm just doing ordinary Atari stuff on it.
Only one machine remaining to get functional, and then I can start making them useful!
Great. Now enjoy your superfast Mac! Though tbh I was always against those emulators at the time. I think it's more of a victory for Apple than Atari, plus it makes some great ST applications go unnoticed.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the TT :)