Way back on my 8600, there was lots of stuff I collected off the internet and burned to cd or dvd.... specifically lots of music transcriptions. These were stored away for ages. I moved five years ago and a few years back I found some of the disks. At that time I was looking around for a particular guitarists transcriptions. There was a fan site that had a shitload and on the old OS9 machine I downloaded all of it... they were either created as jpegs or pdf's... I forget which. But back then I would be guessing jpegs. Unfortunately, several years ago when I wanted to grab that stuff again, the site was no longer available.... hence me hoping the stuff was on those old cd's.

Long story short, when I popped the disks into my OSX machines, the files were unrecognizable/unreadable. I had tried looking for a solution but couldn't really find one.

Now that it came to mind again today, I'm hoping maybe some mac geniuses here know of a solution

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2022

Do you remember how you originally burned those discs? Using Toast maybe? Sometimes having the old software that created the disc is very helpful to have installed. It will just magically work again. lol

What happens when you try to mount the disc? Can you use Terminal to navigate to the disc and see what is on it, at all?


Also, this may be easier. What guitarist? If you could find replacement files, you could sh*tcan the discs. You know the saying about once it's on the net, it can never be taken down? It probably applies here, especially if its a well known player.

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2022

https://archive.org/details/COIClassicOnIntelV4.0.1ChubbyBunny

 

Yeah, the disk mounts and the files are available but I can't open them... or got some kinda message or something. I don't remember exactly and I can't locate one of those old disks at the moment to try.

I saved a lot of stuff some people transcribed like Pat Metheny and many others. In particular there used to be a 'Steve Morse Fan' site that had a ton of transcripts. Its long gone. I did find a facebook fan page and I asked about them and iirc a guy helped out and loaded the stuff he said was from there into that facebook files section. Thing is, I thought there was a lot missing, mostly all the Dregs stuff. I found that site a long time ago and maybe my memory is faulty and I'm imagining there was more than there actually was, lol.

Regardless, I'd like to be able to access that old stuff and see if there's anything useful. As a matter of fact, pretty sure I did use Toast to burn the disks. My 7600 & 8600 got banged up good in a moving accident. I do have one of them G3 blue and white things that probably works. Even if I could open the files on that, I'd still need to copy to a new medium but think I'd have same problem not being able to open on OSX machine. Unless maybe there's a way to use an ethernet cable the G3 to my old mackbook or 2012 mini (shit, does the mini even have an ethernet port.. I have know idea!)

But even if that were possible, figuring out how to set that all up would fry my brain. Might as well ask me to design and build a spaceship to alpha century, lol.

 

@mr.personality Try Windows to access the disk. If it's burnt according o iso standards, it should be accessible. If that doesn't work, install OS9 on a virtual machine (the app you are using for that must be capable to emulate PowerPC instructions).

 

if you can look at it in terminal the disc is probably ok. cd-rw wasn't exactly the best long term storage sometimes.

I think installing toast might help, it can sometimes be decent at backwards compatible. You should be able to get into them at least.

 

Do not disregard the link I posted above. Classic on Intel works great in any macOS that can run 32 bits apps.

It is a no brain install of OS 9.0.2 and you can run in it any old app available in several places:
https://vintagemacmuseum.com/resources/mac-software/

 

Thanks!
I see something called E-Maculation which has something called SheepShaver and Basilisk II, one or both, that could be the thing to use I guess. Don't know if I have my OS 7,8,9 disks anymore so I suppose they'd have have them too.
I have my 2007 macbook I could try it on and don't care if I screw something up on it, heh.

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2022

Thanks. I did at the time stick it in my pc laptop and apparently that didn't work either.

"If that doesn't work, install OS9 on a virtual machine (the app you are using for that must be capable to emulate PowerPC instructions)"

Sorry, I have no idea what any of that means. What app I'm using? What virtual machine?

I notice people who know what they're talking about talk to others in shorthand thinking the other person knows what they're talking about.
I don't know what you're talking about! heh

I should find that disk so I can say more better what my computers say whats going on with the files. I always put things somewhere and then can never find them again, lol

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2022

what MacOS you're testing on?
try Mojave or High Sierra, anything newer won't work thanks to Apple removing 32bit components from the system in relation to CD and burning routines

 

COI (classic on intel) is SheepShaver based and coming with OS 9 preinstalled.

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2022

think first I tried on my old '07 macbook. one partition has tiger iirc and the other snow leopard. I have a 2012 mini running high sierra. I do have an external cd/dvd burner/player but I don't recall hooking it up but I probably did because I'm sure I would've tried. However, at the time I tried I was probably on Mavericks or Mountain Lion.

I could give it another go... if only I can find that damn disk now, lol

 

So it's all one thing... emulation with the system included? I did just manage to find an OS 8.6 copy I made to a cd disk. Still can't find that old files disk yet though

When I moved 5 years ago, guy hit the side of my moving truck, lost control, flipped onto its side, and all my shit came flying out. Still got piles of stuff in the garage haven't sorted through yet (i'm a lazy mutha, lol) Hence my 7600-8600 getting trashed. Otherwise they'd have still worked.

 

Then older OSX would work too then? See my above reply to you. So if it didn't work on my old macbook, it still ain't gonna work on high sierra?

 

worth a try but I'd keep hopes low,
old self-burned CDs usually don't work, few years back I found some CDs of our lost band, and none of them worked

 

Yeah, that blows. When I find the disk I'll try that emulation business belalugosi suggested. Have a copy of old toast too if I try that route as well.

Thanks everyone for your help!

 

The trouble with archiving old mac stuff is that it had a funky way of storing programs and files as separate "data" and "resource forks" which were easily ruined when moving stuff to another filesystem. Best way around that is/was to use compression that understands keeping the data and forks together, like Stuffit .sit or .hqx archives. On CDs apps like Toast used a hybrid HFS/Joliet filesystem that was kept data and forks together.

Unfortunately, the problem is usually not what OS one is using to access old mac archives. It's how the old mac stuff was copied and stored in the first place. There's no way to go back and fix that, apart from re-saving the data directly from an old mac. But if the discs were initially readable on an old mac, they are hypothetically still going to be readable on any system that's mac-aware. Apart from issues like bitrot, flaky media and drives.

 

Thanks.

Yeah. I have a Kawai K5000 that uses a floppy to install its OS and patches. Back then on OS9, I couldn't download the software onto a floppy using my mac... the K5000 wouldn't read it. I asked about why that happens at the time an someone explained it to me as you did here, except irc he said the old mac OS puts 'hooks' onto to the software, hence unreadable to the synth.

I use a pc laptop to download stuff like instructionals, kontakt instruments, samples, etc, etc from the sister site as one example of stuff I grab online, copy that onto a hd then copy onto my mac, and thankfully with OSX, everything plays or works fine.